Bright ds under performing due to carelessness. Help pls!

[Dmummyd]

Hi again!

I have a really bright DS age 9, but I'm concerned he's not reaching his true potentials due to carelessness.

He tends to rush through his work and doesn't read the questions well. He assumes he knows what is expected of him and puts the wrong answers down. Also, sometimes he has worked out an answer correctly but writes down the wrong thing. Example he wants to write down a 6, but goes ahead to write an 8!

This tests my patience sometimes!!!

Unfortunately this reflects in his scores, yesterday, he did a worksheet and only got 2 right out of 5, on going through it with him, he actually knew them all, but got them wrong because of silly errors, of writing down a wrong digit, doing only one step of the question etc.

We're looking into him going to a grammar school, which I know he's capable of, but I'm not sure how to get him to be more focused when working.

I am not a teacher, but have some experience tutoring in this age range. I tutored a ten year old girl (for the 11+) last year who was similar to your DS. She didn't read the question, and would race ahead trying to answer things when I was still explaining how to tackle it. I said to her in a moment of frustration some daft analogy like it was like her jumping into water fully clothed but that seemed to capture her imagination, oddly, she found it funny and would repeat it back to me for months afterwards, it was a non confrontational way for us to talk about her behaviour. if that makes sense!

For months when we were doing her worksheets together I made her read the question out loud to me before she answered - often she would make mistakes even when reading out loud and I would have to ask her to focus / reread. But the mistakes got fewer and eventually she was so in the habit of being thorough she went back to reading in her head. (She knew that that was what we were working towards.)

She would also write down something different from what she worked out the answer to be! that was harder to crack. I tried to get her into the habit of checking she was happy with her answer, asked her to always check her answer right away and gave her time at the end to check back again, and tried to get her to take responsibility for the answers ("are you sure they're all right? are you sure? sure sure?!"). She was so bored by this! it was hard to get her to engage with the material second time round to spot her silly mistakes. but we did make some progress. in maths especially I tried to give her tools for a quick check so she could at least see if the answer was in the right order ie hundredths rather than tenths or whatever. Useful foundation for harder maths.

All this over the course of a year of daily tutoring - the improvement was real and substantial but gradual.

HTH. Fwiw, this is probably because your DS is bright, you might also want to consider if he's bored with the material, IME boredom can produce and aggravate carelessness. You might be surprised by a difference in the way he approaches more challenging / new material.

If you do take that road, consider praising him for effort / hard work / being thorough and not in terms of natural ability / being clever. There was a wave of research about it recently that was interesting, something along these lines

Practicing Bond papers will help for grammer school entrance if your ds will cooperate with you.I have a 6 year old with this problem and my dad does Bond and KS 1 papers with him from time to time.He also bribes him with money for effort and a good result.I personally find it really difficult to do work like this with my own children as they don't always cooperate with me.Alternatively finding a tutor who specialises in grammar school entrance will help.If you are going to do this don't leave the tutoring until the last minute as good tutors are often full.

Thanks for your replies.

I'm one of those mums that didn't really believe in tutoring but I've really been considering it. I feel my trying to teach him might become counterproductive as it sometimes turns into a battle between me and him when I loose my patience!

I just need someone that would be a bit more patient with him and who has the skills to help him stay focused.