I think he does not check his papers

The school term is ending and my son has received all his test results. You might have noticed that I said test and not examinations. Primary One students sit for tests that are spread out over the entire semester, and I guess this is the school's way of not stressing these young kids. 

Overall, I cannot complain too much about his results. They are quite alright. I have to emphasise (especially to my dear wife) that having a great Primary One result does not mean anything. No teacher will ask for his Primary One results and no employer will ask for his Primary One progress card. My wife is in contact with some mothers who are ridiculously "kiasu". They will discretely ask around for test results. One of them was even checking if her son scored well for a health and physical fitness MCQ test in comparison with other students! Seriously.

Anyway, back to my son's results. I am happy with his results, but I think he lacks basic examination skills. He is very careless and does not check his test paper. In his English comprehension test, he answered the questions correctly, but he made spelling and grammar errors that would have been easily caught if he had checked his answers after completing the paper. And in his Math test, he missed out one question. On hindside, that sounded like what I would do when I was a student. Of all the things he picked up from me, he had to pick up this weakness. Sigh.



I read from a blog about this method of checking answers that made sense and provided a structure for kids. There were three levels of checking and what level(s) a kid will use depends on how much time he has, as well as what section it is. The three levels are:

  • Level 1 - Level 1 checking is to see if the kid has completed all the questions. It is quick and takes little effort. This is best used when there is little time left and when there are many short questions, like in MCQ sections.
  • Level 2 - This is when a kid rereads the question and decides if his answer makes sense. If it does not, then work out the question again to find the error. This is probably the 'checking' most adults mean when they ask the kid to check. It is more suitable when there is more time.
  • Level 3 - Reserve this level of checking for really difficult questions with lots of marks as this involves doing the question again and checking it with the answer the kid wrote down in the first place. It is usually only worth it for some questions and not the whole paper.

You can read more about this method here.

I have talked to my son about this and it looks like I will have to talk about this again to him.

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