Sometimes grades aren’t perfect, and sometimes learning math is just hard! What happens to the transcript grade when things don’t go well?
My daughter is working on Saxon Algebra 2 and says she understands it fine. However when she takes the tests and even on her daily assignments she is frequently getting the wrong answers because of what I will call Stupid mistakes (not copying the problem correctly, forgetting to put a negative where it belongs, adding instead of subtracting).
I have tried having her take 2 days to take the test but going slower doesn’t appear to make a difference in the number of errors. She is following the correct steps to get her answers but gets the wrong answer because of her mistakes. If I just give her the test scores as her grade she would be averaging about a “C” (about 75%). Should I just give her that Grade or give her credit for attendance, assignments completed and such. Any advice would be welcomed.
~Sandy in Utah
Hi Sandy,
Math doesn’t always come easily to kids, and not all homeschoolers will get a 4.0 in math, so don’t worry about that. I do want you to think about what a transcript grade is, however. A grade on a transcript is not the same thing as a grade on a test. The grade on a test only measures one thing; the test. A grade on the transcript reflects EVERY way you evaluate them. It includes doing their assignments, discussing it with you, doing all the work you ask, taking tests, and taking quizzes. So you do want to include other things besides her 75% on the test when you are considering her transcript grade. My Total Transcript Solution and my book on course descriptions both go into that in detail.
Math may be difficult because you are using a misfit curriculum. Perhaps Saxon isn’t right for your daughter for some reason. You may want to try another curriculum. You can see my blog post on choosing math for more ideas.
For “stupid mistakes” you can try my “tricky” strategy. Tell your daughter that she only needs to do 1/2 the problems. If she gets them 80% correct, then she doesn’t need to do the other problems. If she makes enough “stupid mistakes” she will have to do the other problems – OUCH! Sometimes that will be the motivation teens need to be more careful with her work.
Remember that with Saxon math, every test is cumulative. If she pulls her grade up toward the end of the year, it’s OK to drop her earlier, unsatisfactory tests. Saxon also has a LOT of tests, and you may not need so many tests for her. Perhaps by giving tests less often she may end up doing better on them.
Christianbook.com Curriculum Page
Kim says:
Hi Lee,
Love the “tricky” strategy idea! Got to remember that one!
Thanks,
Kim
October 30th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Kimm says:
We use Saxon math as well. I grade using partial credit. I look at each problem as worth one point. If they miss something small, like a label or a sign, I subtract .1 and if they miss more of the concepts or make more mistakes, I take off more. I think this helps give an equalizer and their grade better reflects their amount of understanding of the material.
October 31st, 2009 at 8:06 am
J W says:
I was exactly like Sandy’s daughter! Fortunately, my Dad stuck with me and checked over my homework each night. I wish my teachers had reduced my workload! It doesn’t help that I’m mildly dyslexic. I coped with that by writing as much as I could on scratch paper to reduce the chances of reversing something. To transfer it back to the paper I turned in to my teachers, I read each number out loud, (“four hundred and sixty two”), set it down on paper, then read the next, (“times five hundred and twenty”) and wrote it down, etc. For problems that required multiple calculations, sometimes I wrote notes to myself (“diameter of the circle,” or “speed of Train A”). I used lots of scratch paper with plenty of white space between the work I did for each problem, and even labeled the work with the problem number. That way I could see every stage without it turning into a meaningless “swimming” jumble of numbers. I can’t do mental math beyond very simple arithmetic – the numbers “swim around” and get muddled, and I get lost. I absolutely must write everything down. If I’m copying a long number from a book, I say the first digit out loud, write it, say the second digit out loud, write it, etc. It’s the relationships among numbers and concepts that I relate to most in math.
November 1st, 2009 at 6:37 am