Silly Mistakes are Still Mistakes

... and they should be treated as such.

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When you’re engaged in serious skill-building, it’s not good enough to be “almost” able to execute a skill properly.

Think about gymnastics: if you’re “almost” able to land a backflip, then that’s great …

… but at the same time, you’re NOT ready to try any combo moves of which a backflip is a component.

Even if it’s a silly mistake keeping you from landing the backflip, you still have to rectify it.

The same reasoning applies in any hierarchical skill domain – including math.

If you don’t force students to clean up their silly mistakes on low-level skills, then students will eventually hit a wall.

No matter how hard they try, they’ll be unable to reliably perform advanced skills due to the compounding probability of silly mistakes in the component skills.

Silly mistakes are still mistakes, and they should be treated as such.

(Additionally: sometimes, a student may claim their mistake is silly when in fact it arises from a deeper conceptual misunderstanding.

Whether this is an honest misbelief, or an attempt to exploit the grading system, it’s something that needs to be prevented.)

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