In math, students must build a shared understanding of mathematical to share and refine their ideas successfully ideas. This can be challenging because students must learn new words and symbols that are unique to math, as well as precise new meanings for words they are already familiar with

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Working memory is the cognitive function responsible for keeping information online, manipulating it, and using it in your thinking. It is the way that you delegate the things you encounter to the parts of your brain that can take action. In this way, working memory is necessary for staying focused on a task, blocking out distractions, and keeping you updated and aware about what’s going on around you.

Although working memory is generally associated with academic performance, the link seems especially strong to mathematics. Differences in working memory among children explain roughly half of the differences in math achievement.

This type of intelligence deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind’s eye. Understanding takes place best when using or creating images, graphics. The information is translated into visual codes, spatial relationships, patterns and properties. This representational form allows students to interconnect ideas in relation to their spatial or temporal proximity, rather than using their logical or linguistic relationships.

Math anxiety impacts students as early as the first grade by affecting their working memory. But this working memory can be disrupted by math anxiety in both elementary and secondary school students. This can lead students with math anxiety to be as much as half a school year behind their peers in math.

•    The deadlines that timed tests to impose on students lead them to feel anxious. This leads them to forget concepts that they have no problem remembering at home. Since these tests can have a negative impact on grades, the student’s fear of failure is confirmed. This creates a vicious circle that can be difficult to break.