Put the power to shape learners’ mindsets in your hands by establishing a language of challenge in your classroom

Establishing a language of challenge in your classroom means finding ways to communicate to learners that challenge is good, that it is to be expected, and that it is to be embraced.

There are a few ways you can do this.

One option is to develop a set of challenge questions you then use repeatedly.

For example:

Why do you think that? Where’s your evidence?
How does this fit with what we were saying earlier?
How would you try to discover if that is true or not?
What might be the consequences of this?
What do you predict will happen, based on what you know?

Used regularly, these questions habituate learners to expect that their thinking will be challenged, that they will have to fully justify their answers, and that this is part and parcel of gaining mastery.

Another option is taking the concept of reframing and using this to redefine how you and your learners talk about challenge.

This might lead you to alter common words or phrases:

‘Challenge’ becomes ‘Good Challenge’
‘It’s hard’ becomes ‘It’s hard, so I must be developing my brain’
‘I can’t do it’ becomes ‘You can’t do it yet so it must be a challenge. And challenges are good!’

Each reframing changes the learner’s perspective on challenge, turning it from a negative into a positive.

Another option is to focus your praise on challenge:

I like the way you embraced the challenges today, Sid. Seeing you keep going when things got tough was great.
Excellent work on that last challenge today, Sameera. You kept trying different strategies and found one that worked.
Great focussed effort today, class. I ramped up the level of challenge and you all kept persevering and found ways to succeed. Well done.

Or you can make challenge a central feature of your reflection activities:

What was the biggest challenge you faced today, and how did you overcome it?
What does it feel like when you have your thinking challenged?
How would you explain the strategies you used to overcome the challenge to someone who hadn’t been in the room?

Making Positive Connections between Mistakes and Challenge

If a learner goes through school without making any mistakes, the chances are that they won’t have been sufficiently challenged.

The flipside of this is that mistakes are the hallmark of challenge.

If a learner is making them, the work is probably at a level that pushes them to the edge of what they can do.

With that said, a surfeit of mistakes may signal to the teacher that the work is too difficult.

By and large, though, if learners are making some mistakes (or if they get stuck some of the time), then this tends to indicate that the level of challenge is about right.

To promote a culture of challenge – one in which learners embrace challenges when they come along – we need to build positive connections in learners’ minds between mistakes and challenge.

This is for a couple of reasons.

First, we want to minimise any perception learners might have that mistakes are a signal to give up.

Remember that if a learner is operating under a fixed mindset perspective, they may feel that the risks attached to making mistakes are so high as to make them best avoided.

We want to negate this view.

Second, we want learners to see mistakes for what they are: opportunities to learn.

In the context of challenge, this means that learners see mistakes as opportunities to work out what has gone wrong and, therefore, what could be done differently next time.

Third, we want learners to understand that if they are not making any mistakes then the work is probably too easy for them.

In this formulation, an end to mistake-making signals that it is time to move on, or to ask for something more challenging.

You can draw positive connections between mistakes and challenge in several ways.

These include:

By praising learners for taking on challenges, making mistakes, and learning from the results.
By circulating during activities and asking learners to show you or tell you about any mistakes they have made and what they’ve learned from these. You can follow up by connecting this learning to the idea of challenge.
By making clear to learners that you expect them to tell you when they stop making any mistakes and, therefore, when they think they might need some harder work.
By talking about times in your own life when you’ve faced challenges that have led first to mistakes, then to learning.
By creating a system through which learners can gauge the level of challenge they feel they are working under, based on how many mistakes they are making and how difficult they are finding the work. This gives them a reference point for quantifying challenge – and for asking for more challenging work.

Modelling Embracing Challenge

You are a powerful role model for your learners.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you can be sure that they are constantly observing you – what you do, how you act, and what you say.

They won’t always be consciously aware of this, but it will be happening.

As such, what you do and say in relation to challenge can have a big impact.

You can set the tone for your class by modelling a growth mindset perspective.

Here are some examples of how to do it.

Strategy 1: Bring in work you did when you were at school

Talk to learners about this.
Show them where you faced challenges, the mistakes you made, and how you learned from these.
Emphasise the fact that your intelligence, ability, and talent has grown and developed because of this – and that theirs can as well.

Strategy 2: Use examples from your own life to illustrate the benefits of embracing challenge

These could come from your own education, from your professional life, or from hobbies.
Whatever you choose, draw learners’ attention to the fact that anyone can embrace challenge and that perceived costs connected to ideas about failure are just that – perceived rather than real.

Strategy 3: Model how to think about challenges

Talk learners through the kind of thinking you do when faced with a challenge.
This can include any negative thoughts you have, or any fixed mindset words you hear.
Show learners how you respond to these, put them to one side, and embrace challenges regardless.

Strategy 4: Narrate the experience of embracing challenge, including any negative aspects, and how learners can respond to this

Here we go one step further.
Instead of modelling how to think about challenges, narrate what happens, emotionally and intellectually, when you take on a challenge.
A good way to do this is to turn one of your experiences into a story, with the focus being on your interior monologue as you went through it.

Strategy 5: Create a checklist for embracing challenge and show learners how to use this

This could be a set of steps for learners to go through, or a set of questions they can ask themselves when faced with a challenge.
Demonstrate the checklist to learners and show them how you have used it outside the classroom when looking to embrace a challenge.

Create a Challenge Wall

Having a challenge wall in your room means having a focal point for the challenge culture you are building – something you and your learners can use, refer to and talk about on a regular basis.

There is no set formula for creating such a wall. In fact, many options are open to you.

Here are three examples of how you can do it.

Fill Up the Wall

Designate a wall and leave this blank at the start of the year, except for a title.

For example: ‘Class 5G’s Challenge Wall!’

Either at the start of term, or through the course of the year, invite learners to come up with the most challenging questions they can think of.

Then, use these to fill up your wall.

Explain that you want questions on all sorts of different topics and invite learners to write these on pieces of paper they then pin to the wall.

As time progresses, plan opportunities for the class to discuss these questions.

Use the wall as a challenge talking point – one you go back to time and again.

Many Challenges

Set aside a space on one of your classroom walls.

Cover this in challenges: problems, questions, extension tasks, riddles, puzzles and so forth.

These can be subject/topic specific, or they can vary. It’s up to you.

There are now a couple of options open to you.

First, invite learners to go the challenge wall and select a challenge whenever they finish their work early.

This creates a sense of fun and excitement around the wall and gives learners motivation to embrace challenges.

Second, set aside lesson time in which you or a learner select a challenge from the wall for the whole class to discuss.

You can turn this into a regular activity, helping to embed a culture of challenge in your lessons.

Taking on the Challenge

Create a wall display with the title: ‘We’re Taking On The Challenge!’ or something similar.

Explain that this area will eventually contain work from every learner in the class, but it will only contain work that shows mistakes learners have learned from, examples of how learners have persisted, and work that has been revised or edited to make it better than it was.

Two things flow from this.

First, you are making it clear that work goes on display for reasons of process, not just end product.

Second, this reinforces the idea that challenge is about changing, growing, and developing – and that everybody can do this, regardless of their starting point.