How do you deal with a child who keeps making careless errors?

[hlee]

I have an 8 year old boy who has been evaluated as being gifted in language arts and math. We are using Singapore 2A right now, and I feel like we are going slower than we should because I am insisting on seeing him reach at least 90% on his tests to be able to go to the next level. He knows and understands the concepts, BUT he keeps making careless errors. I have tried all manner of incentives and encouragements to help him try to be more careful, to no avail. Are my standards too high? Is it natural for an 8 year old to make these kinds of errors and should I just keep going if it's clear he understands the concepts? I'd love some insights on how to address this issue!!!

 

Thanks much, Hive!

[Chris in VA]

Dd was making a lot of careless mistakes on her Saxon homework. I ended up having her do the work at night ("homework"), then having her check it again the next morning before she gave it to me. She ended up catching nearly every mistake, and then gradually made less of them.

 

As far as careless mistakes on a test, I just made her correct them and moved on.

[mom2boys030507]

My son is 8 and I have pretty much the same issue. The latest thing I have tried has worked the best so far. I give him half the problems and tell him if he gets them all correct he is done. If not, he does the other half. It has turned out to be extremely motivating. He sometimes does the problems 2x to double check himself.

 

Thanks for this idea. I will be trying it in the morning. My son 7 takes forever to do his math. I know he needs the review but spends so much time staring off in space that it takes 4 to 5 times as long as is really needed. We are currently doing review to get his facts down better before moving to the next level.

[redsquirrel]

Yeah.... that is so frustrating.

 

My son is 10 and I can say that it IS getting better. I have tried almost everything. We had great luck with timez attack to increase the speed of his multiplication tables. That was a game changer.

 

The careless errors were just making me crazy. I needed to create a culture of careful work. He would wonder off in the middle of a problem, skip problems, write HALF the answer, not follow instructions. OMG, it was killing me. Half his math problems were due to mentally walking away halfway through a problem. Of course he was making mistakes, he forgot where he was in the problem. He wasn't able to understand the reasoning behind the steps of a problem because he wasn't following it all the way through. We had a mess on our hands.

 

I have made two changes:

1. I have him do a limited number of problems before I check the answers. I started with having him call me over after every. single. question. He is now up to three or four questions before I ask him to check in. That helps keep him on track, lets me know if he is woolgathering (or Ork fighting), prevents him from making the same mistake in all his problems etc.

 

2. I did something controversial, at least as far as my own parenting is concerned. I line up chocolate chips in front of him. One for each question. If he makes a careless error then I get one chocolate chip. If he gets the correct answer then he gets a chocolate chip. I was very clear about what a careless error is. It is not just making a mistake. We all make mistakes. Carelessness is not completing a question, not being able to figure out what the answer is because it is written so messily, not reducing a fraction, not following order of operations or not following directions.

 

His moral has increased so much. He is feeling much more confident and competent in math. We are now having cheerful math lessons instead of sobbing and frustrations.

 

I think the most important change was both the increased fluency in math facts and the frequent checking in. The chocolate chips are a nice reward and make him smile but they aren't what made the difference. Well, it did make a difference the first week. Boy did he WANT that reward. Now, I am pretty sure I could start phasing them out.

[blakereese]

This is a great idea. Especially with Horizons, I feel like there are a lot of review questions, or days of all review...I know my son would love a

"break" from doing a whole page of the same thing. I'm going to try this next time I feel like he is getting careless. Thanks! :)

 

My son is 8 and I have pretty much the same issue. The latest thing I have tried has worked the best so far. I give him half the problems and tell him if he gets them all correct he is done. If not, he does the other half. It has turned out to be extremely motivating. He sometimes does the problems 2x to double check himself.

