do B's matter in elementary school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally. Any kid who gets a B is certainly struggling. I mean B basically is a failure, right?

Well, multiple B's won't get you into a decent college. DD hasn't received any but just started 5th grade and we're wondering what to expect.

Multiple B’s won’t get you into a DECENT college?

You people are seriously sick. This is not healthy or normal in any way, shape or form.

For real. I come to dcum for entertainment but every once in a while you come across a thread that is a little sad and you kind of just feel bad for everyone involved.

[Anonymous]

They don’t matter in the sense that they don’t go on any sort of record, but ES is so darn easy these days that I’m shocked how many posters don’t view this as either a sign of struggle, laziness, boredom, executive function issue, LD, etc.

[Anonymous]

Here’s the way I look at it. Good grades are not the goal in school, learning is. Grades are merely a rough indicator of how the learning process is proceeding. In elementary, you’re probably the only one looking at the grade to see how the child is progressing, although when the child wants to apply to something competitive (magnet, college, etc.), others will look at the relevant grades because rough as they are they’re the most convenient measure.

As for what a B represents, it generally suggests a child is doing good work, but the teacher thinks the work could be done better. Keeping in mind that learning is the goal, that B could mean anything from a warning of potential problems to an achievement to take pride in. You need to investigate further and consider if questions like the following might be relevant:

Is the work too hard and they’re not quite getting it?
Are they completing the work, but not investing tine and effort to really master the concepts?
Do they fully understand the concepts, but get sloppy with the details and lose points?
Did they struggle to learn the concept, bringing their grade down, but they kept at it until they mastered it, bringing their grade up to a B?
Is the work too hard, too easy, or just right?
Is there anything bothering them (a noisy classmate who distracts them, trouble seeing the board, etc.)
Is your child mastering the concept but making a judgement call about the assignment? (For example, schools have a habit of turning assignments for all classes into art projects. If the art project is an art class, the child needs to learn artistic techniques. On the other hand, when my child was in middle school, she had to make a poster for her foreign language class with pictures of the vocabulary. What mattered to me is whether she had the vocabulary memorized, I didn’t care if she had a pretty poster, although she cared).

A lot of parents encourage their child to try their best, and that may work for sone kids, but if your child has any perfectionist tendencies it will increase the pressure and make things so much worse. Sometimes kids need to be taught to remember the goal of the assignment is to learn, not to get a grade, not to do perfect work, but to master the material so it’s theirs to use when needed.

Basically a B in elementary school matters only in what it tells you, which is that the child is doing pretty well but that the teacher thinks some of the work could be better. If adult lives were graded, we’d probably be pretty happy with Bs showing that while we might have room for improvement, we’re doing pretty well and making progress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally. Any kid who gets a B is certainly struggling. I mean B basically is a failure, right?

Well, multiple B's won't get you into a decent college. DD hasn't received any but just started 5th grade and we're wondering what to expect.

Multiple B’s won’t get you into a DECENT college?

You people are seriously sick. This is not healthy or normal in any way, shape or form.

What, planning ahead? Multiple Bs in high school won't even get kids into the program I went to these days. And if they can't manage As in elementary school...

Not how that works. I got B's in elementary school and still got A's in high school, undergrad and law school.

But the work gets harder. That doesn't make any sense.

Of course it makes sense. A huge component of learning is motivation. A kid may not care much about school or be interested in what they are learning in the early years. They may also lack the executive functioning and organizational skills needed to get As. Then once they mature a bit and start learning content that they care about, they excel. My sister was one of those people. I was an organized, detail-oriented rule follower who always got very good grades and now have a PhD. Some of the most brilliant people I have met in the workplace had grades that barely got them into grad school. But they are highly intelligent, out of the box thinkers. As are overrated.

This is true but I think the primary factor is that kids are well aware that only grades that will go on their high school transcript really matter (as long as they don't do so badly they can't get into advanced classes that will go on their high school transcript). What incentive does an elementary schooler have to go the extra mile to get an A when they could spend their time doing things that are more fun? It's perfectly rational to slack off at that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They don’t matter in the sense that they don’t go on any sort of record, but ES is so darn easy these days that I’m shocked how many posters don’t view this as either a sign of struggle, laziness, boredom, executive function issue, LD, etc.

This. This is the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They don’t matter in the sense that they don’t go on any sort of record, but ES is so darn easy these days that I’m shocked how many posters don’t view this as either a sign of struggle, laziness, boredom, executive function issue, LD, etc.

+1 this exactly

[Anonymous]

I am a fifth grader who is in the talented and gifted program. From my experience, being in programs such as GATE and getting good grades really opens you up to opportunities for middle school. If you get A's in elementary school, it opens you up to things such as Honors English in 6th grade, Course 2 and 3, and sometimes, (in my case) IM 1. I am a straight A student, and I have 3 A's and 2 A+'s. I am just giving advice for future people! Get good grades! It might be hard, but it pays off!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They don’t matter in the sense that they don’t go on any sort of record, but ES is so darn easy these days that I’m shocked how many posters don’t view this as either a sign of struggle, laziness, boredom, executive function issue, LD, etc.

This. This is the issue.

That's really kind of true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a fifth grader who is in the talented and gifted program. From my experience, being in programs such as GATE and getting good grades really opens you up to opportunities for middle school. If you get A's in elementary school, it opens you up to things such as Honors English in 6th grade, Course 2 and 3, and sometimes, (in my case) IM 1. I am a straight A student, and I have 3 A's and 2 A+'s. I am just giving advice for future people! Get good grades! It might be hard, but it pays off!

If you are real, you are too young to be on DCUM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a fifth grader who is in the talented and gifted program. From my experience, being in programs such as GATE and getting good grades really opens you up to opportunities for middle school. If you get A's in elementary school, it opens you up to things such as Honors English in 6th grade, Course 2 and 3, and sometimes, (in my case) IM 1. I am a straight A student, and I have 3 A's and 2 A+'s. I am just giving advice for future people! Get good grades! It might be hard, but it pays off!

Shut up troll

[Anonymous]

Bs don't even matter in HS or college.