What is an Acceptable grade?

[heritagelearningacademy]

I'm asking this because I am thinking my perfectionist tendencies may be making me place an unrealistic expectation on my oldest.  He will be 9th grade starting July. 

We've had issues this year with him in math...not a lack of ability, but a lack of interest and a lack of effort.  So, he does an assignment and is okay with a  B.  if he would check his work, he would score higher because he would catch his sloppy math mistakes.  But, he will check after my getting on him about it, but then slip back into not checking. 

So, is a B in math okay?  Or should he be expected to be striving for higher?

We don't see this behavior in science or history, because he loves them.  We saw it a bit in creative writing this year with sometimes his being willing to spend more time to work on a stronger assignment, and others he was okay just getting it done.

 

Any insight or advice would be welcomed!

 

[chiguirre]

With my dd, I've devised a system that rewards getting it right the first time. I assign about half the problems in the book (you'll have to adjust this depending on the text you use and it won't work for Saxon). If she gets one wrong in the assigned portion, she has to rework it and I add a new, similar problem to her assignment. I do answer questions if she gets stumped, so her mistakes are due to carelessness. It hasn't completely eliminated errors, but it has eliminated my need to nag and her need to whine.

[Brenda in MA]

What I chose to do was emphasize the importance of scoring well on the exams.

 

I corrected their daily work and made them re-do any they missed, so they did have an incentive to do the daily work well. I did not count their daily work grade as a part of their grade for the course. The course grade was based only on their scores on exams.

 

When it came to exam time, I really hammered home the idea of checking one's work and striving for the highest possible score. Both have gone on to do well in their college courses, so this approach seems to have worked.

 

HTH,

Brenda

[kiana]

If the student is making B's, I think re-doing any missed problems plus an extra one of each type would suffice. I would frame it as "Gosh, honey, I didn't realize you needed extra practice on this" rather than "here's your punishment".

 

ETA: I wouldn't do this with someone who was making less than C's. In that case I think re-doing the missed work would be sufficient.

[Mom22ns]

We don't grade math assignments. We check them. If there are errors, the problems are re-worked so they know how to do them correctly. I consider math homework to be the perfect opportunity to make mistakes. There is no punishment for it. It isn't lazy or sloppy. It is just part of learning. If you want him to check and he isn't, then just take that responsibility away and check together. When he has corrected all errors, check again. When he gets tired of you watching over his corrections he will probably decide to check his own work. I think the mistake here might be assuming that a freshman is ready to do math on their own, not the quality of his work.

 

As for grades, I only grade math tests.

[Sunshine State Sue]

IMO, a B is fine for a student who has the potential but is not striving for higher.  It is an accurate representation.  FWIW, I tend towards perfectionism and I would describe ds as a bright but unmotivated student.  CC helped, but also some of the CC standards were lower than mine.  I did see an improvement in 10th-12th grade.

[EKS]

I agree with the others who said to grade only tests.  The daily problem sets should be corrected and if there is a lack of understanding of a particular concept, extra instruction and problems would be appropriate.