First Grades of 4th Grade

Well, Friday Will brought home his first graded papers from 4th grade. All were either math or social studies, which means they were from Mr. P's class. He likes to put grades on things. Last year, none of Will's math pages actually had scores on them, but apparently this year they will!

So, for the most part they were good. I still can't get over the fact that an 83 is a C. What is up with that? An 83 used to be a solid B. But, not now. Not at Loveland. So on Will's first Social Studies paper he got a C. An 83/C. Unfortunately, 3 of the points he missed were because he did not capitalize River as in the Mississippi River. Three times he missed that, so to me it is obvious that he does not realize "River" is supposed to be capitalized. I asked him about it when we went over his homework and I was right. He didn't know.

On several of his math pages he got A+'s, which is fantastic. On another he got a B. Again, he gets the work, he just makes careless mistakes. Adding incorrectly, etc... But when you are figuring out a word problem and you make one minor addition error, it changes the final answer. And with numbers, one off makes it wrong!

They did two sets of multiplication facts. How many they could get done in a minute. He did not do too hot on those. Luckily they were not graded on them. He definitely needs to work with flash cards or something, though he says no way, he does not want to. How do you get past that?

Last night he saw me doing Ben's spelling homework with him. Backwriting. He asked me to do it with him. So he brought up his spelling book and we looked at his words for the week. After we did the spelling words I decided to do some multiplication facts on his back. It worked and I was proud of myself. He thought it felt good and enjoyed doing it. So, he didn't realize we were actually practicing!!!! We only did the 3 facts. He definitely does not know them. I will try again tonight. I need to find some sort of something to reward him with, encourage him to practice. Just getting a good grade does not seem to be enough incentive, unfortunately. I don't know why and it frustrates me. I don't know how to make him care about his work.