As educators, we are aware that our current students will be redefining knowledge and possibilities in the future, in ways we cannot even imagine! It is our job to create and foster a learning environment where student failures and intellectual risk taking are anticipated and welcomed as vehicles to growth and innovation.
There are two significant reasons to fine-tune our attention to creating opportunities for risk taking and clearly modeling how we respond to student failures:
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Mistakes lead to learning!
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How we respond to mistakes leads to future behavior!
Here are two strategies you could use today.
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Introduce a quick “Mess Up Warm Up”
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Give students a scenario that aligns with your content area and have them respond through drawing, writing, or modeling. Ensure that the scenario has multiple solutions. Display a preplanned solution that would not necessarily work. Have students identify everything that is wrong with the solution; celebrate the idea, and then use linking sentence frames such as:
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“This idea makes me think of ____.”
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“In the example, I see ________ and I think it might work differently like _____.”
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“I see _________ as a way to achieve ________. I wonder if _______ might be another way to achieve this.”
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Create a “Risk Taking Wall”
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Find a location in your classroom to put wild and crazy ideas on display: a creative draft of a topic sentence, a unique—and maybe not even successful—strategy for attempting a math problem, a draft sketch of a solution to an engineering design challenge.
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As an extension, you might encourage students to mark up the work that is posted, leaving comments and feedback for their classmate and making the improvement process transparent for all to see!