Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Marking correct answers as incorrect

Honestly, I think the best thing to do is to ask the teacher why the question was marked wrong. I'd frame it along the lines of "I'm kind of confused because the answer is correct; can you tell me what's wrong?" Something like that. Until you ask the teacher, you're just speculating.

It's true that some teachers can be very rigid. My kids had one of those a couple of years ago, and a long miserable thread was devoted to her on this board.

But at the same time, people also make mistakes, especially if they're grading a lot of papers at once. It's possible that she was looking at the answer to another problem or that she misread the digits your DD wrote. Or whatever. Who knows? Again, if no one asks the teacher, you won't know what's wrong or if it was just an honest mistake. If she was unhappy with something, your DD won't know how to fix the problem in the future. If it was an honest mistake, it's best to find out and move on.

^ That.

I've done that hundreds of times in my lifetime when grading thousands of problems in a weekend. (Really not kidding).


All it takes is for my phone to ring when I'm in the middle of it. Sometimes it really is that simple/stupid.

This morning I told dd to ask the teacher why it was wrong, hopefully we'll get an answer and know for sure.

This is just an accumulation of frustration for both dd and I. She doesn't feel challenged, I'm frustrated how slow they're moving and feel we'll be spending another year not making progress. We're going on our 3rd year of dealing with this. I'm extremely happy with what the teacher is doing with writing, grammar, and vocabulary and dd enjoys these lessons. She says she's bored with the math. The multiplication they are working on she learned almost 2 years ago.

I would circle the problem as a reminder to your DD to ask the teacher to show her how to solve it. Whenever my DD gets a correct answer marked as incorrect, I have her do this and two results usually occur: 1) She learns what she was missing and is able to fix her mistake (whether it be in calculation or in the process if the actual bottom line answer was correct) or 2) She is able to discuss with the teacher and the teacher realizes she does know what she is doing and changes it to correct. Math is usually black and white, but sometimes a little shade of grey creeps in.

maybe they're doing this?
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/arithmetic/rapid/Specifics/Times9.shtml

That is how i would have done it.

Not that I can tell, that's the only problem out of 20 that had 9s in it. The rest of them were just random numbers and dd was solving them the traditional way and those weren't marked wrong. This was the only problem where things weren't stacked neatly on top of each other and had a question asking what it was next to it.

Following up, the next day after school I asked dd if she asked her teacher about why the problem was wrong and dd said she didn't want to ask. I think the teacher's personality makes dd uncomfortable and anxious and she'd much rather avoid talking to her than figure out why it was marked wrong.

I'd flick her a quick email saying DD is having trouble understanding what she needs to do in class and that you would like to support her learning at home, so could she send through where she went wrong and you'll go over it again with DD at home?