Today I made a mistake, well quite a few but don't we all, but I was able to learn from it as well as make it into a teachable moment. We are writing thank - you letters to Ambassadors from U of I because they came in last week and taught us more about the human body. So I made a thank you letter to the students on Microsoft Word. Then instead of copy and pasting I just re-wrote it as a flip chart. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it since the day was about to begin and I had a few other things to do. Once I began showing it to the students I realized I had A LOT of errors. Part because I was typing fast and part because I didn’t proof read. We proof read the letter and found most of the mistakes (2 major one’s where I spelled the teachers name wrong and the school ) . I then asked them why was it important for me to go back and re-read what I wrote? I also asked them what would someone think if they received this letter as a thank you letter with all the errors in it? They told me that it would look bad, and one student mentioned the fact that it makes you, as the writer, look unintelligent. Lesson learned, I will proof read items before showing them more often!
During my math lesson I came across a problem I wasn’t sure how to react to. The students were measuring different lines and wing spans of bugs in their books. I asked the students what did they get as an answer. I knew that there would be some fluctuation of answers because they were measuring in millimeters and it’s often hard for them to see the little lines. The answers some of them were giving me where way off.. I didn’t want make them feel bad by saying they were wrong, but instead I called on a few other people. The numbers where still way off. After I made it through the lesson nervous about what had happened and why it turned out that way. we found out during their partner work time. We found out that some of the rulers where different sizes. We had printed off a few more of the rulers this morning and didn’t think about checking them to see if they were the same. This was then a realization as to “why” the answers would be different. So for the next time we got rid of the old rulers and made new ones that are all the same size.
Daniell--
ReplyDeleteI can sympathize with that feeling you had once you were into your lesson. Sometimes we have to divide our energies among so many things, we just count on the fact that other things are going to work. But they might not--trust me, I've been there. You would have never thought that the rulers wouldn't be the same size, but as teachers, we have to check and double check everything. It's exhausting.
I'm glad that you used that moment as a teachable moment. It let your students know that even adults make mistakes, and they got a very real example of it. They also go to practice grammar and the process of proofreading. Also, it's awesome that they knew themselves why it was important to do so.
It's ok that you made some mistakes. The best part is that used it as a teachable moment! There is no way that we can be perfect, so we just have to make sure we use these moments are learning opportunities for our students. I had a moment like this the other day. We were working on our DOLs (Daily Oral Language) and I missed a comma. The students called me on it, so then we had a conversation about why the comma went there and how sometimes it is difficult to decide whether they should be in a sentence or not. We need to let our students know that we are human and we make mistakes, too. How else will they learn that it is ok to make mistakes?
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