One of the most important resources you can provide to someone learning a new skill is instant feedback. No matter what skill you’re trying to learn, having someone immediately tell you whether or not you are completing the process correctly has a great value.
Have you ever learned something the wrong way?
For me, I started playing basketball at a young age. So, like many, I shot the ball from my chest to compensate for my lack of upper body strength at a young age. Trying to break this bad habit, and learn the correct one, was not easy. The same is true in the classroom.
A STORY
I once walked into a math teacher’s classroom to observe her students working in stations. She had some students on a laptop working on IXL.com, another group was with her receiving direct instruction, and the last group had a worksheet.
Everyone was working on long division with decimals.
I circulated the room to see how all the students were doing. When I arrived at the table with the students working on the worksheet, they were all quite proud to show me how many questions they had already completed. Unfortunately, they had done them all wrong.
That meant that they had been working on these problems for a good deal of time in class that day, and were no closer to mastering the skill than they were when they began the period. You could even say that they were farther away since a bad habit had been reinforced.
I Had to Relearn Trigonometry
Many years ago my Principal asked me to get my teaching certificate for High School Math. At the time, I only had my teaching certificate for middle school math. So I began studying. I hadn’t taken an upper-level math class since I was in high school (a LONG time ago).
So I began the process of learning upper-level mathematics, starting with Algebra 2. I remember struggling a bit when I had to relearn SOHCAHTOA. To make sure I was doing the problems correctly, I would pick a problem out of the book or from the website I was working on. I would work the problem and then immediately check my answer. At first, I was getting a lot of them incorrect. Which forced me to go back and look at my work to find my errors and recheck my notes to see how to do the problem correctly. Once I realized my mistake, I learned from it and moved on.
Practice Does NOT Make Perfect
Vince Lombardi is credited for saying, “Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” You can’t practice something over and over again, but do it incorrectly, and gain any value from the experience.
The only way you can master a skill is to do it correctly over and over again. Which means when you make a mistake, you must be corrected so that you can adjust accordingly.
The Value of Instant Feedback
When students are given instant feedback, as they work out a problem, they are given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes instead of repeating them.
When you are made aware of a mistake that you made while working out a problem, you are forced to go back and look at your work, evaluate it, compare it to your notes, and correct it. By doing all of these things, you will actually acquire a better comprehension of the material, because you will now also know what does not work and why.
If you are never corrected when you make a mistake, you will continue making it. After so many repetitions the process will become engrained in your memory and be able to be repeated effortlessly. Unfortunately, the process you will be repeating to solve the problem, will be the wrong process and result in the wrong answer.
Not Penalizing Failure
Giving students instant feedback is another way we can avoid penalizing them for making mistakes when they are in the learning process.
Experimentation is a healthy part of the educational process. However, if students are discouraged from experimentation out of fear of getting the wrong answer and penalizing their grade – their understanding of the subject may be limited. However, if students feel safe in making mistakes, they are more likely to experiment with different methods, which could help them better understand the skill that they are practicing.
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How it is Accomplished
There are multiple ways that you can provide instant feedback – I’m sure you are already thinking of some as you are reading this. Here are a few ways I provide instant feedback to my students.
1) Whole group review
After teaching a skill to the students, I give them several practice problems. I give a few minutes to practice the first problem, and then I go over it with them – working it out in front of them and discussing any alternative methods that may have been attempted. We also review any wrong answers and how the students arrived at that answer – and what they should have done to get the correct answer.
2) I provide answer sheets
If my students are working on a worksheet or book work, I provide answer sheets, which I encourage them to check after each problem so that they know that they are doing the work correctly – or so that they can learn from their mistakes
3) Online Practice
I am a big proponent of practicing math skills on web pages like IXL and KhanAcademy.org. The reason is that these sites (and others) provide multiple practice problems of a skill and then give instant feedback after a student answers the problem. I understand that you might have limited access to electronic devices, the internet, or these platforms. But if you can get your students on them, it is very valuable practice time.
4) Learning Stations
In my class, I differentiate instruction in a different way then the teacher was doing in the opening sections of this article. That teacher had all her students performing different tasks on the same skill. I have all my students working on different skills at the same time. I do this by assessing what skills my students are lacking that is preventing them from doing the grade level work and then putting them in a learning station to work on that skill. In that learning station are a lot of practice problems. The practice problems come with answer sheets, and I encourage my students to check their answers on each problem as they do their work.
Take the Journey
I’d like to challenge you to join us on a journey to reach all our students through differentiated instruction.
This journey is called the Uncommon Teacher Challenge and it includes 10 uncommon teaching strategies that will yield you uncommon results. I will email you these 10 strategies over 10 days, and each will come with a free bonus resource.
You’ll be enrolled automatically when you download the free resource below.
Click here to begin the journey.
You will receive an email within a few minutes with your first free resource. Make sure to check your primary and promotional inboxes, and mark the email as safe.
MISTAKES ARE GREAT TEACHERS POSTER
Get a Free Growth Mindset Poster for your classroom when you join me on our journey to reach all of our students. Click the image, or click here to receive the free poster. It will be emailed to you in a black and white format (the image on the left) for you or your students to color.
