Math anxiety? That’s a new one for me.
She could have a specific learning disability related to math, though.
I’ve done a lot of math tutoring in my life. A learning disability is the diagnosis of exclusion. A student has to do a lot of work to convince me they are really bad at math. Such persons exist, but they aren’t that common and even when they are there are strategies for getting around their trials.
I would also go so far as to tell a fourth grader (as I have done) that it is probably an advantage to run up against a subject that gives you grief sooner rather than later. Most of us hit one, sooner or later, and it is better that it isn’t on some big important class in high school or college. Learning how to handle yourself and how to counter-attack a subject that ambushes you is a great piece of knowledge and a big confidence-builder, if only you are willing to see it that way. Success doesn’t fall into the laps of the talented. Success comes to those who will not let failure stop them from conquering their goal, anyway.
The first experience with academic hardship could not come at a better time than 4th or 5th grade. Let’s face it: Our grades in 4th grade will not have any necessary impact on our adult life. Our middle school grades may make some difference in what high school we get into, but our grades in 4th grade are not used to judge whether we ought to get future academic opportunities. We’re just short of the emotional roller-coaster of middle school and high school. Yeah, I’d say 4th grade is as good a time as any. More to the point, any student will be helped by thinking of herself as the kind of student who turns disadvantages into advantages. You can learn helplessness, but you can also learn tenacity and get a long ways by thinking of yourself as a person with typical abilities but an atypical refusal to let any subject beat her. I have even had a college professor tell me that A-/B students make better scientists than A+ students, because they aren’t stunned when they run into the obstacles that real life always throws everyone researching a real problem. I’d sell this situation that way.
In 4th grade, scholastic marks are only feedback meant to tell us how we have done in demonstrating our knowledge and skills. It is like being told your time in practice, before the day of the real race. It is the knowledge and skills that we will need later, not the grades. It is far better to get awful grades and a solid foundation of skills and knowledge than the other way around! It is no fun to learn the habit of tenacity, but it is a wonderful weapon in life, once you have it.
Math anxiety is a very real thing. It is harder to do math (or any higher thinking) when your mind is not relaxed. We all know sparkling conversationalists who become tongue-tied around someone they particularly want to impress or when they run into someone who responds negatively to all the speaking habits that work great around someone else. Math responds to different strategies than other subjects, it can be a “curve ball” to otherwise capable students, and so it can do the same thing to us.
One of the first tricks to dealing with math anxiety is to realize that this sort of anxiety is not atypical among people who eventually master all the math they need in this life. There are strategies for recognizing this anxiety and dealing with it. Students should certainly be taught that self-concept about one’s ability to do math is a fairly poor gauge of how likely one is to be able to learn to do it. People who are afraid of heights learn to climb mountains (I know one), people who are slow at reading can still become doctors (I know one of those, too), and people who start out with a math discomfort can become comfortable and proficient in math.
Another trick to learning to do math is to realize that some of us are born pre-wired with the “tricks”–that is, we just “see” how to do far more problems than a typical person does–and yet others without that pre-wiring can learn problem-solving skills that will get them to a very useful level of proficiency.
As for mastering the latest “teaching method,” I have likened it to learning methods of explaining math to others. When you learn someone else’s way of looking at math, you are learning how to explain your math work to someone who thinks about math differently than you do. That’s a useful skill, too, because yes, the day could come when you will be explaining your math thoughts to someone else, and you may need all the tools you can get!
If the method doesn’t make sense to you, learn the math concept via a different method, then go back and learn the method you’ve been asked to use to demonstrate the math.
As for word problems, I would suggest two things:
One is to learn what math information is needed to do a certain kind of problem. Once that is done, make lists of such information, throw in a few extra things onto each list, then practice identifying which things on the list are needed and which ones are not. Having done that, start doing word problems by generating just such a list of data from the problem. Once you have your list, you are back to the skill set of looking on the list for the information you want, ignoring the information that is irrelevant.
Finally: consider getting a white board. I’d get the biggest, highest-quality dry-erase white board you can accommodate in your home. Our children got one that is 4 x 6 FEET when they were in 4th or 5th grade. They are in high school, and they still use it constantly. It is great for discussing math and science and even for brain-storming writing ideas and also for quizzing students. That is some of the best money we ever spent on their education.
(they liked that). And of course, baking a lot and using math to figure it all out, which involves doubling or halving recipes (which is easy to do with some of the recipe sites, because they will adjust the recipes to the numbers of servings you put in. So if you want to make enough for 4, and “just happen” to print out a recipe for 8 or 12, there’s a lot of math to be done. Do be very careful to remember to change *all *the ingredients 
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