A guide for young teachers
We all make mistakes as teachers. These errors do not always have to be seen as something negative. They can be used to improve our learning/teaching techniques.
Students make mistakes too. One of our responsibilities as teachers is to show students ways to reduce errors. This will improve your learning, your results, and your confidence in your own ability to succeed.
Below are some strategies I have used to make the most of my mistakes made in the classroom. In addition, there are strategies to help students avoid mistakes, improve their learning and their confidence in their ability to use their learning effectively, especially in an assessment situation.
Strategy #1
The ‘deliberate teacher made a mistake’ during a teaching session
Here, a teacher makes a deliberate mistake by testing which students understand what the teacher is doing and which students are really on task, i.e. actively listening.
- Make the kind of mistake students often make and tell them about it.
- Sometimes you accidentally make mistakes, so encourage students to catch you by carefully concentrating on what you say and do. So it’s important to politely point it out. Compliment the student on her observation skills.
- I always claim that I made the mistake on purpose to see who was ‘awake’ and who was ‘asleep’.
- Sometimes I put an error, explanation or solution in writing and ask students to find it.
- When students don’t see a mistake I made and I didn’t tell them I made a mistake, I say something like, “I cheated on you again” or “How did you let me get away with it?” I do it for fun. Then I ask who saw the error but didn’t want to pry. Encourage them to do just that. Tell them that in the future you will make mistakes on purpose to test them. Remind them that everyone makes mistakes, so “Make sure you catch me.”
Strategy #2
Teach students how and why mistakes are made.
Show them real examples:
- Careless reading of the question.
- Careless copying of the question data.
- Not answering the question correctly or completely
- Sloppy calculations, spelling, grammar, etc.
Strategy #3
Errors in the exam cost notes.
Detail those errors and their cost as a percentage of all work to show students their true potential in terms of what their level of achievement would have been without those errors. Use this to encourage students to develop their own verification procedure to reduce or completely eliminate these errors.
Strategy #4
With each new topic you teach, point out when mistakes, misconceptions, and mistakes are made.
Include this discussion in any review program you organize.
Strategy #5
Always review each assessment task.
Point out when students did not recognize areas where mistakes could be made as a follow-up to the last strategy.
Strategy #6
Encourage students to highlight their own mistakes as learning experiences.
They could then share them with others in hopes of preventing them from making the same mistakes.
Strategy #7
As a teacher, don’t give perfect answers all the time.
Do this in particular for the most difficult tasks. Students often believe that they can never be ‘that good’, so they say to themselves, “Why try?” (This is a good strategy in subjects like Math).
Strategy #8
Some textbooks have exercises where deliberate mistakes are made..
Use them or design your own for students to practice finding mistakes.
Strategy #9
In subjects like Science, Mathematics, and others where proofs are required, students sometimes take the wrong approach. Teach them that this mistake is a real learning experience. No a failure as they now know that the problem cannot be solved that way.
Students, most of the time, take a mistake that they do not understand what they have been taught. Our job as teachers is to show them that, most of the time, the error is just a lapse in concentration, not a lack of understanding of the subject. If we can do this, then students can use the mistake as a learning experience and hopefully not repeat it.
One last point: Making mistakes and admitting them in class will show students that the teacher is ‘human’ after all. This often improves the distribution between the teachers and the class. This is a positive result.