Suggest that students contact Academic Learning Services if they need skill-building help. If a student expresses anxiety, talk to him or her in private. Find out specifically what the student fears. Students who fear doing math have different fears than students who fear presenting their own poetry. Ask the student at what point in the process his or her heart starts pounding, and they start looking for distractions.
Some instructors make written contractual agreements with especially anxious students.
Here's an example Share the frustration you experienced and mistakes you made when you first learned the material. Try to present the topic in the student's terms. Connect it to his or her experience using situations from his or her life. Find out what particular terms or concepts the students find ambiguous. Explain that your subject is just something someone, somewhere understood and the student's goal is to work toward understanding it, too.