Leah Alcala is a teacher at a middle school in Berkeley, California. For the past four years, she has been doing a certain activity with her students as they enter the classroom. She calls it, “my favorite no.” Alcala writes a math problem on the whiteboard, and when the students arrive in the classroom, they are instructed to solve it on index cards.When they finish, she can see each of the students’ right or wrong answers - “yes and no.” After this, Alcala then chooses her favorite incorrect response, the one most liable to be repeated. She then explains it to the class, and shows the students how it can be avoiding. Alcala never identifies which student/s solved the math problem incorrectly. In doing this, Alcala has began to be able to pick out their mistakes before they make them. She has also seen their test scores rise since this activity. Alcala’s students are not the only ones who have benefited from this activity. A study conducted by two French researchers published in the Journal of Psychology has shown that telling students that failure is a natural element of learning may increase their academic performance. There has also been three studies conducted by Croizet and Autin. They conducted these studies among sixth graders. In the first experiment, they gave 111 students an impossible set of anagrams to solve. Autin told one group of sixth graders that “learning is difficult and failure is common,” but hard work will help, “like riding a bicycle.” Autin then asked a second group of students how they attempted to solve the problems after the test. When both groups, plus a control group, then took an exam that measured working memory, the students that Autin has counseled performed significantly better than both groups, especially on the more difficult questions.
The classroom activity in Leah Alcala’s middle school classroom and the study conducted by Croizet and Autin proves that students achieve higher on tests and do better in school without being pressured to succeed. It is a problem when teachers stress students out over performing well on tests. Instead of pushing students to do well on tests, and causing them to stress, teachers need to be instilling confidence in their students, and let them know that failure is okay and is expected. They will feel less pressured this way, and they will be able to think straight, achieve higher scores on tests. More teachers need to use Leah Alcala’s math activity. It is fun for students, and it helps them learn more. It also builds their confidence and allows them to realize that it is okay to make mistakes. Students will then achieve higher on their standardized tests without all of the stress and pressure to do well.
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