How can I use Favorite "No" to promote a growth mindset with students?
How do you help students modify their mindset so that they are able to see mistakes not as mistakes but as opportunities to learn and grow? A challenge that educators face is helping students take advantage of missteps in terms of using them to pivot their understanding and propel forward (rather than close down and give up on learning). Choosing instructional strategies that highlight the fact that errors are okay while developing skills and acquiring knowledge can be an important step in moving students toward a mindset of growth and perseverance in the learning process. One such instructional strategy is called “My Favorite ‘No.’”
In this simple strategy, students are given a problem to solve or a question to answer. Each student takes a few minutes to privately address the task and create his or her response. The instructor then collects the answers from the students and takes a few minutes to quickly review the responses. While skimming through the students’ responses, the goal for the instructor is to identify any work that is incorrect and, in particular, that illustrates misconceptions students have about the targeted concepts. Once the responses have been sorted, the activity shifts to a whole group discussion.
With the class, the instructor presents (anonymously so that particular students are not called out in front of their peers) responses that are incorrect (referring to each response as a “Favorite ‘No’”). The whole group discussion is prompted by asking students to identify the errors or misconceptions that are represented in the incorrect answers. This approach to the discussion allows students to solidify their understanding of the targeted concepts. For students that provided correct responses to the initial prompt, the discussion is an opportunity to dig deeper into the concept by doing error analysis. For students that initially provided incorrect responses, the discussion is a chance to identify errors, to get feedback from the instructor and peers in a non-threatening way, and to make corrections in thinking.
Here's an example:
This instructional strategy can be used in all types of learning settings. The above description and example of the strategy are geared toward a face-to-face setting. However, the steps could be easily modified for an online or hybrid modality. In an online setting, the instructor could ask students to privately submit a response to the prompt. The instructor could then post (without any identifying information) the “Favorite ‘No’s’” to a discussion board and solicit feedback from the class. The instructor could also provide additional private feedback to students who had submitted incorrect responses to the initial prompt. This approach to creating discussion topics has the potential to spark rich, collaborative discussion among the students.
“My Favorite ‘No’” is a formative assessment strategy that puts a unique spin on problem-solving and group discussion. The strategy emphasizes that making errors is part of the learning process and is okay. More importantly, the strategy demonstrates that powerful learning often emerges from the errors that are made rather than from the right answers that are given.
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