Social and Emotional Learning to Support Formative Assessment

Growth Mindset Exercise: The Mistake Game

Time: Approximately 30-40 minutes Intended Audience: Students in any grade




SEL for Formative Assessment by Davidson, S., Bates, L., McLean, C., and Lewis, K., is licensed

under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Step-by-Step Guidelines

Timing / Content:topic/steps/activities / Notes to facilitator / Resources/ materials
30 minutes / Activity
1.Provide students with several (5–10) math problems relevant tothe currentlesson.
2.Ask students to work individually to complete the mathproblems.
3.Group students together and assign each group one of theproblems to present to theclass.
4.Invite students to share their individual solutions with their groupand choose one of the solutions to share with theclass.
5.IMPORTANT! The group must make one intentional mistake in its solution. They can choose a mistake one of their members made (thisleads to a discussion of who had “the best mistake”) or they can think of a mistake other students might make. They can make as many unintentional mistakes as theylike.
6.As each group shares its solution, the rest of the class listens and at- tempts to find the mistake. When they find the mistake, they MUSTask a question in order to get the group to admit its mistake: “Why didyou...?”“Can you explain how you did ...?”
Key point
◇It’s ok to make mistakes! Mistakes are opportunities for learning. / The Mistake Game can be tailored to work with any age group. It could even be changed to go with a different subject such as science.
See mindsetkit.org for more information and free mindsetresources. / Teacher-generated math problems relevant to the current lesson
Timing / Content:topic/steps/activities / Notes to facilitator / Resources/ materials
10 minutes / Optional class discussion about mistakes
1. Lead a discussion on how students feel about making mistakes and why.
Key questions
◇How do you feel when you make a mistake?Why?
◇How do you think other people see you when you make amistake?
◇Have you ever discovered something new from making amistake?
◇Have you ever felt proud of making amistake?
◇Has a mistake ever made you think deeply about a problem? (You can start by talking about a non-academic setting and then talk about how the lessons apply toacademics.) / See Mindsetkit.org for more discussion resources.