A culture of learning from mistakes in the classroom: how to give students useful feedback
A mistake is always an opportunity to learn, and that’s what a culture of learning from mistakes is all about. To help students, we need to build a system of relationships and learning processes that promote accepting mistakes and feedback, so that mistakes are experienced not as something negative, but as valuable information for improving.
Feedback is a form of support, assessment isn’t only in the teacher’s hands, and the final assessment doesn’t determine everything students have learned.
To build a strong culture of learning from mistakes in class, let’s start by sequencing assessment tools and activities so that students take ownership of their learning:
- We share the learning goals and prior knowledge with students.
- We explain the success criteria, actions, steps, or skills they need to develop.
- We let them self-assess, both during and at the end of the activity.
Turning mistakes into a positive experience
It’s important to manage the feedback we give during activities, choosing comments that celebrate mistakes and praise participation, especially when a task is challenging. To make the classroom a safe space, we should also invite students to ask questions.
For example, imagine one of your students makes a mistake while solving a math problem. Instead of pointing it out or correcting it right away, you can say:
“How interesting! This mistake gives us the perfect opportunity to explore different ways of solving the problem. Does anyone else have an idea about how we could approach it?”
With this approach, you praise their effort and create an environment where failure is seen as a natural step in learning, and where every student feels safe to participate and take risks. The goal is for students to engage with mistakes and difficulties the same way they do with any other content: with the aim of learning.
How to give students useful feedback
Feedback is, after all, a correction we give students to guide them. The key to making it worthwhile is that it provides information. Even positive comments should include information about what the student did well. Let’s remember that the goal isn’t to grade, but to help and support.
Useful, high-quality feedback should meet these requirements:
- It motivates the person receiving it.
- It provides information for moving forward and improving.
- It is part of the learning process.
- It focuses on the task, not the student (let’s avoid value judgments).
When is the best time to give feedback?
Feedback should be planned whenever possible. If we want to comment on the learning process, we can schedule short one-on-one conferences with each student, joint reviews of evidence, or guided reflections throughout the school year. We can even plan them to coincide with reviewing self-assessment tools or final reflections. There are many ways and times to give feedback!
Two key moments for giving feedback:
- During the lesson: immediately, spontaneously, and orally.
- After the lesson: later on, and in writing.
Whatever the moment, for feedback to be truly useful to the student, it must be linked to the learning goal we want to achieve. To start, let’s read the learning goal and the assessment indicator for the lesson, and identify which activity focuses on that learning so we can give feedback at that point.
During the activity, we can give feedback at several levels: comments to the whole class, to a group of students, or to an individual student.
For the experience to be positive, students need to know in advance that any comment is meant to help them reach the goal. It’s also important not to overload them with too many comments (less is more). Other activities usually already include elements that regulate participation and support self-assessment: graphic organizers, modeling, group or pair activities, etc.
Feedback is a powerful tool that can transform our students’ learning experience. By building a culture of learning from mistakes in our classrooms and giving specific, constructive feedback, we can motivate our students, boost their confidence, and promote meaningful, lasting learning.
Feedback isn’t just about correcting mistakes; it’s about celebrating effort, recognizing achievements, and guiding our students.
If you’d like to learn more about assessment, we recommend these resources:
- Webinar: How to assess competencies: innovative, successful strategies, with Carles Monereo (in Spanish)
- Assessment rubric: Reading comprehension in Primary
- Article: LOMLOE: competency-based assessment
