(Nevermind) wrote:

I'm sure many of you have encountered this problem: My 8 YO has a very
easy time with his 3rd grade work; so far, none of it is challenging
to him. However, on his homework, we see him making TONs of errors
that are clearly due to carelessness. They range from skipping whole
problems/lines of homework to making computation errors. I know the
computation errors are due to carelessness because if I simply mark
them wrong, he can immediately fix them with no help. It's like he
didn't really look at them the first time. He does work *very* fast.
The problem is especially bad in math, for some reason. If it's bad at
home, it must also be happening in school. I'm concerned about this
carelessness causing some bad grades on tests.

I had a hard time concentrating in math (and still do). It may be
that since it is harder for him, he wants to get through as soon as
possible.

What have you done about this? Let some bad grades happen and
hopefully motivate the child to be more careful? Offer rewards for
homework done right the first time? But even if we used that approach,
I'd worry that in school, where the only reward comes later in the
form of good grades, he would still rush through work and be careless.
I have heard people blame carelessness on boredom, saying that when
their kids got challenging work, they started working harder and being
more careful. Makes sense to me, but I'm loathe to assume that in this
case, because math is my son's worst school subject (though I don't
believe he is *challenged* by his 3rd grade math; he just isn't as
advanced in it) but the one he makes the most errors on.

I wouldn't worry about poor grades on tests in school. This is beyond
your ability to do anything about, therefore, IMHO you might as well
pick something else to worry about.

DD#2 would do SAT tests, and come back and say that she got bored in
the middle of it and just rushed through at the end, and she got
pretty good SAT scores - dd#3 told me the other day that she had done
the same thing. But there isn't anything that anyone can do (again
IMHO) to change the basic nature of the kid who doesn't like to sit
still and concentrate on tests.

One thing I would suggest for his homework is to look at it and count
the errors and not mark them wrong but just say "4 errors on this
page", and then he'd have to look at ALL the problems to correct the
errors rather than just look at the ones you've marked. So that will
make it less attractive to rush through.

My dd#2 had her son (who is in 4th grade this year) doing some kind of
extra math program last year which I don't remember the name of but
I'm sure somebody can tell you what it was. They did it because one
of their friends children was having extreme difficulty with math, so
the moms got together in the summer and all did this program together.
In any case it resulted in him being a good bit ahead of what they
were actually doing in his class, so the classwork was easier.

IIRC part of it involved how many problems that he could do correctly
in a specified period of time. That worked well for him because he
was very competitive even when he was competing with himself. Also he
liked being able to see that his skills were improving. YMMV.

The basic computation fact memorization problem can also be addressed
on the computer - the computer never gets tired of making random
problems of a specific type and keeping track of how long it takes to
do them and how many errors there are. And for that kind of skill -
perfect practice makes perfect.



grandma Rosalie