[brownie]

We're in the same boat with ds10 and I can tell you it is only getting worse for us. We just switched from Singapore 4A to Saxon 7/6 because he was struggling SO much and I wanted something that would require him to review and get the details correct. We've been at it a week and every day he gets 10 mixed review problems wrong out of 30! Addition, multiplication, lack of labels...these are the problems, NOT the new concepts. He rarely makes a mistake on the new concept problems!

 

We tried evening tutoring (with Singapore). I've done the candy idea for 2 days now but the number of incorrect answers did not change. I am going to keep at it because I am hoping he just needs to adjust to the new curriculum, but let me tell you he is this way about everything so I don't expect perfection! We do make him correct the wrong answers and right now math is taking at least 90minutes a day!

 

Brownie

[Sweetbeebie]

My oldest is gifted and has a terrible time with this also...understands the concept but makes the "stupid" mistakes. What has helped her remember to recheck her work for those mistakes has been allowing her to do a lot less work if she gets all the initial practice problems right. Just knowing if she checks and catches those mistakes her math work is cut in half:) has made a world of difference. Suddenly those silly mistakes almost NEVER happen.

[boscopup]

Taking notes here... My 6 year old sometimes forgets to do a problem on his math at school (Saxon 1, which is too easy for him). He skipped a problem on a test one time, knocking 10 points off, and it was one of the most simplest problems. He just didn't see it on the page, forgot to do it, or something. I've definitely noticed that he tends to do this more if he isn't being challenged by the work. He makes far fewer mistakes on the Math Mammoth he does at home, though one time he did an entire section of writing numbers that were < or > another number, and he'd done them all one way, not noticing that the sign was changing, but then in a separate section that had the same thing going on, he did it correctly... I just had him redo the section that he'd missed - I said "Look at that again", and he noticed his mistake right away. Interestingly, < or > is one of those easy concepts that he knows very well, so again, it was something where he wasn't being challenged.

 

Of course, they need to learn to pay attention even if they're bored with what they're doing... In the work world, not everything will be challenging all the time, and they still have to pay attention and do things correctly. ;)

[plimsoll]

Be patient and persist. This is normal. With practice and time, there will be less careless errors.

[Melabella]

My oldest is gifted and has a terrible time with this also...understands the concept but makes the "stupid" mistakes. What has helped her remember to recheck her work for those mistakes has been allowing her to do a lot less work if she gets all the initial practice problems right. Just knowing if she checks and catches those mistakes her math work is cut in half:) has made a world of difference. Suddenly those silly mistakes almost NEVER happen.

 

 

I do this, too, and it really motivates my dd. She is mildly dyslexic, but very good at math. She rarely makes a math error that isn't jsut carelessness. For her daily lessons, I mark the problems she gets wrong and she must re-work them. If she misses a problem again, then we work it together. If the error is clearly an issue of understanding the concept, I go over those problems with her first before having her redo any other missed problems.

 

Both of these strategies have significantly improved her scores. When I started homeschooling her in 3rd grade, it was not unsual for her to miss nearly half of the problems due to reversals and other careless errors. She rarely makes anything lower than a 90 on quizzes and tests now and she is working a grade ahead.

 

Also, as others have recommended, be sure your child has automatic recall of all math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). That will really help, too!

[Laura Corin]

I did two things with Calvin. The first was to teach him how to check his answers. I was telling him to check, but he didn't really understand what that meant. I made a list and stuck it to the table, saying things like, 'Did you use the right operation? Did you copy down the right numbers? Was the calculation done correctly?.....' This helped a lot.

 

Once his new checking regime was in place, I told that if he got too many wrong, he would have to do another exercise in his own time. We had a tough month or so, but then his work improved a lot.

 

Laura

[Kates]

Two things:

 

1) Yes, it's completely normal. He's a child, and a pretty young one at that - carelessness is very common in a lot of children. It's why they're still children - they're learning the discipline needed to stay with something.

 

2) This is especially common with gifted kids. If you think about it, their brains understand a concept a LOT quicker than most, and they honestly see no reason to keep reviewing. It can actually make them go backward. Most gifted kids won't retain anything they're made to work on over, and over, and over again...because they see no point, no application. To them, it's just mindless junk.

