Sloppy, disorganized work. I need some creative ideas.

[Perry]

My 14 year old dd's work is increasingly sloppy and disorganized. It's particularly a problem in math. She's missing most of the problems, because she doesn't like to write every step, and her work is messy and unreadable. The irony is that she is really very good at math. When I sit with her and make her write every step neatly and thoroughly, she does fine. I need to come up with some creative incentive program that will encourage her to show her steps and write legibly.

 

Any one have a good system? Nagging and making her repeat the lesson isn't working.

[Kisa in CA]

Well, I feel for you. Incentives may work, but I tried for an entire year to get my son to write more carefully and neatly, (writing and spelling was his issue) using incentives with no success. No matter what I tried I was constantly battling with him. This year I was fed up and said I will not spend the year constantly harping on him. So I started charging him .25 cents for each illegible word or misspelled word, (for spelling I only charged if the word was already in the question or reading, or I knew he knew how to spell it). I know you didn't ask for a consequence, but my son values money and at .25 cents per infraction, he quickly started handing in much better work. So you may try charging her .25 cents for each missed math step and maybe a whole dollar for missed problems. Worked for us.

 

HTH!

Kisa

[katilac]

My dd's incentive for being careful in math is not having to do it over again.

 

If she misses one or two problems, I will simply go over them with her. If she misses several, she has to rework them. When she makes me say "WHAT were you thinking??" she has to rework the missed problems, along with additional ones for practice. That's the 'stick.'

 

The 'carrot' is that if she does outstanding work for several days, I sometimes let her skip bookwork for a day and do math on the computer.

 

And yes, she does better on the HARDER chapters, because she is paying attention!

[JFSinIL]

If I can not read my student's work, or it has too many errors due to sloppiness - they have to redo it. For math, I have found providing graph paper helpful - or simply having the kid use notebook paper turned sideways, so as to have lines to keep numbers lined up.

[frogpond1]

I think you have to demand it be neat. Graph paper helps a lot for my 13 year old. This summer we worked on neatness and he had to copy the book of Proverbs neatly in a notebook. It took a year of us being on him, but he rose to the neatness level. Unless it is personal notes, you just have to demand it be legible. We have Saturday morning Wii time that is a major incentive. Use what you can, but no fun unless its done well. I brought DH in on this one and he really helped out a lot.:tongue_smilie: