We spent most of Friday with the homeschool group, so we didn't do much academics at home. I did assign Sparkle a few math problems, and this time asked her to "show her work," instead of just writing the answer. Although most of her final answers were correct, the part where she showed her work was wrong every time. That means that even on the problems where she got the answer correct, she doesn't really understand.
Sparkle's issue made me think about the phonics vs. sight words wars in teaching reading. Somehow Sparkle has picked up enough math "sight words" to fumble her way through the math equivalent of a basic reader. However, she doesn't know enough "phonics" to "sound out" math problems that she doesn't have memorized. And when she guesses incorrectly, she can't recognize or correct her mistake.
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