If some creative teacher can find a way to teach our son to slow down just a tiny bit -- and pay attention to details, instructions, etc -- he'll be unstoppable. "Going too quickly" really is his only problem in school right now, and is the only thing negatively affecting his grades.
My DS9 has the same problem. We were going through math yesterday and I read a few of the posts in this thread to him. I told him that the forum is run by the Davidson Institute. The immediate effect was that his face lit up when he saw that smart kids can have this problem. He had been complaining of being "stupid" on occasion before that.
I also thought about how to help him increase his accuracy. I realized that I've always emphasized the need to "check your work!" but never gave specific advice about how to do this, apart from re-working the problem. Of course, this approach can just lead him to make the same mistakes.
So I deconstructed the process and gave him these pieces of advice, based on his biggest problems:
1. For order of operations, use braces to show which parts of the problem you do first/have done. This will help you keep track of things.
2.
Always simplify fractions.
3. THE LAST THING YOU NEED TO DO is to check signs.
His accuracy went up immediately! The task didn't seem as overwhelming to him either.
Val
