Son losing lots of marks through carelessness - help!

Thisismadness · Post by **Thisismadness** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 6:07 pm

My son just did a maths practice paper which should have taken 1 hr - he finished after 35 minutes saying he'd gone through and checked. Sure enough, he's made loads of really careless mistakes either by misreading the question (eg writing the "total of four purchases" down correctly but missing the fact that they actually wanted to know how much change you'd have from Â£5 after those four purchases) or by making a mistake in a simple calculation, eg not adding in a carried-over figure. So he got 65 out of 100, but there were at least 15-20 questions that he didn't get through carelessness.

Do you have any good tips on getting your children to check their papers carefully, particularly with maths, or not be so careless in the first place!!

Ed's mum · Post by **Ed's mum** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 6:10 pm

Give him practise at underlining the important information with one colour and underlining the question in another colour. Not as part of a timed test though, obviously!

T.i.p.s.y · Post by **T.i.p.s.y** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 6:16 pm

Hopefully this score will have shocked him enough and he'll learn from this mistake. Of course if he puts his working down that will always help him get some points even if the answer is wrong. I always tell my sons to check and see if the answer looks sensible. So, for example, if they multiply 48x11 and they put down 5280 I always tell them to think about what would 50x10 have equalled so does their answer look sensible.

familyinthevalley · Post by **familyinthevalley** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 7:40 pm

Excellent suggestion from Ed's mum - using colour and imagery to highlight important bits is very beneficial. This would be very helpful in test situations to do this.

FirstTimeBuyer · Post by **FirstTimeBuyer** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 8:11 pm

DS1 drove me to distraction with careless mistakes in Maths. Teacher's end of term reports equally frustrated.
Gentle persuasion, reading Riot Act, attempts at embarrassment , all to no avail.

Practice, practice, practice........finaly worked

(or maybe he began to mature)

. Best of luck.

Ed's mum · Post by **Ed's mum** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 8:23 pm

Re: my suggestion earlier. I don't think that there would be time in most tests to do colour highlighting...but what it DOES do is illustrate to the child how important it is to READ the question properly and to realise the pertinent information and the superfluous information.

If the child learns how to discern between the two then they will properly understand what is required of them. Practise now so that your child can read the question properly during pressurised tests.

familyinthevalley · Post by **familyinthevalley** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 9:30 pm

FirstTimeBuyer wrote: Gentle persuasion, reading Riot Act, attempts at embarrassment , all to no avail.
Practice, practice, practice........finaly worked (or maybe he began to mature) . Best of luck.

Attempts at embarassment? you can't be serious......

yoyo123 · Post by **yoyo123** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 9:53 pm

one of the best techniques I have found is to mark it with the pupil as it is, going through each question. often the pupil will say see the answer fairly quickly.

The contrast between the mark they got and the mark they might have had if they had taken time to actually read the question can be quite an eye opener

Thisismadness · Post by **Thisismadness** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 11:09 pm

Thanks for all these great tips - will try the underlining one, which should help, and I also told my son his score and we went through and worked out what he could have got if he'd checked each answer and he seemed to take that in. We'll see how he does in the next test!

mattsurf · Post by **mattsurf** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 12:38 am

I have the same problem with my son. I get him to read the question to me and identify the important points (I don't comment) Marks went up by 20% and still within time. Hopefully he will get into the habit before the exam