Jenny O'Fee

Mistakes, errors, corrections, shouldn’t haves. Whatever you want to call them, we all make them, most of us daily. In fact, education, learning and indeed life is all about making them, yet our students are often most afraid of mistakes. The focus for learners is more often than not on what wasn’t done well and what wasn’t learned. What we got wrong is important but only because it tells us what we need to do next to improve. Empowering students with the knowledge and skills to be reflective as learners is the key. We shouldn’t erase our mistakes, we should highlight them!

Teaching students to use ‘what went wrong’ or the mistakes they have made, is how we can ensure the process of lifelong learning is instilled from a young age. Teaching students to accept mistakes, take control of them and use them to their advantage is a gift that we must give young learners. This is not to be misinterpreted though, we are encouraging students to get things wrong, although, if by doing so students learning is enriched, why not? Taking risks and accepting when we are wrong are skills and concepts that are extremely challenging. So how do we begin to ’empower’ young learners and arm them with using their mistakes to reap positive rewards?

One simple strategy is lead by example. If we show as adults that we will take risks and accept when we are wrong, young learners will do the same. Fear and embarrassment of ‘being wrong’ or failing sends the wrong message to students and reinforces the belief that all mistakes should be erased and forgotten.

Another strategy is to reflect upon how we, as adults, respond to mistakes. Using powerful vocabulary that is focused on future learning is essential. When a child makes a mistake respond with:

‘What would you do differently in the future?’

‘How will you remember that next time?’

‘I remember when I made that mistake, I learned…….’

Demonstrating that we learn from mistakes reaffirms to a child that they are not ‘bad’ or ‘stupid’ and prevents the blocks that we ourselves may have had to face as learners when we were growing up.

Find more good strategies and links here:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-moment-youth/201109/mistakes-improve-childrens-learning

http://www.top20training.com/experience-top-20/top-20-parents/mistake-making/