11 Plus Exams Forum

am really beginning to worry, DD is doing well with VR and NVR but still making simple mistakes with maths, which isn't her strong point to be fair, however i am getting more frustrated with her lack of ability to learn from her mistakes she seems to have a relaxed attitude to it, and thinks it is ok to only just pass ie get 48% is good enough

how can i get her to learn from these silly mistakes (call them silly not stupid because she suffering a lack of confidence in her ability!) screaming doesn;t seem to be working??????????? Maybe its too late, she has always been a borderline but is determined she wants to sit the test !

You have quite a bit of time left. I don't think you can expect at this stage to get her to "learn" from the silly mistakes for herself. I think you need to look at her workings carefully, or get her to talk through questions she has got wrong, and see where the sources of the silly mistakes lie.

Only then will you know what to teach her next in order that her accuracy will improve.

e.g. if she were to tell you that 5+4 = 8, you need to ask her how she worked it out. If she says she just "knows it" or, "oops I meant 9", then you know there is some insecurity in her number facts and she needs to practice a lot of adding to get more accurate. You might then need to find games which will provide this practice without being too dull.

You could also teach her some other techniques to see that her answer must have been wrong e.g. you would expect the answer to be one less than double 5, or one more than double 4, you'd expect it to be odd, not even etc etc.

Or it might be that she doesn't read questions accurately. You can teacher her how to underline important things in the question, and how to set down the facts she needs to use to get started on a sensible way of working things out etc etc.

I don't think there is much merit in just working through vast numbers of papers and finding her marks are lowish and you both getting demoralised. That is not focussed, active learning. If you found that doing this did improve her accuracy (e.g. because she just needed the practice to get more accurate, or she pulled her socks up because she did not want to re-work things when she gets them wrong) then fine, but that doesn't seem to be what you are asying.

thanks for the reply, she is being tutored and this is a copy of a test for her to work through at home, have spoken to tutor who has said not to worry and that i should try not to look at homework etc as i may worry but that they work through the test at next session to see which questions she misreading/doesn't understand etc and they use it as a base for the next session, eg she was showing that she was struggling with long division in some previous work sheets etc but with work have now become quite good at them (Better than me!)

I just get so stressed with her as i am not pushing too much at home, just ensuring she does work set by tutor and maybe 1 or 2 bond 10m tests a week as top up, as maths is a definite weakness of hers, probably my own worries that i am not making her do loads, certainly not an hour a day! She often knows when i ask her why she came to the answer she got to she says oh i didn't mean that i see now its wrong should be x instead!! She also hasn't got into the habit of rechecking her answers, she has been taught (tutor and school) to concentrate on the questions she knows she can answer, especially the first 25 as they the easier questions, then go back through working the harder ones out, but she doesn't do this, doesn't attempt the harder ones ??

need to work on building her confidence but how?

I have the problem with silly mistakes too. My son doesn't read the questions properly ie... thy ask him to find 20% of 76 and he would put the 80% figure. He says they'll know what I mean.
I've told him he'll lose the point and they wont even look at why he got the answer wrong. I have tried to explain the importance of listening to and reading instruction. He just doesn't seem to take it in.

Drives me mad

Have you tried the IPS daily maths tests? Only 10 questions but ask her to do them all. (in 10 minutes I think) I understand the shouting! Doesn't help at all but I have definitely been there. With each of my children. Hope I am not the only other person on this site though!

are the IPS sheets good, have the non verbal one?

Just think sometimes they need a short shock and a bit of a scream and shout you would think would work but not really, i suppose they are only 9/10, and despite our school giving them weekly chats about the importance of the test (they get a lot of pushing/support from school which does have a high pass rate though) doesn't seem to sink it that you only get 1 shot and its not just another practice test.