Does your blood boil when your child shows you the SA2 exam scripts? Do you feel like flaring up at your child, not because of the results, but because of the ridiculous mistakes made? Before you start lashing out or nagging, read about this 3-step approach that you can start using immediately to help your child avoid similar mistakes in the future.
Nowadays, kids are very different. They tend to be less independent and more self-centered. They also like to take the easy way out (Ok, who doesn't?). The typical answer to an unsatisfactory result is carelessness and that just angers us more. How many times have we reminded them to check and check again? However, do you know that making careless mistakes is a sign of disorganised thinking processes? As adults, we take for granted that they should be able to learn from their mistakes. What your child really needs is a simple framework (W.Ra.P) that they can follow whenever they review their mistakes ,whether for post SA2 evaluation or for other daily assignments).
Here is the W.Ra.P framework which contains 3 simple guiding questions to help your child learn from mistakes:
1) What is my mistake?
2) Why did I make the mistake? (Reason)
3) How can I prevent the mistake?
We will be using an example as illustration of the framework.
1) Problem Identification - What is my mistake?
Most of the time, the child will be able to easily identify the mistake as it would have been marked out on the script (although sometimes the teacher might not have circled the error portion).
2) Problem Definition- Why did I make the mistake? (Reason)
This is usually very difficult for the child and the most common answer to that question is "I was careless". That is definitely not an acceptable reason and it shows your child has not been thinking systematically during the exam. In this example, the child would have avoided the mistake if he had identified that the question type ("and") requires a change in the verb form. Ask probing questions to help your child get to the root of the problem. Most of the time, it requires the kids to also identify the concept that the teacher is testing (We cover this in WG's Art of W.A.R strategy).
3) Solution generation and implementation- How can I prevent the mistake?
This is the most important step. Control your urge to spoonfeed! Your child needs to come up with ways to prevent the same type of mistakes on his own. If you have guided him well for step 2, step 3 should be easy. Once your child is able to verbalise the solution to preventing the mistake, get your child to try the same question again to see if he has really learnt. Better yet, find another similar question for your child to try. It is more important that he focuses on the thought processes than on just doing the question. Your child can now W.Ra.P up and move on!
Ultimately, other than learning from their academic mistakes, the children will develop problem solving skills which is an invaluable lifeskill. We will be more than happy to help your child identify his strengths and weaknesses based on the latest SA2 scripts. Contact us today to book a free consultation session!
