“Your best teacher is your last mistake” - Ralph Nader
Welcome back, my friends. This week I learned something that should be heavily implemented in the classroom. It is something that I feel not many teachers understand as something that is positive. It’s an unpopular saying and it goes along the words, “MISTAKES ARE IMPORTANT!”
If you’re unsure of this saying, I highly recommend the video below. In the video, Jo Boaler states that the brain grows from making mistakes. It is important to allow students to make these mistakes since it actually allows them to grow as learners. In fact, when a human being makes a mistake, their brain grows. These mistakes allow for deeper thinking - students can think back to their problem and break it down to find the solution
In addition to this, mistakes allow students to challenge themselves in a good way. Students can continue to practice math. By repeating steps and going back to one's mistakes, a student can find multiple ways to solve a math problem. It promotes a questioning attitude, problem solving skills, and critical thinking. When a student gets a question wrong, they will backtrack and try to understand what went wrong and then find a solution to get the correct answer. All in all, mistakes are seen as "brain exercises." We need them to grow and further develop our skills.
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After learning about this mindset, I started to explore some online resources to find out how an educator can implement this mindset into the classroom. According to Thinking Through Math’s “Mistakes Are Okay!”, all it takes is a growth mindset and good mentoring.
The rule is to normalize mistakes in the classroom. It is absolutely crucial for students to learn that everyone makes mistakes. Students should use mistakes as an opportunity to learn rather than an opportunity to regret and dwell on. In order to normalize mistakes, teachers should give students an adequate amount of time to solve math problems. Being under pressure, while also stressed, may hurt the students. In addition to providing more time, the source suggests that teachers should continuously remind students that it’s okay if they struggle with math.
If you’re unsure of this saying, I highly recommend the video below. In the video, Jo Boaler states that the brain grows from making mistakes. It is important to allow students to make these mistakes since it actually allows them to grow as learners. In fact, when a human being makes a mistake, their brain grows. These mistakes allow for deeper thinking - students can think back to their problem and break it down to find the solution
In addition to this, mistakes allow students to challenge themselves in a good way. Students can continue to practice math. By repeating steps and going back to one's mistakes, a student can find multiple ways to solve a math problem. It promotes a questioning attitude, problem solving skills, and critical thinking. When a student gets a question wrong, they will backtrack and try to understand what went wrong and then find a solution to get the correct answer. All in all, mistakes are seen as "brain exercises." We need them to grow and further develop our skills.
[]
After learning about this mindset, I started to explore some online resources to find out how an educator can implement this mindset into the classroom. According to Thinking Through Math’s “Mistakes Are Okay!”, all it takes is a growth mindset and good mentoring.
The rule is to normalize mistakes in the classroom. It is absolutely crucial for students to learn that everyone makes mistakes. Students should use mistakes as an opportunity to learn rather than an opportunity to regret and dwell on. In order to normalize mistakes, teachers should give students an adequate amount of time to solve math problems. Being under pressure, while also stressed, may hurt the students. In addition to providing more time, the source suggests that teachers should continuously remind students that it’s okay if they struggle with math.
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Besides learning more about having a growth mindset, we learned about using typical gaming objects and turning it into a math game. Many teacher candidates used board games but my partner and I used a fun math trick using 3 dice and then asked students to use math to figure out how the trick was done.
It's a great trick to show the students and allows students to collaborate with each other and find different ways to solve the math problem.
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| Step 1: Roll dice on flat surface. |
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| Step 2: Stack Dice. |
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| Step 3: This step is the actual trick. In this situation, the students cannot see 5 total faces (underneath the white dice, and the top and bottom of both the red and blue dice). These 5 faces, including the one that is visual should always equal 21 (this is your secret!). Tell your students that the faces they cannot see equals 20 (to get this answer, subtract the top face from 21). It is your students' job to find out how you got this answer. The best method is to distribute a set of 3 dice to each table/pair so they can try it out for themselves! |
Hey Catherine! Thanks for sharing about growth mindset and your game today. I wanted to make the connection with you towards "mistakes are important". I think this is something SO important to stress to our students as well as ourselves as educators! We all stress perfection, that is evident, but as you said, it is so important to make mistakes because it actually helps our brains grow. As a student, I was always so caught up in getting the right answer and never being wrong. Maybe, if someone had told me it's okay to make mistakes when I was doing math... I would be better or more open to math when it gets excessively difficult for me. As a future educator, we need to ensure we are creating a safe and welcoming environment where our students feel comfortable making mistakes! I think that will actually be one of my main focuses when I have my own class. I am seriously going to encourage and stress that students need to make mistakes and we'll have a period dedicated to all of our mistakes we've made in responding to some math questions, and we can go over them in groups, pairs or as a class to ensure that our students brains grow and they can maintain a growth mindset.
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