Ways to help foster a Growth Mindset

Making Mistakes

Mistakes are a frustrating part of life.  They take up our time, patience and quite often, our resources.  They can make us feel angry, frustrated, and have us questioning our ability or feeling less than worthy.  Mistakes are, however, an integral part of being human.  No matter how they make us feel, mistakes are an important process in the human brain.

Mistakes are things that show us where we require more practice in an area.  If you make a mistake, you often look at what you did, where you went wrong with the process and what you need to do to rectify it.  Then you practice again.  You may make more mistakes.  So, you practice again.  Eventually you will master the skill and mistakes will happen less and less.

In short, our brains need mistakes to grow and improve processes.

In our classrooms, learning mistakes are celebrated. We explicitly identify that mistakes are a part of learning and help us to see what we need to continue working on.

At home, you can help change the perception of mistakes by making mistakes yourself and modelling a positive reaction to them.  Showing perseverance for the task also shows your children your Growth Mindset and resilience, which is one of our WSAPB values.

Here are some great picture story books to help your children identify mistakes as a part of the learning process:

The Girl who Never made mistakes by Mark Pett and Gary Rubinstein
The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
The Beautiful Oops by Barney Seltzberg