Make No Mistake, Mistakes Are An Important Part of Learning

If you have heard of Carol Dwek’s growth mindset then you have probably seen your fair share of posters and slogans about mistakes being a part of the learning process. What you might be missing is how to use mistakes for learning.

It is one of my goals to normalize making mistakes as a part of learning. The goal is to eliminate the embarrassment, defensiveness, and fixation that comes from not conquering a skill immediately. Learning to manage how to respond to mistakes is a skill that will benefit students for life. Below I share some of the efforts I engage in regularly to help make mistakes a part of my learning climate.

Growth Mindset Poster

Ways to Teach from Mistakes in Your Classroom

Set Clear expectations

I make clear expectations to respect other people when talking and when mistakes are made. We discuss what that means. For one, it means not laughing when someone makes a mistake. When you allow students to laugh or participate in any sort of ridicule or even light joking when someone makes a mistake the climate is not conducive for sharing or learning. Light joking can even lead to someone who is not even the center of the joke being apprehensive of sharing. I’m not saying to punish the students who laugh or make rude comments. However, you should be prepared to correct them, to model what they could say instead. We should be mindful to teach our students - remember punishment does not provide an alternative action. When you correct with an alternative statement you teach all of your students how to communicate better.

Point out your own mistakes

I make so many mistakes. I say one number and write a totally different one on the board all of the time. I have this crazy problem of saying the answer when asking a question. It’s maddening.

Use these times to say “see I make mistakes too. It’s a part of life.” It helps a lot. As teachers we hold this powerful place in our students minds. We should step off that pedestal they put us on and let them know we are regular people just like them. We also get this wonderful opportunity to model how to respond when you make a mistake.

Talk About Mistakes in the Learning Process in the Real World

Kids get so caught up in their own world. They are so worried about embarrassing themselves that they tend to lack the awareness of what is true in the real world.

Teach the kids about the real world. Highlight important people they know, including you. Share the really hard things they learned to do, but also the many mistakes they made along the way. Michael Jordan is an easy and popular celebrity to use since there are many resources on how he overcame failures to become known as the greatest basketball player. There are many more important and interesting people out there.

Even better, relate the discussion to yourself. I created a video last year that tied CrossFit to Math. I started CrossFit about 9 months prior. I could see a parallel between learning the very difficult skills in CrossFit and learning math. In the video, I took comments about CrossFit from real people online and used them to describe math. For example “You get out of it, what you put into it.” I added background voice overs with past presidents talking about failure and perseverance as students watch the strongest people in the world fail. I showed homemade videos of someone as they progressed over months to learn how to do a handstand walk. He fails in all of the videos except the last one. I show myself doing some of the skills I once thought were too hard. I made a connection to the hard work I was doing learning new skills to the hard work they would do in the upcoming year. I was also sure to update my students on my progress learning how to do double unders and pull ups. I made myself human and I helped them realize I was no different than them.

- I would share the video, but I do not have the copyright license to share beyond the classroom.

Reassure Students After a Mistake

Acknowledge the mistakes with neutralizing comments. It’s okay to make mistakes so we should tell students “it’s okay” when they make mistakes. I sometimes say something like “I can see how or why you made that mistake.” When students can, it is helpful for them to state why or how they made the mistake. If they are not sure, especially in the beginning of the year, model this step by helping to identify what went wrong.

When my students are struggling with a skill or when they make mistakes I remind them they are still learning. I tell them we are here to learn and we have all year. I love the motto: “we are here to learn.” It’s not just for students or for classrooms. We are all learning and here is wherever you are.

Make Mistakes a Regular Part of the Day

Every day during the practice and sharing portion of the lesson students should find mistakes within their partners and correct them. I walk around to ensure that is happening. As I walk around I look for partners who have two different answers and guide them through how to find the error. I correct the language of students with low confidence who assume the other person is correct. I encourage them to believe in themselves and continue to engage in this part of the process. I ask students to use what they have learned or a resource (poster or notes) as evidence to support their work.

As a class we also encounter mistakes when work is shared with the class. I use Nearpod which allows students to work on virtual white boards and submit them to me for review and to be shared back to the class in an instant. So when a randomly selected student’s work does not show an error, I will scroll through the other students’ work to both assess the overall class understanding and to find errors. As a class we perform error identification and corrections.

In the beginning of the year students are apprehensive about talking and sharing work. No one wants to have a mistake highlighted on a big screen. However, when you introduce this process as a part of your class and normalize it, students lose a lot of that apprehension. As you go through the year your students will engage in the full process, no longer expressing apprehension and quickly reengaging to self-identify their mistakes. They tend to volunteer what they did and why it went wrong.

Provide Feedback

In math especially, it can be easy to skip providing feedback. A lot of online assessments mark answers correct or incorrect and a score is generated. Also specifically in math, a student can do so much work correct and still get the answer wrong. This makes it super important to help students see what they are doing correct and what they need to work on. This can reduce frustration and promote confidence in the area they do well. Feedback is the pathway for students to learn from mistakes.

Promote Reflection

I don’t know if it is possible that you have met a bigger fan of self-reflection as a tool for learning than me. I use reflections for myself all of the time. I also use reflections for my students all of the time. I assign reflections after every major assessment and marking period and at the beginning and end of the year. When I return the students’ graded tests I assign a reflection that focuses on preparation, asking for help, expectations, and outcome.

This past year I saw a lot of I should study more, practice more, and do more homework. I saw that for the same students after multiple chapter reflections in a row. I adapted the next reflection to that trend to try to help students become more aware and motivated. In this case I added a question asking if they followed their own suggestion from the previous chapter reflection, why or why not. It can feel pointless when students keep making the same mistake and don't seem to be making a shift, but don't let that stop you. We are teaching life lessons, hopefully this one comes back to them when they are ready.

Wrap up

We know learning from mistakes is an essential skill. Hopefully you now know or are reminded of some tricks to promote learning from mistakes. If you have some of your own tips and tricks be sure to comment below.

#WeAreHereToLearn #GrowthMindet #ReflectiveLearning #LifeSkills