distancia Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 (edited) We need some help a) identifying my daugther's problem and 2) finding a solution. She is a high school senior and is now taking College Algebra. She is a very bright girl--scored genius 144 in math when she was in elementary school and won many awards--but something happened in (public) middle school and her grades and performance went down, down down. She was always complimented on her appearance, her clothes, her smile , her dancing, but never on her intelligence. We parents tried our best, but it was fighting against the tide to to speak. Anyway, homeschool began in the middle of 11th grade. She has done remedial math to cover everything she glossed over in grades 6-10 and she did well enough on her SATs to qualify her in College Algebra. She is in her third week now. She understands the math perfectly. She LIKES it. She gets a great sense of accomplishment by writing out her problems neatly, taking notes, etc. etc. She understands the concepts and she works through everything. This is a computer (online) program, MyMathLab, and she scores 95 to 100 on all her homework assignments. The problem is the quizzes. When she sits down to do the quizzes she flunks them. They are identical to her homework so it's not that she hasn't seen the material before. She's even allowed to use her notes, which she refers to! What happens is this: she solves the problem. Then, she scrutinizes her answer and says hmm, maybe I didn't do it right. So she solves it again, moving a sign here or there, playing with the equation. Then she doubts that answer, and does it again. And again. She will do each problmee 5 or 6 times! because she is not sure that she knows how to do it. But she has just "done it" perfectly on her homework. She can explain it to me aloud and tell me why she is doing eveyrthing. But give her the quiz and yikes! She had the same thing happen with College English. Here is a girl who scored 750 on her SAT English and she can't finish the first sentence of her term paper. She erases and erases and erases until there is nothing. This will go on for hours. [Thankfully she finally CLEPed the course and moved on; now she can write papers easily because the threat of "English" is no longer looming over her head.] She is a perfectionist and has some OCD tendencies (she was on meds for this awhile back) but now she on ADD meds. She also has anxiety at times, and other times, extreme confidence. Hubby says to have D re-take the quizzes (she can re-take each 3 times) to get her used to doing them over and over again until the anxiety/fear wears off and she gains confidence. On the other hand, we think that failure may breed failure may breed failure. Suggestions, please! Edited January 31, 2011 by distancia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 I am not a math teacher, but a physics teacher, and I have encountered students with similar issues. If I had a student with these problems in my college class, I would send them to the counseling center because I would see these problems clearly as NOT subject related, but related to her perfectionism and OCD tendencies which you have mentioned. Another indication of that is you mentioning that the situation is not confined to math, but happens in English as well. In my opinion you are not dealing with a math issue, but with a psychological issue, for which I recommend that you consult a professional in THAT field. In the meantime, instead of having her retake quizzes, you might want to do exactly the opposite: sit next to her and make sure she has ONE single try at each problem only - in order to break the cycle of the erasing and redoing over and over again which is becoming an obsessive behavior. A trained psychologist would have better suggestions how to achieve behavior modification - but that's what I'd try with my kid to see if I can help her. Nothing you mentioned seems, to me, to point at an issue with actual math. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiana Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 I agree with regentrude. This is perfectionism and OCD, not math. I also agree about the 'one try per problem'. Have her do the quiz like that and see how she does. There are two more tries if she actually doesn't understand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dana Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 She understands the math perfectly. She LIKES it. She gets a great sense of accomplishment by writing out her problems neatly, taking notes, etc. etc. She understands the concepts and she works through everything. This is a computer (online) program, MyMathLab, and she scores 95 to 100 on all her homework assignments. The problem is the quizzes. When she sits down to do the quizzes she flunks them. They are identical to her homework so it's not that she hasn't seen the material before. She's even allowed to use her notes, which she refers to! What happens is this: she solves the problem. Then, she scrutinizes her answer and says hmm, maybe I didn't do it right. So she solves it again, moving a sign here or there, playing with the equation. Then she doubts that answer, and does it again. And again. She will do each problmee 5 or 6 times! because she is not sure that she knows how to do it. But she has just "done it" perfectly on her homework. She can explain it to me aloud and tell me why she is doing eveyrthing. But give her the quiz and yikes! I teach with MyMathLab and like the software a lot. My current group of students has done their homework - mainly getting 100% - and now that they're taking their first quiz, they're not doing so good. It may be the case that it's more prior OCD/anxiety tendencies that are going on with your daughter. Here's what I generally see with my students... take what's useful & ignore the rest :) I see students do well on homework and poorly on tests or quizzes because when they do the homework, they follow a pattern with the examples or because they've just done a few similar problems. When it comes to the test and problems are not in the same order - and on only one topic - the students second-guess themselves. One way to see if this is what's going on is to make up your own quiz. Take a few problems from each topic from the text, write them on notecards, shuffle them up, and you've got a practice quiz. You could have your daughter take this quiz with you there. Watch her do the problems and see if it's an issue with her not understanding as well as she'd thought (in which case, learn the material better initially... change notetaking approaches, do more problems for practice... ), if there's a common error she's making (sign errors or something along those lines), or if she's not trusting herself (in which case maybe telling her to take the quiz but only allow one attempt on the problem, get the answer, and move on). Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyThreeSons Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 She had the same thing happen with College English. Here is a girl who scored 750 on her SAT English and she can't finish the first sentence of her term paper. She erases and erases and erases until there is nothing. This will go on for hours.. I like to say there are two kinds of perfectionism -- the driven kind, and the paralyzing kind. Sounds like she has the paralyzing kind -- if you can't do it perfectly, don't do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julie in MN Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 I work at a tutoring center where some retired Ph.D. math types tutor the older math kids. They tell me that (a) your first answer on a test is your best answer, and students should be told not to re-do, and (b) routine use of timed tests with teachers looking over their shoulders helps students get used to testing. Not sure either is intuitively what I'd say, but those fellas work with a lot of advanced math students past calculus, and they believe these two facts are true for their students. Julie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plansrme Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 --but something happened in (public) middle school and her grades and performance went down, down down. She was always complimented on her appearance, her clothes, her smile , her dancing, but never on her intelligence. We parents tried our best, but it was fighting against the tide to to speak. I apologize for derailing your topic, but this part reminded me so much of a book called Smart Girls, the entire premise of which was that exactly what you described happens to an astonishing percentage of gifted girls when they hit middle school. It has been a while since I've read the book, but I believe the author refers to it as the "culture of romanticism" or something like that. Many girls' IQs actually go down, substantially, in middle school, while boys' do not. The book is supposed to offer solutions; I found that it did not, really (though perhaps I did not pick up on the solutions because my oldest was not even close to middle school when I read it), but the description of the phenomenon was both fascinating and distressing. Terri Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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