A test comes back
You did much worse than you expected. Your first feeling is that you want to put it in your bag and not look at it.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
In a match
You made the mistake that lost the game. Your team saw it. You want to disappear.
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
A mistake tells you exactly where the gap is. That is more useful than a right answer, which only tells you that you were fine.
It is about the thing, not about you
"I got that wrong" and "I am stupid" are different sentences. Only one of them is about the question.
Two kinds
A slip is when you knew it and rushed. A gap is when you did not know it. They need completely different fixes.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
Slip or Gap?
Sort each mistake by what it actually was.
Which of these needs more care, and which needs more learning?
Tap something to move it.
- Empty
- Empty
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
You got six out of ten. What is the most useful next step?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Sort your last four
- Find the last piece of work you got back.
- Label every mistake: slip or gap.
- Fix one gap properly.
Why: Sorting them tells you whether you need to slow down or to learn something, and those are opposite jobs.
Step 6: What You Learned
- A mistake shows you exactly where the gap is.
- "I got it wrong" is not "I am no good".
- Slips need care. Gaps need learning. Tell which is which.
For the grown-up
The slip-versus-gap distinction is worth teaching explicitly because the standard adult response to both — "be more careful" — only works on one of them, and repeatedly fails on the other in a way that makes children feel stupid.
How you react to your child’s mistakes sets whether they show them to you. A child who hides a bad mark is usually not lying about the mark; they are managing your reaction, which they have learned to predict.
Marking their own work against answers, and being asked to explain what went wrong rather than correct it, does more for this than any amount of encouragement.