 

I say this as the mom of a borderline PG 13yo (one of the kids who's "scary gifted").

 

Neurological studies have shown that truly gifted kids actually process info differently than most...on average, people need to see the same information several times in order to retain it - it goes from working memory, to short term memory, to long term memory. Only repetition or extreme emotion gets it there. For gifted kids, anything worth retaining goes from working memory straight to long term memory - it simply needs to pass the "worth retaining" test. Anything that is seen as redundant generally doesn't pass that test.

 

I'm not saying never review...I'm saying that once he gets the concept, move on. He'll see the need to retain that concept once he needs it for the next level, and it'll be there. It'll take a couple of careless mistakes, since his brain is going much faster than you would think, but he'll get it once he's challenged with it and is actually putting the concepts into use for something more than a "stupid worksheet". If you need to review, find a way to present the info in a different way - through a game, having him teach it to you, etc. It'll do a lot to get past the "redundancy" factor.

 

For example - I had mine slugging through algebra texts for about a year and a half, since he wouldn't "get it down"...the problem wasn't that he couldn't do it, he could - with near perfect accuracy. He just hated it and didn't see a reason. (This is a kid who wants to be a bioengineer and watches college lectures for fun.) We tried Life of Fred, and he went through 200+ pages in two weeks. There was application and a snarky storyline, and he was all over it. He's now peeved with me because I won't let him take Algebra 1, 2, Geometry, and Trig all in the same year. (I have a feeling that 4 upper math credits during his 9th grade year might seem just a tad suspicious on his transcript lol...) Instead, I'm letting him take on a consumer math project of theoretically buying, financing, renoing, and designing a home, working with friends (a residential contractor and a designer) over the course of a semester.

 

Obviously you wouldn't have your 8yo do that...but hopefully the idea comes across. Let him move as quickly as he needs to, stop and review quickly as needed, and let him challenge himself to learn the material. Not every child responds well to rote memorization - for many gifted kids, it's the kiss of death academically.

 

For LA, you may notice that he practically snoozes through a normal text...because although he's perfectly capable of it, he doesn't care. Once he gets a concept, let him use it in a creative project. Anything that you see he's not doing, point it out and do a quick review...and then let him apply it again.

 

Hope that helps. I know it seems counterintuitive, but you may find that it's just the thing to help him along. :)

Edited November 9, 2010 by Kates

[brownie]

I wanted to point out one more thing. I shared earlier that we have the same issue, but my son clearly has attention issues (and has tested gifted). I'm surprised nobody else has brought that up, but if you are dealing with any kind of attention issue/working memory deficit, etc...I don't think it ends up being just as simple as assigning more work if it's not done well or rewarding accurate work. I've tried all that. And you can be dealing with a lesser degree of an attention issue...it's not a yes or no thing.

 

My son wants to do better but is clearly very frustrated. Maybe somebody who knows they've been dealing with ADD all along can chime in, but we've even tried sitting on one of those prickly yoga blow-up things, playing attention/meditation games, memory games on the internet, tea for a little stimulant kick (ds is not medicated). I don't know if any of it has helped but it's definitely still not smooth going. There is no magic bullet for my son.

 

We also tried letting him just understand the concepts but move on with an 80% on the tests last year due to silly errors. No amount of review seemed to bring that score up anyhow. The problem is that spiralled down to getting a 65% on his midterm test this year, which is when we tanked Singapore (after requiring a month of tutoring in the evenings which brought his score up to a 78%).

 

Maybe an indication it is an attention issue is that your child asks what's for dinner 3 times during math lessons (at 9AM), you catch him or her not even holding the pencil, or my favorite...they tell you what percentage of the problems they've completed and what fraction of the remaining problems they will need to get correct to keep 10 of the candies in the bowl, but they've only completed 2 problems in the last 10 minutes and they're both wrong!

