How can we respond to wrong answers in a way that encourages our children to keep thinking and trying, instead of making them feel disheartened or embarrassed?

Here are some suggestions for how to respond to wrong or partially correct answers. I’m writing from an elementary school background, but I’m sure some of this could be applied/ adapted to other grades. 

Phrases to use in responding to wrong answers:

’No, but thank you for playing!’ –

I used this more when we were doing more rapid-fire questions or when we just didn’t have time for delving into mistakes. I had a whole collection of game show sayings that I would use to just keep the energy light hearted so the child didn’t feel bad about saying the wrong thing. An ‘aw, shucks, maybe next time,’ feeling was what I was aiming for. This also gave the kids an opportunity to have an ‘oh, no’ or frustrated response while still keeping the emotions light and playful. 

’How did you get to that?’ –

I used this a lot, especially during math lessons or more deeper critical thinking lessons. For me, it’s worth it to take a little side quest into figuring out how a student arrived at an answer. This way, everyone can share their thinking and understand which parts of the thought process were correct and where it went a  little off the rails. And of course, knowing that you got at least part of the way to the right answer is better for kids’ self esteem than just telling them they are ‘wrong.’ 

’This particular answer isn’t correct, but that’s really good thinking.’ –

Sometimes kids put great thought into an answer and it still comes out wrong, and that’s okay. I try to celebrate the deep thinking that kids do, even if their final answer isn’t exactly correct. Yes, getting the right answers is important, accuracy is important, but so is creative and flexible thought, so we need to reward and encourage both as teachers. And if a kid is doing one but not the other, I’m for sure going to point out what they’re doing right while still helping them get the other part down. 

Responding to common errors in your classroom:

For common errors, I would often do a full class lesson (or small group with just those who were doing the error). I’d show the error and say something like, ‘I’ve seen some kids do this,’ or ‘Some of my students last year did this,’ with the goal of never singling out a student and putting them on the spot. I’d also be sure to say something like, ‘And this makes sense, like I can see why someone would think this,’ so that the students would know that they weren’t entirely off. More often than not, I’d see the same kids who actually did make those errors explaining why they were incorrect by the end of the lesson!

Okay, my fellow teachers thought I was nuts for this one, but I swear it works. Fourth grade sense of humor is definitely nutty, for sure. We usually had some sort of class mascot or ‘pet’ that would arrive out of some inside joke. The one that sticks out in my mind was when we just had a picture of Justin Bieber printed out and pinned up in the back corner of the room, for some reason that only the 9 year olds fully understood. Anyway, it became really convenient to just blame mistakes on the Beebs. If a bunch of kids made the same error on an exit ticket in math or something, I’d just blame Justin Bieber and say he made this mistake. And then we’d spend a good chunk of time explaining to him why he was wrong and what he should do next time and making sure he understood it. Kids are actually really good at explaining things if you give them a chance. 

Side note: Later, when I learned to code, I learned that developers apply this same strategy, just using a rubber duck instead of Justin Bieber. When coders are debugging, they go through their code line by line and explain it out loud to a rubber duck, until they find the mistakes. Turns out I didn’t actually invent this strategy (sad face), but the good news is that there’s proof it works!

I’d also use this for individual mistakes. Once a child understood what the error was, I’d say, ‘Oh, Bieber made the same mistake, actually, can you go explain it to him?’ And the kid would skip off to the corner to explain to a printed picture of Justin Bieber why you have to carry the one or something. The silliness and ridiculousness of it created a lighthearted environment and a playfulness to mistakes. Kids felt better about their own errors and mistakes were viewed as a chance to explain and understand and not as an opportunity to shame or ridicule. 

Helping kids make fewer mistakes overall:

One way to help kids just make fewer mistakes and have fewer wrong answers in the first place is to provide them with time to think. Often, when I asked a question in class, I’d say something like, ‘Don’t raise your hand yet’ and then ask. I’d give my students a minute or two to think about their answers and then say, ‘Okay, who’d like to share.’ By not letting anyone raise their hand immediately, I tried to show my kids that it was important to take time to think. I tried to lessen the pressure to answer quickly, and instead placed value on thinking more deeply about the question. Of course, kids will still give wrong answers even after thinking about it (that’s why they’re in school!), but hopefully there will be fewer of them and they’ll at least be more thought out. 

If your kids are making computation errors, check out this blog post & freebie on reciprocal learning and how to help your students stop making computation errors.

Creating a classroom culture where mistakes are okay:

And finally, I shared my own errors with the class as often as I could. If I made a mathematically error, I’d show it to them and share what I did wrong and let them tell me how to fix it. We’ve all read sentences where it takes our brains a second to figure out what’s going on. I’d share those with my students and what went wrong. I skipped over this word, I put the emphasis on this part instead of that one, I had the wrong meaning for this word, whatever it was. When students see you sharing your mistakes and how you caught and fixed them, proudly, they won’t feel so badly when they make their own mistakes. It creates an environment where it’s okay to make mistakes and there’s a culture of catching and correcting errors.