MARVELOUS MISTAKES
MISTAKES ARE AN IMPORTANT TOOL FOR LEARNING.
Fear of making mistakes is one of the most limiting barriers to learning as it ebbs away confidence and has a negative impact on progression.
Helping young people recognise where they went right, even though they might not have achieved the desired outcome is a much more positive strategy and gives them something to build on.
HAVE A MARVELOUS
MISTAKES DAY
This fun activity helps take the negative status from mistakes and helps your young people worry less when they make one.
Printable version below.
MORE ON MISTAKES
TRY A COLOUR EXPERIMENT
Support your young people to experiment with mixing colour ... learning from each past attempt.
Colour swatches from your local DIY store are great for this activity. Printable challenge below
EACH TRY MATTERS
Help your young people to write a mistake that they've made recently in the middle of a piece of paper.
- Scrunch the paper into a ball and then open it out back out again, smoothing it flat.
- Draw along the crumple lines radiating out from their written mistake.
Once complete, explain that this is what happens inside your brain when you give something a try ... whether you get it right or you make a mistake, the brain fires out lots of synaptic signals to make connections, helping you to learn.
STRENGTHENING CONNECTIONS
This activity is designed to explain how NEURONES work in your brain.
Cut a number of similar lengths of wool and give the end of one piece to your young person.
Take turns to offer suggestions of things that could be done to help someone learning to ride a bike.
For each suggestion give an additional length of wool between you, illustrating a 'try' firing between your neurones.
After a number of suggestions, the connection strengthen, getting thicker and stronger with each 'try'.
This activity can be used to help your young person think of different things they can do to tackle something they're finding difficult and reinforce the concept that perseverance is the key to success.
