On 8/15/16, Zahirah Alee wrote:
> If students are afraid of making mistakes, it
> basically means that they are afraid of learning something
> new, will stick to rigid routines and would rather prefer the
> teacher to spoon-feed that 'answers'. Thus, their higher
> order thinking skills, which have a direct correlation with
> their problem solving and reasoning skills do not get
> developed effectively.
I've experienced this same issue when I was teaching in the classroom. Students
don't want to be the one who messes up, or the one that's trying too hard. Yet
I believe that students do have the desire to soak up as much knowledge as they
can and to be active participants in the classroom. The hard part is finding
the way to bring that passion to the surface and developing a culture of trust
among all the students in your classroom.
One method I used while I was teaching was treating the first two weeks of
school as a "getting to know each other" period. Instead of teaching, I spent
time talking to my students and fostering conversations about why we all were
there. Why is learning important? How will we all interact with another in a
respectful way?
You can read more about my strategy in my blog post!
Those Dreaded First Two Weeks of School
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