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How to help your teen beat maths exam stress? Anxiety is a part of taking exams, and for the most part, it is a perfectly normal reaction that motivates your child to be prepared through study. However, for some children, exam stress can get overwhelming. When this happens, your child may experience some of the following symptoms: worrying a lot complaining of headaches and stomach pains not sleeping well being irritable losing interest in food eating more than normal not enjoying activities they used to enjoy becoming negative in their outlook feeling hopeless about the future Talk to your child See if it will be helpful for them to talk to a teacher or a school counsellor about their feelings around maths exam stress to keep their thoughts in perspective. Also, talk openly about exam nerves. Remind your teen that it’s normal to feel anxious. Help them put these nerves to positive use and help them face their fears rather than avoiding them. Make sure your child eats well A balanced diet is important and is food for the brain as much as for the body. Having the right nutrients in the diet will help your child perform well during exam periods and better cope with maths exam stress. Involve your child in shopping for the week’s groceries and encourage them to choose snacks that won’t spike sugar levels, which will only contribute to the stress. Make sure your child gets enough sleep Your teenager needs between 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night. This helps to improve thinking and concentration. Set up a bedtime routine for them to stick to that includes no screens of any kind an hour before bedtime. Make sure they aren’t staying up late to finish homework. Establishing a sensible study timetable will help avoid this. Be flexible during exams Give your teen a breather on household chores around exam time, where taking them away from their revision time may add undue maths exam stress. Provide a comfortable study environment Make sure your child has somewhere comfortable to study. They need a quiet place where they won’t be interrupted. Encourage exercise during the exam period This can boost energy levels, clear the mind and relieve stress. Activities that involve other people can be particularly helpful. Avoid criticising Listen to your teen, give them support and avoid criticism. Be positive and reassuring before they go into the exam. Remind them that failing won’t be the end of the world and they can always take the exam again if needs be. When to get help Some teens feel much better when exams are over, but not all get over their maths exam stress. If your teen’s anxiety persists, consult your GP as a first step. If stress is caused by their struggling with maths knowledge or exam techniques, try a trial lesson at Matrix Math. Contact us today!

What students cheat. Whether it’s pressure to pass exams, get good grades or to help out friends, most students have been exposed to cheating in some form or another. Most know it to be wrong yet can find a way to justify why it was done. “Everyone else is doing it so if I don’t I’ll fail”, “It’s not an important exam so it doesn’t matter”, etc. As parents and teachers, we play a role in ensuring that students don’t feel the need to cheat. Here are some strategies that can be put in place in schools with the support of parents.   Reduce the pressure to perform Students tend to cheat when they don’t value the work asked to do. Tests for tests sake, repetitive homework assignments all lose their value and students are more tempted to cheat rather than spend their time working on them. Providing assignments that allow students to think critically removes most of the incentive to cheat. Having a focus on learning rather than test taking also helps.   Be careful with praise Avoid the tendency to praise a child for being smart but rather praise specific actions. Praise the effort rather than the result. Children will then be less likely to cheat just to get praise based on inflated test results. Provide constructive criticism. Acknowledge where they worked well and then make a suggestion for improvement. “You’ve made great progress this semester, but here are some areas for growth in the next semester you can work on.” will be more positively received than “You need to work harder next semester.”   Create a student-driven culture of integrity Creating a learning environment where honourable behaviour is defined and enforced by the students helps to reduce the temptation to cheat as a form of peer pressure. There is no feeling worse than being the one bad apple that spoiled the bunch for everyone else. Get students to write their own honour code and teach it to the form below, who then pass it on to the form below them. Penalties for breaking the code can also be decided by the student council.   Encourage students to think about how they think Use metacognition to help students process their motivations and actions. Get them to consider the consequences of their actions if they cheat and examine under what circumstances they think it is OK to cheat, if at all. Get them to be more aware of why they act the way they act and the effect it can have on others, and if they cheat and get caught, what would the repercussions be for them?   Make the teaching of ethical behaviour part of the curriculum Build lesson in ethics into the curriculum so students implicitly know what is right and wrong. Set an environment where students feel they can be open and talk about their feelings so pressures to perform can surface and measures can be taken to help the student so they don’t feel they need to resort to cheating. While rules on ethics need to be enforced, understanding why students cheat, the motivations for their behaviour, can help encourage ethical behaviour rather than focusing on penalising bad behaviour. After all, you get what you focus on. At Matrix Math, our teachers are trained to maintain an open environment where students can talk about the pressures they may face. Take a trial lesson today!

Please be mindful that certain schools may implement a half-mark deduction for unanswered or inadequately explained notations in mathematical assessments. Hence, students must provide clear and concise explanations and solutions to avoid unnecessary point deductions.

What is number sense? Number sense is the ability to understand, relate and connect numbers. When you have good number sense, you can: How can you help your child develop good number sense? Why is having a strong number sense important for your child? Good number sense builds a foundation for mathematical understanding that will help your child solve more complex problems in the future. It also builds a love for maths in your child as they will see it as fun and more like a game than study.