Grading 8th grade Algebra for transcript?

We do not give additional credit for corrections. We will however, give partial credit based on what the error was. Also if the student could have “plugged in” their answer to check their work and they didn’t do that, then no credit for a wrong answer. That was laziness on their part.

I do agree reworking is key to mastery and having them find out why they got the wrong answer is a good skill to learn.

I don’t know anything about what is typical in Canada.  But here in the US, you aren’t LIMITED by number of credits, but by space.  There is a LOT of info to pack into one page, and it’s really hard to do–I spent a lot of time on it and finally decided there was no way except to limit it to what was achieved 9th through 12th, and actually I asked a few admissions departments and they said that was what they preferred. They were smart enough to figure out that if you had a more advanced math class, you’d had the previous class. If 9th grade listed French II, they could figure out you’d had French I somewhere along the way.  My kid had two foreign languages going, lots of fine arts and social sciences studied, AND more than 4 English and math credits, just counting 9th grade and up.  I couldn’t waste the space, as I heard multiple times that an additional explanatory document was OK, but the actual transcript should be ONE page to make life easy for the adcoms.  Since that’s what they told me, I took them at their word.

BECAUSE MOST COLLEGES DO NOT DO THIS.  Very, very few do in my experience.  College algebra is not really even a college class (misnomer.)  Most colleges expect students ready for calculus.  And calculus is graded very differently—you might have six problems on your test.  With points off if you get an answer wrong.  And points off if you do a step wrong.  And points off if you do not SHOW how you got to a step.  And sometimes you can lose more points than the problem was worth to begin with.  And there are NO do-overs.  If you miss it you miss it.  My very good at math son had a bad day, made a couple of mistakes he knew better than to make, got a D on the test, and when he talked to the instructor he cheerfully told him to pay better attention next time.  🙂  Even when he was taking calc at the community college here, there were no do-overs on tests.  Just like you don’t get paid if you screw up your purchase orders at work.  Or bill your hours wrong as an attorney.  Or crash your semi.  If you want to encourage perfect attention, stress doing it right the first time.  If you want to stress that it doesn’t MATTER really if you get it right or not, then reward making mistakes and doing it again.  Which way would you rather have the brain surgeon working on your baby trained???  Even in places where you can try again (think repentance) you still may have to live with the consequences of a mistake.  Better to learn not to make mistakes.  🙂  Or at least minimize them as much as is humanly possible.  One can learn to NOT make math mistakes.  It requires discipline and attention to fine detail and memory.  None of these things are bad  

WRITE IT OUT.  WRITE IT OUT.  WRITE IT OUT.  WRITE EVERY STEP OUT.  As hard as I tried to get this through to my oldest, he still struggled a little when he got to college and they really did expect EVERY SINGLE STEP written out.  Fully.  If you don’t do it, you can be graded down EVEN IF YOU GET THE RIGHT ANSWER.  This really cannot be emphasized enough and also applies to all problems done in chemistry and physics.  So tell your kids Bookworm and son have learned from painful experience that you really do have to write it all out, whether you want to or not!  Actually, this is a great habit and helps in anything else you are doing, especially if it is collaborative.  I was once working on a statistical project and had a coworker who just would NOT write out her math and when she messed up, we could never figure out where or why and had to repeat ALL her work over again. Needless to say, this will NOT make one popular with bosses and coworkers!!!!!

My dh is a college math professor. Agreeing w/ Bookworm, write it out! And no partial credit, unless it is one very small mistake and you still have the right answer! 🙂

The PS has “dumbed” down students by allowing them to get credit for correcting mistakes and extra credit! They then come to college expecting help on it all and extra credit when they did bad on the test! Of course, nothing is wrong w/ correcting your work, that is how you learn from your mistakes! But when students expect to be handed everything to them, it carries on into college! Not good!