I have second-grade boy. He doing his homework correctly at home, but makes mistakes in class.
For example, he wrote all of his spelling words correctly at home but in school on his exam, he had five mistakes.
I'm so sad because I can't accept his doing wrong when he can do right!
What should I do?
My son used to have a similar problem. When he was quizzed at home he got all the answers right, but at school he would often do very poorly on tests. We also noticed that when we just casually asked him questions about his knowledge he did quite well, but when we were upset or he was in a stressful situation he was unable to give correct answers. It was like his brain just froze when he was stressed. That problem got even worse as he anticipated the stress of being tested, and being unable to answer and getting into trouble for it.
It might be that if the teachers can alter his testing situation so that it feels less stressful, he will be able to recall the answers better. The teachers at my son's school let him sit alone in a quiet room with a snack, and told him he could take his time. That allowed him to feel less stressed and he was able to do well on tests. This made him feel less anxious about tests, and he was eventually able to do well on tests in a normal classroom environment.
Of course, it might also be that your son isn't doing well because he just doesn't see any reason to try that hard. Perhaps if you worked out some sort of incentives...every time he gets 90% (or some other reachable but challenging level) on a test, he gets a treat. Or a "star point" which he can accumulate to redeem for prizes. For example, if he gets, say, ten star points you will take him out to McDonald's as his prize. BTW, positive incentives are far more effective than negative ones. It's better to reward for success than to punish for failure.
My son has/had a similar issue. He would perform well at home but poorly at school. For him, a number of factors were involved:
My son was accused of selective deafness by his kindergarten teacher. A doctor found that he was partially deaf. Blocked Eustachian tubes had filled his inner ears with liquid reducing his hearing. This affected his ability to work in a noisy environment because he couldn't hear. This was resolved with an operation and 6 months of grommets.
Even now (grade 3), he has a hard time hearing in a noisy environment. We had another test done (a figure-ground discrimination test) and found that his brain had a hard time processing sound when the background sound was raised. This makes it hard for his to concentrate and makes him easily distractable. We're hoping he will grow out of this.
He's a energetic boy, he has a hard time sitting still in class and concentrating. We exercise him before he goes to school which helps him for the first couple of hours.
In my opinion, tests not only test the subject knowledge, they also test the students ability to take a test, independently of subject matter knowledge.
try not to think of him as doing wrong - he just haven't mastered test taking as a skill. He might feel stress over taking a test, so try not to make him feel like he is inherently bad at taking tests.
Maybe you can do some 'mock tests' at home to help him build test taking skills. They can even be on very simple things, or on things that are more 'fun'. Just mimic the test taking scenario.
