As a parent, this is very frustrating to see. My DD7 is highly competitive and wants to be the first one finished with her work. DD does have a tendency to rush through what she is doing. At school last year in 2nd Grade, she lost over 100 grade points total for not putting her name on her papers and additional points for leaving blanks. The teacher said that she jumped on any assignment immediately with intensity and excitement that is very rare for kids her age. (However, teacher also had a fun station in back of the room for kids to play at when they finished their work. Unfortunately, I did not find out about this until the last quarter!)
My DD just didn't seem to grasp the importance of careless mistakes, which may be some sort of maturity issue (or maybe an absentminded professor mentality).
This year, I took a different approach. DD has the option of filling in all the blanks once in school or she has to write the entire sentence, problem, etc. at home to make the corrections. She has a strong competitive streak to win, and I finally told her that the fastest kid in the class doesn�t win and the school tracks grades only. The kids with the highest grades win. The good news is that we have seen a drastic improvement in 3rd Grade with very few careless mistakes and unanswered blanks.
