I’ve been thinking about this a little bit and for math problems, making an activity of writing out what they did wrong and correcting their work might be more useful than just giving back a scored assignment. Maybe, for written prompts, you could have it span a few days or weeks? Like you give the first prompt and then they answer with something short, so then then you write them a message back and have them answer that? So it’s like a written conversation! And then make assembling the sentences they produced into a paragraph into an activity as well?
making an activity of writing out what they did wrong
Sounds like something that could devolve too easily to a shame-based system where one must submit self-criticism. Children would get an even more negative association with the subject.
Oops, that’s not what I meant at all. I just meant identifying the type of error and noting it down with absolutely no shame. That’s what you do after you’ve made an error—you figure out what you did wrong and what extra understanding you need to fix it so you don’t make the same error again. I’m talking about normalizing that process early without shame. Maybe you still don’t understand how long division works. Or maybe it’s just a tic error that you keep making everywhere and you just need to remember that 3 × 7 = 21 and not 24 and then you’ll be fine. If the teacher who posted this question facilitates the process and doesn’t shame anyone, I’m pretty confident the kids at this age will take their cue from their teacher and won’t start shaming each other randomly.
What happens in schools now is the teacher gives you your test back and if you have a good score then you feel good and if you have a bad score then you feel bad and go home and report your bad score to your parents, who act disappointed and no one ever really says “Now given that you have a bad score, what are you going to do to have good scores in the future? And how can I help you do that?”
And if the kid is writing “What I did wrong is being a stupid person and sucking at math,” then this child probably need help with things other than math.
I’ve been thinking about this a little bit and for math problems, making an activity of writing out what they did wrong and correcting their work might be more useful than just giving back a scored assignment. Maybe, for written prompts, you could have it span a few days or weeks? Like you give the first prompt and then they answer with something short, so then then you write them a message back and have them answer that? So it’s like a written conversation! And then make assembling the sentences they produced into a paragraph into an activity as well?
Sounds like something that could devolve too easily to a shame-based system where one must submit self-criticism. Children would get an even more negative association with the subject.
Oops, that’s not what I meant at all. I just meant identifying the type of error and noting it down with absolutely no shame. That’s what you do after you’ve made an error—you figure out what you did wrong and what extra understanding you need to fix it so you don’t make the same error again. I’m talking about normalizing that process early without shame. Maybe you still don’t understand how long division works. Or maybe it’s just a tic error that you keep making everywhere and you just need to remember that 3 × 7 = 21 and not 24 and then you’ll be fine. If the teacher who posted this question facilitates the process and doesn’t shame anyone, I’m pretty confident the kids at this age will take their cue from their teacher and won’t start shaming each other randomly.
What happens in schools now is the teacher gives you your test back and if you have a good score then you feel good and if you have a bad score then you feel bad and go home and report your bad score to your parents, who act disappointed and no one ever really says “Now given that you have a bad score, what are you going to do to have good scores in the future? And how can I help you do that?”
And if the kid is writing “What I did wrong is being a stupid person and sucking at math,” then this child probably need help with things other than math.