LEGOOH Group: Approaches to Students’ Mistakes

Dilemma: How can the teacher help students when the students aren’t looking at their mistakes or aren’t willing to look at their mistakes?

Protocol: Consultancy (adapted for examining student work)

Presenter: Samantha

Facilitator: George

Samantha presented some examples of students’ work from a 4th grade English class after explaining the dilemma.

After listening to the dilemma and concerns, the group members took turns asking clarifying questions--questions that have factual answers:

• “Do you correct each and every mistake?”
• “Do you focus on any types of mistakes (e.g. remember full stops, capitalization)?”

The group went on to ask more probing questions. Here are some examples:

• “Do you know how these students are doing in their other lessons?”
• “How many students are having the same problem?”
• “How much time do you spend in class building their background knowledge around these mistakes and much of an importance do you place on mistakes in class?”
• “Have you ever thought of listing the common mistakes made by the students (without identifying the student’s name)?”
• “Do you think seeing a page of corrections de-motivates students?”

Summary of presenter’s responses:

We do a lot of “correct the mistake” activities for students that are teacher created. “If you made a mistake, let’s fix it.” In our class there is no negativity attached for doing it wrong. However, when it’s the second or third that they are ignoring the mistake, that’s an issue. We play a game where students are given 100 pretend GBP and bet on which sentences they can correct. Students love it but it does take time away from what needs to be covered in class.

Then it was time for the group to discuss what they heard and reflect.

Some of the group’s responses:

The teacher has done a lot of hard work checking over the students work. However, the frustration she may be going through might not be worth it considering all of her responsibilities and classes to check.

I wondered how these two students (of the examples presented) handle frustration and how the family reacts to the students not being successful at something.

I don’t think the students get the systematic process of the workbook used in class, although it looks logical to us as teachers. Students might be frustrated by our expectation for them to get the writing structure system used in the workbook. I wonder if there is a way to combine the structure presented in the book with more interesting and creative tasks.

Sometimes as teachers we’re tempted to ask them to write about similar topics over and over again. I took a risk this year and asked my students to write about something one might not think they’re interested in. To my surprise, since the topic inspired debate, I got a lot of interesting and passionate ideas out of them. Don’t be afraid to take a risk when selecting topics to write about. I also never use red to correct students mistakes and I’m also careful to focus on the important items to correct.

At the end the presenter responded to what she heard. Here are some of the responses from the presenter:

I wish the systematic writing structure of their writing exercise book was more interesting. The changing pace of content that needs to be covered is too much. There is a frustration with the effort that you are putting in as a teacher. Even with the reminders, some students seem to still not put in the effort needed. I am planning on gaining their interest beforehand when going into the next unit with an interesting video about the topic. The best thing that I’ve heard today is that we need to put activities in between these units that expand on the topic.