Same thing here. DS9 (3rd grade) can verbally score 100% on all his classwork but last trimester, he brought home TONS of failing papers -- all but one or two errors for the entire trimester were because of carelessness. He will complete one half of a paper, and then just not answer the other half -- sometimes he forgets to turn the page over, and other times he just stops and doesn't finish. His answer is always that he didn't see it. How can you just NOT SEE the bottom half of a page of a test?!!!!
I agree wholeheartedly that for things that DS finds challenging, we are MUCH less likely to see the careless mistakes. Interestingly, the teacher now offers pre-tests, where the students can test out of the regular lecture/work by scoring 92% or better -- and they receive differentiated work. DS RARELY makes any careless errors on the pre-tests. So, motivation can help!
I've heard others who have posted here say that they've had frank discussions with their DC in those instances where the child has expressed boredom/lack of challenge AND the teacher is citing their carelessness as a proof that additional challenge is not appropriate. The parents might tell their DC that they understand that the child needs more challenge, but that the teacher won't consider harder work when the DC is unable to do the current work satisfactorily. They ask the DC to try to be more careful, and explain that they'll try to work with the teacher to get more appropriate level work.
HTH! Best of luck!
