It's frustrating, isn't it? I think the answer is maturity, tbh... The best thing I found to do about it was to make sure there were consequences for making mistakes. ALEKS, despite its many faults, was good for this - DS learned that he could get a topic out of the way by getting 2 or 3 questions right, or he could make a careless error, the system wouldn't know it was only careless and not misunderstanding, and then he'd have to do 4 or 5... he got better!
On the other side, DS10 is now far better at this (though he still has scope to improve) and at the same time, I'm awestruck by how much he can do in his head. He reasons through problems without writing anything down, in cases where I would have trouble doing so and would reach for paper reflexively (indeed where looking over his shoulder I do ;-). I think he's got something there that I'd like to have; there definitely is an upside to getting good at juggling lots of information in your head.
ETA: I'm only answering the post as written. Of course, there's also, separately, the important skill of explaining what you did so that someone else can understand it - but I think that is best treated as something separate.
Last edited by ColinsMum; 05/09/14 08:19 AM.
