Careless Mistakes during test

My girl often makes careless mistakes during tests as most kids her age do I suppose. However, yesterday she brought back her Maths paper and I saw that she had lost over 10 marks due to carelessness. Oops!

It was the first time she had to do an objective paper by marking on a separate paper. She had gotten the answers right on the question paper itself but when transferring the answers onto the objective answer sheet, she somehow put in the wrong answers. She did so for 5 questions. Thats 5 marks.  She also forgot to transfer an answer. Thats another 1 mark. 6 correct answers but marked wrongly.

She miscalculated a very easy sum. 1 mark. She got tricked because she did not read the question carefully enough. 1 mark. (These 2 marks lost are excusable and not as bad as the above. Anyone can make those sorts of mistakes. Still it is not because she does not know it. She knows the answers when I asked her to look at them again and straight away she spotted her mistake.)

Finally, she got 3 marks deducted because she forgot to put in some maths equation or answers even though she had done the workings and got all the answers correct. Again, all answers were correct but marks deducted because incomplete.

When I spoke to her, I saw that she was going to get defensive and start arguing "But mummy, I checked. I used the ruler and checked line by line when transferring the answers." I told her that obviously there was something wrong with the manner in which she had checked because she made 6 wrong markings but she was adamant that she had checked correctly and carefully and she does not know how to make it better.

Instead of scolding her, I suggested to her that in future, instead of checking in that manner using a ruler, she should try to look at the numbers carefully before marking the answer sheet. "Isn't it such a waste that you are smart and studied so hard but then you lost so many marks due to not being careful enough?" She lost her defensiveness and agreed that it was indeed a waste. Hopefully she will not make so many careless mistakes in the future.

Though this is her first time doing answers on an objective answer sheet, her father had reminded her to check carefully before marking the answers. No matter how often we remind her, she still makes careless mistakes every time (which is acceptable for which kid does not make careless mistakes?) but this time, more than 10 marks lost due to carelessness is certainly a waste. She had studied so hard.