Ugh... sounds a bit like "Mom's Carnival Funhouse of Math."
I had her go and get things from her room to 'buy' as prizes for correct answers.
Initially, this "game" began somewhat coercively because Little Ghandi simply refused to bother writing out double digit subtraction problems as a 6yo... because, see, she didn't care. A 42% on a 4th grade unit exam made ME care, though. LOL!!
But DD was unfazed. So, with the understanding that I needed to know whether or not the problem was one of a lack of mastery... or of, umm... motivation... I assured her that any toys "unpurchased" at the end of her problem set would be donated to a local children's charity. (Cruel? Maybe. Still-- I strongly suspected that the problem was motivational in nature, and I certainly wasn't going to actually follow through if it wasn't. The problems were challenging-- more so than what had been on her exam... because I had to make them hard enough to motivate her to write out her work, and I needed to SEE where she was making errors, if that is what the problem was... ) I gave her 42 problems, and she needed to get 30 of them correct within 40 minutes in order to 'buy back' everything in the living room.
After the first round, her percentage of correct answers for the entire problem set topped 98% and she went to her room to collect more "prizes" so that we could keep playing...
(Aughhhhhhh....)
Boy, did her teacher laugh when I explained this one. I was mostly just relieved that there wasn't an underlying problem with her understanding, but WOW... I'm pretty sure that most kids don't respond like that to pressure. :sigh: Perfectionism + ennui = baaaaad output in schoolwork. Truly.
