[ High School and Self-Education Board ]
Posted by Nicole on 12:09 Jun 17
In Reply to: Hate to sound severe posted by cb
I was apprehensive about giving any partial credit at all, at first, for exactly this reason, so my son appeared to be bombing every test. I've loosened up a bit, though. But this isn't engineering, is it? And. If my son misses punctuation, I have him fix it.
For some reason, seeing math errors corrected effects my son differently than seeing punctuation errors. I can correct a punctuation problem on a paper, and he doesn't feel crushed and defeated. Math errors do make him feel that way. But then, I don't assign % or letter grades to written work, the way I do for math work. I think a very large part of math success is confidence. But I do not think that is the case for writing, as much. Or at least not in this family. So partial credit is a way of building confidence. And I hope and trust this is not building *false* confidence. When you're dealing with a perfectionist child, you have to walk a fine line.
And I think that small errors do tend to diminish with time as a student matures and feels more comfortable with the material. I'm just wondering how long it takes! And writing everything out for every step helps, too. I find that my son has more errors toward the end of the test, when he's getting tired. I think on the next test I may have him try doing it in two chunks, just to confirm whether fatigue is a factor. We're also trying doing the tests at different times during the day, to see what effect that might have.
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