Junior High math - doing corrections

This post comes from us trying to cut down on the level of junior high homework ; the school has promised to listen to us & be flexible.

When I was a young lad, the maths teacher would mark our worksheets, and correct our mistakes in red ink. That is, he’d:
1/ mark the answer as wrong
2/ write the correct answer by the side
3/ correct (or circle) the area where we’d made a mistake.
4/ if things had gone really bad, you might get a ‘please see me’ for further explanation

What my kid is getting in Taiwan Junior High :
1/ mark the answer as wrong
2/ go home and do the question again

First up, this approach gives her more homework, each week. She’s Ok at math, but not top of the class. Secondly, it penalises her against those classmates who are great at math, because they have little extra to do - they get a sign or two wrong, or they make a lazy error - easy to see, fast to correct.

For example, this weekend she’s spent 2 hours on corrections from last week’s worksheets, the math supremos will have done 10-20 min max.

Is there any evidence that the ‘Taiwan’ method produces much better results for kids with intermediate math skills? I’d rather have a slightly less proficient kid, who is getting more personal time.

from the teacher’s point of view he is encouraging your kid to rethink the whole process and find out what went wrong and fix it. it encourages thinking and evaluating your performance, which is not a bad thing

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My niece’s homework is the same. It is just lazy marking. Instead of explaining the mistake themselves, the teachers are putting the work onto the parents. Not all parents have the time or math smart to explain the mistakes. In most cases the parents just end up Googling it and writing the answers for the kids, so they aren’t even learning anything.

My view of homework is it is to reinforce what has been taught and for me to assess whether the students have got it. If they get it wrong then it tells me that I need to review what I have already taught in class because they haven’t got it. I don’t know if the teacher in question is doing this.

I suppose just getting the students to try again by themselves could be positive in that it forces them to think about their mistakes. However, if they are making errors then I don’t see any benefit as they don’t understand why they are getting it wrong.

As for the OP’s issue about how to reduce homework workload, I’m afraid I can’t offer any advice. I will be hitting the same issue with my daughter in a few years.

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It’s lazy grading. With my students, I underline grammatical/punctuation/spelling errors and get them to think about corrections in class, so that I can advise them.
I suppose with math that is difficult.
However, pointing out where the mistake lies could be considerably more beneficial than simply saying “This is wrong!”.
Taiwanese schooling. Shut up, listen to teacher. There is only one way if you don’t want to end up working in a 7-Eleven.

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7-Eleven is probably one of the best working experiences a young person can have. All of the things they need to know how to do. If I was a hiring manager, someone with experience in 7-Eleven would get my attention. Rather have someone from an average university with experience than an NTU graduate who has never struggled or worked for anything other than grades in their life.

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I agree. It’s just not something you want to be doing for your whole life.

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Ok, I’ll steer her towards the nearest 7 then. She doesn’t work nights at the mo, just sleeps, and i’m sure she could skip her zzz twice a week. But I do get that the point that there are some amazingly efficient 7 employees out there: they work hard, multi-task, juggle 包裹. handle general math a lot (although the till does most of that).

I do understand that the child gets to review what went wrong, and re-attack the question. But some of these questions are not straightforward. It involves starting again from scratch, getting your head around what they’re asking for, trying a new approach. It all eats up time, which is fast becoming a precious commodity in our household.

Keep replies coming, I’d love a large cross-section of views.

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I would just tell your child’s teacher straight.

“If you mark my child’s answer wrong, write down why it is wrong.”

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Homework isn’t that bad in most schools I think. Couple hours a day most. Most time is spent reviewing in my kids’ and family members’ experiences.

For situations like this there are now apps where you can ask questions like this and they will explain the answer to the student. Lots of teachers also have Line groups to do the same thing.

711 experience (or something customer facing) means they can handle workload and customers which is good for any business.
The kid who just studies all day usually has no social skills and not good for a lot of positions.

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I know of high school students making around US$1000/mo working convenience store jobs in Taiwan. I can’t imagine having that much money as a teenager. I know some really rich kids that got more than that for a basic monthly allowance though. No work required.