hi my name is sally and i have a soon to be 6 year old that i just took out of a montessori school. I have continued to do "at home school work" with keeley while she was in this school. This would be my problem: how do you make your child realize that it is okay to miss one or even two math problems when you got 24 correct!! Keeley loves to see check marks beside the correct problems, but oh boy if she gets one wrong then she totally melts down and says that she is no good or that she cant get anything right! i give tons of praise for everything she does and i have explained 10 different ways that she has still done a wonderful job, even if one was wrong. i have tried to not check any of them and she assumes then that they are all wrong. Has anyone had to deal with this and if so i could use some examples, PLEASE. my child loves to learn and i dont want her to get discouraged for any reason. any and all help welcomed---sallyr in nc
markings why is a child who can do twenty four problems of the same skill correctly, which is indicative to mastery, continuing to do that many? Five to ten would be a good indicator AND it is not supposed to be for the check mark that the child does the work. If its correct then put nothing. if its wrong put a dot near the answer. It should remind the child like an eye ball- for them to look at this answer again. the child then returns to correct errors. at the top of the paper you can put a fraction. number correct over total number of equations. If a child does not get the correct answer but you can indicate where in the process they error, put the dot at that area, or if its subtle, you can put a line underneath. Just a suggestion, take the same activity that she is doing, make a copy of it and YOU put the answers down as a key and let HER self check.
Hi, Boy does this sound familiar!! My dd would break down just at the thought that she might be wrong at anything. She wouldn't answer things in ps because of that slight chance that she was wrong. She would get upset if she had a spelling or math test at ps, because what will happen if I get one wrong. I would say you know all that your dad and I want of you is for you to have tried to do your best. Then I had a brainstorm. I should let her see that I can be wrong to, or need help. I would read to her, stop at a word, and say something like oh this is spelled ******, I just am not sure that I know how to pronounce it, is it ****** or *******. She would look at the word and say I you pronounce it *******. Just to let her know that it is ok to have to stop and figure something out, and maybe be wrong. I would work one of her math problems and get it wrong, have her check it for me. I would say, oh I thought I had that one right, and would erase it and do it over again. Then one day at ps the dreadful thing happened. She had a spelling test in 1st grade and missed a word. I was teaching at the school that day. She came to me at the end of the day and said mommy I missed a word on the spelling test. Of course with tears in her eyes. I said you did, which one? she told me, and I said oh that is ok. She said it is? I said yes it is ok. She said but I know how to spell it, I said I know that, but when you take tests sometimes you can get a little nervous and write something down that may not be right. She said You're not mad mom? Well did you try your best, she said yes. Then I definately am not mad. I asked if Mrs. N was mad at her, she said no, I asked am I mad at you, she said no, I asked did the school fall in because you missed a word? She giggled and said no. I said to her that I am always proud of her, and so is her dad, and that those things do happen. Just do the best you can do and know that it is ok to get something wrong. It was OK. She was OK.(YAY!) I stressed along with her for her "having to be perfect" phase that lasted from k through 2. It did get better. I do think it helped to have her see me be wrong on NUMEROUS occasions. And to get to correct me, and to help me figure out how I got it wrong. It was cute to hear her tell me that it is ok mom, you'll get it next time. I hope it helps to know that you are not in the boat alone ! and that this too, shall pass. But boy do I know how stressful it is. She still doesn't like to get things wrong, but now being in 4th grade, and having more opportunity to not be right 100% of the time, she is handling it much better. Hang in there, if you need to talk about it more, feel free to email me at home. Good Luck!!! Kim R
Hello everyone, Thanks for letting me know that i am not alone in this situation (kimR)!! To answer the question of why is my child doing so many problems when the mastery is there: well for one i feel like it is very important to have a very strong foundation on all levels and by letting her choose to continue practicing simple addition problems until she is comfortable with it is only building self confidence. This would be why i pulled my child out of the montessori school she was in. I felt that the school was moving too fast before making sure that the child had a concrete foundation on the current subject before moving forward. Granted my child knows the concepts of addition,subtraction,and multiplication, but is uncertain of her own knowingness of any of these! Yes she can do work in all of these areas, but until she has the comfortability of knowing what she does i will allow her to keep choosing to do the work she is comfortable with, to better benifit my child. Thanks for all the help, sallyr
Keep in mind there are alot of ways to practice simple addition and subtraction. Multiplying with 2/1 digits and long division are excellent ways. The basic skills are reinforced while mastering more concepts. Michelle ps....I used to post at abcteach as fitmom3
Really trying to mess with our minds, eh Michelle? I think there is that give and take, when the kids feel what they did isn't good enough. We just have to keep telling them it's ok. What if after you mark it wrong you let her correct it so that she knows she did 100%. Ds is only doing 1st grade work but, if I see he answered something wrong we usually stop and fix it OR after he is done I will remind him to check his work. So...we really do both approaches. It's the Oreo cookie effect....you take some good, some bad, some good and you sandwich it all together. I haven't bought the book yet - waiting for payday called Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner. TinaTX actually recommended it to me and I flipped through it at B & N bookstore last week. Neat book worth checking into - your library might have it. Ours didn't. Anyway....online it is $19.96 at B & N or $16.97 at Amazon. Guess where I'm going to buy it? Another book that I'm reviewing is Creative Home Schooling for Gifted Children A Resource Guide by Lisa Rivero. Our library did have this one and this is the second time I've checked it out. The first time was last summer when I was first understanding how ds was able to just magically *know*. Anyway...thinking about buying this one, too. B&N online $28.95, Amazon $20.26 If you haven't already you might want to check out http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/ Might help you...might not. It shed some light on why ds is the way he is, for me. So...I could understand that he is *normal* Smart as can be, highly emotional. ahhhhhhh the joys!
