The child who claims they know nothing but...

[AimeeM]

What do you do with the child who claims to know "nothing", but manages to always get the correct answer?

Example:

 

Me: "please explain how you came to that answer", or "how did you get that"

 

Her: "I don't know how to do it"

 

Me: "it's right though... the answer - they're all right. I was just wondering HOW you did it"

 

Her: "I don't know how I did it"

 

 

OR

 

Me: "how did you get that answer?"

 

Her: "it's wrong again!" (quickly erases answer before I can tell her it's right)

 

 

She has a huge problem with second guessing herself. She is a natural with math; but I can't allow her to move on if she can't tell me HOW she does the things she does. How can I help her learn to explain herself instead of just jotting down the answers?

 

ETA: This is her first full year homeschooling (and part of last year). If she is forced to "show her work", 9 times out of 10 her answer is wrong and she comes up with a different answer than she did without showing her work - or, rather, doing her work sloppily on a separate paper that nobody else can read or understand :glare:, which she is infamous for.

[dangermom]

I think this is what I would do. Once she has completed the problem and mysteriously has the correct answer, but cannot explain how she got it, FIRST praise her work and tell her she got them correct. (edit: Don't bother to ask her to explain since you already know that she will react defensively.) Then do it with her and model how to verbalize the thought process. At first, do it all yourself: write it out clearly and talk through each step, having her repeat after you. Then do the writing as she instructs you how to do the problem (you will have to prompt her a lot). Work your way up to having her write and explain.

 

I would not do this for every problem, but as many as she can stand. Maybe take it in two chunks during the day with other work inbetween. Start with addition and work up to more complex problems. Maybe take a break from progressing further in math and tread water while you work on this skill.

 

It will probably take forever and you'll want to tear your hair out at frequent intervals. Feel free to self-medicate with chocolate.

Edited April 3, 2012 by dangermom

[Haiku]

My son is like that about second-guessing himself, and my daughter gets annoyed with me when I ask her to explain an answer without first telling her that it's correct. She says, "I don't like it when you don't just tell me if it's right."

 

Two suggestions:

 

1) Don't make your dd explain herself. If she's a natural in math, she honestly may not know the steps she took because she took them so fast. Especially if she's new to homeschooling, she may not ever have been taught math in a manner in which she was supposed to be aware of the steps.

 

2) Watch her work and see what she does. She's 10, right? She should be doing math that requires multiple steps (long addition/subtraction, multi-digit multiplication, long division). Watch what she's doing. Pick a few problems and verbally walk her through the steps she's doing so you can both get a feel for how she's accomplishing it.

 

I would ease into this and not expect big changes overnight. As she gets into higher level math and more multi-step problems, she will naturally have to show more work. I am a big believer in showing your work, and I require it of my kids, but since your attempts to do this are simply annoying your daughter, you may have to be content with slow progress in this area as she continues to move ahead in math.

 

Tara

[dangermom]

Oh, and another thing. She will almost certainly ask WHY she has to show her work if it the answer is correct. This will cause whining. The answer to that is "Real mathematicians and scientists always show every step of their work so that their colleagues can check it for themselves, and errors are easy to find. Real-life math and science doesn't have an answer key in the back of the book, and that is what you are practicing for."

[Bang!Zoom!]

Totally off the wall idea, but something that showed some fruit here was to take her dolls and have her be the teacher to the dolls.

 

If you sat her down and had her "play school" with her toys to teach them, would that be of any help?

[Twigs]

Oh, and another thing. She will almost certainly ask WHY she has to show her work if it the answer is correct. This will cause whining. The answer to that is "Real mathematicians and scientists always show every step of their work so that their colleagues can check it for themselves, and errors are easy to find. Real-life math and science doesn't have an answer key in the back of the book, and that is what you are practicing for."

 

:iagree:

 

Fantastic response!!

[MomatHWTK]

It may be as simple as communication issues. My son can look at math and just know things. But, he has executive function and processing issues, so he can't always express himself clearly.

 

If you and she are just getting used to teaching and learning together, I'd start with you working a problem or two and showing her how you do it. Let her hear and see how you show your work. Also, I sometimes do the writing for DS. I write the problem and ask him what to do. He then tells me step by step what to write. If he misses a step, I can prompt him by asking what I should do with this number or that.

 

Basically, work as a team and model the performance you want to see. :001_smile:

[AimeeM]

Is the work at the correct level?

Sometimes when students solve in their heads, it's because the demand is too easy. The teacher can up the complexity and make the work shown useful.

It is NOT at her level. She is ahead in math and could likely be working a normal pre-algebra program; but with her dyslexia we have working memory problems... which means that she freezes with her basic tables, even though she understands (and readily does; although I'm not sure HOW) much more complex concepts. I guess I *know* CLE 5 is a bit easy for her, but I absolutely cannot move her ahead into pre-algebra until she knows her tables.

I think :tongue_smilie:

[AimeeM]

:iagree:

 

Fantastic response!!

And applicable. She's my math and science kiddo. She hates words (and that may be the problem). She doesn't work well with me; she works best on her own and is working through an independent loop schedule, doing only one subject (spelling) WITH me. Math and her other subjects I just check, ask her a few questions about (which never gets me anywhere), and move on.

*cringe*

Sounds horrible of me, but she is making much more progress working on her own. She's a visual learner which is why we chose CLE for math. Written to the student. She doesn't learn anything from HEARING explanations - she needs to just see it, read it, do it.

[MomatHWTK]

Oooh, dyslexia, well then of course she's going to have trouble getting the answers correct when she has to scribe. I was just going to edit my post to mention that the scribing of math work is a totally different skill than the computation. I don't think I'm dyslexic, but had this same problem in school.

 

I could do the work. But there was often a disconnect between what my brain knew and my hands wrote. This is a huge issue once you get into multi-step math because an error in step one messes up the whole process. My son avoids writing anything out for the same reason. He can remember 6 x 8 long enough to move to the next step, but not long enough to transfer the data to his hands for scribing. He'd rather just zip through the problem before the information gets lots in the transfer to paper.

 

I would- 1. allow her to move forward to the concepts she ready to learn and enjoy success. 2. Choose 1-2 problems a day that are remedial and work specifically on being able to scribe the information as a unique skill set.

 

I found for me personally, the solution was to work all the problems on paper then return to them and work them through mentally again, double checking for scibner's errors. So basically every test I took in grade school, I did the math twice. :tongue_smilie:For someone with true dyslexia, you may need to seek out a better solution.

 

ETA: My son sees a therapist and we did testing to discover the processing disorder, etc. Her recommendation for him was that I allow him to use a calculator. So, yes, under normal circumstances we want our children to memorize the math facts. But, at some point you have to allow them to move forward. In "real life" if she needs a calculator to do the multiplication facts it will slow her a little but not that much. And why waste a beautiful scientific mind over a few math facts struggles. I know it's a very case by case situation. But don't be afraid to let your child have the tools to soar.

Edited April 3, 2012 by MomatHWTK