 

Brownie

[Mallory]

My son is 8 and I have pretty much the same issue. The latest thing I have tried has worked the best so far. I give him half the problems and tell him if he gets them all correct he is done. If not, he does the other half. It has turned out to be extremely motivating. He sometimes does the problems 2x to double check himself.

 

 

This works for my 9yo.

[lisabelle]

My ds is 11 and we have those days--the ones where he just wants to race through his math and he makes a lot of mistakes on his daily work. I do insist he correct them after I've looked them over and he's slowly realizing that hurrying isn't working out real well for him.

For chapter tests I've told him if he gets less than 85% we do the chapter over again. I've also told him that chapter tests are something that I put into his portfolio, so it's possible that other people will see those tests. I've never gotten less than a 95% on a chapter test.

[rafiki]

.

[Greta]

I give him half the problems and tell him if he gets them all correct he is done. If not, he does the other half. It has turned out to be extremely motivating. He sometimes does the problems 2x to double check himself.

 

I did two things with Calvin. The first was to teach him how to check his answers. I was telling him to check, but he didn't really understand what that meant. I made a list and stuck it to the table, saying things like, 'Did you use the right operation? Did you copy down the right numbers? Was the calculation done correctly?.....' This helped a lot.

 

I love both of these ideas and wanted to thank you for sharing them! This thread has been really helpful, lots of great ideas. I'm definitely going to start implementing these two tomorrow.

 

Laura, if you (or anyone else!) have further suggestions for checklist questions, I would be grateful to hear them. One thing that my daughter seems to forget a lot is to label her answer with the correct units (dollars, meters, pounds, whatever). Also "did you follow the correct order of operations?" might be a good one.

[brownie]

Just wanted to share that I took the idea about standing up (ds10 puts his head on the desk alot) and combined it with using our large wipe board on the wall so it wouldn't seem like a punishment since he like using it. We've also been using the candy idea but it didn't seem to help. DS went from 10 errors on Monday's 30 problem mixed review to 8 on Tuesday, 6 on Wednesday, and 4.5 wrong on Thursday! I'm hoping this pattern keeps up. He is still missing problems mostly due to forgetting labels on money and distances, but getting better. Wanted to share before I forgot! brownie

[Laura Corin]

One thing that my daughter seems to forget a lot is to label her answer with the correct units (dollars, meters, pounds, whatever). Also "did you follow the correct order of operations?" might be a good one.

 

No other ideas, I'm afraid.

 

Laura

[kalanamak]

I remember feeling itchy and bored in math, and when I see my son struggling with the same look....we often go to verbal math. I have also tried the "two of this type of problem just right and we stop". I also take in the particulars of the day: not enough exercise yet, math at the end of a long session, etc.

 

I clearly remember getting less sloppy and generally more organized near the time I turned 11. One of the reasons I homeschool is so that we can do things like change over to verbal answers on the fly, instead of sticking to "by the book" no matter how bloody the fist we pound on the table is.

 

I expect to slowly demand more precision as he ages, just as I demand more on each topic, slowly, as he ages. I have also noted that he is getting much more precise in LA subjects, and loves to get a bright red 100% written at the bottom of his, e.g., GWG page. Soon, I'm going to start instituting marks for precision in math. I'll pick a "good day" and tell him that today I'm going to be marking him for precision. Sometimes, when he has gotten especially sloppy in long division, I get out the large-square graph paper and label the columns with H, T, and O. Then I tell him his old mum needs help seeing the answer, and I can see him strive to be precise.

 

Re-reading your post, I wonder if you mean messy in his columns or sloppy in his facts. If kiddo gets fatigued and starts making math-fact errors, I feign shock: "Really???? 5x5 is 30? Call Stockholm, we have a revolution in mathematics here!" Then we laugh and he corrects himself.

 

HTH