My mistake

Miss Abigail’s thought for the week: My Mistake!

At Nadeen, we teach children to develop a growth mindset.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, the five central abilities needed for a growth mindset are:

  • Embrace challenge – do stuff that is hard
  • Persevere in the face of setbacks
  • Know that effort is the path to mastery of anything
  • Learn from your mistakes and from criticism
  • Be inspired by and learn from the success of others.

I would like to focus on the fourth one of these today – learning from your mistakes.

A quick Google search will show countless famous quotes and memes about making mistakes and this is because most people that have become really successful at what they do are all too aware that taking risks, being wrong, making mistakes and failing are all essential steps in learning to be great…at anything.  And yet, many people – children and adults – fear being wrong and are ashamed of their mistakes and sometimes even don’t like to own up to making them.  Children need to see us as adults embracing the power of the mistake as a learning tool for positive growth.  They need us to be role models of how to own up when we get things wrong and they need to see us put things right. They also need to see us take criticism well (see previous Dojo post).

They also need us to understand that, in order to really grow and flourish, with a growth mindset, they will need to risk being wrong and be given the space to make mistakes and learn from them.  Many children are scared of making mistakes because they fear the disapproval or disappointment of their parents.  Be mindful of this!

Of course, there are different types of mistakes and some are far more valuable than others.  This article very clearly sets out the different types and what this can mean: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/42874/why-understanding-these-four-types-of-mistakes-can-help-us-learn

Here is a short video about how making mistakes helps develop a growth mindsets: https://youtu.be/BjZ5O4sA-fg

This video shows what some children say about mistakes: https://youtu.be/ndvt89ybSSE

And, finally, this is what some of our Nadeen children have to say about making mistakes, and it is quite nice to see how the level of understanding moves on between year 2 and year 6! https://youtu.be/JSKiC-GUyT8 (year 2)    https://youtu.be/yxAjqyV6RXw (year 6)