How Can We Facilitate Failure in the Classroom?

Dealing with failure and developing healthy coping strategies are essential for children, so how can we reverse engineer these with the help of some creative activities?

By Libby Herbert

Several months ago, while working in a premier independent girls’ school in Singapore, I began experimenting with a series of workshops for year 9 students (13–14-year-olds). These workshops addressed a need within the school, expressed by teachers and senior leaders. Within this high-performing school where a culture of winning competitions, receiving high distinctions, and achieving A grades was expected, instances of failure sometimes triggered overwhelmingly negative student reactions.

Sore losing, grudge-holding, opting out and playing it safe?

At the time I deduced that it was impossible, or at the very least, extremely difficult to design authentic classroom experiences to remedy this issue. Failure or losing just had to happen naturally. The only problem was that it was not happening frequently enough for some of the students in the school, especially given the high socio-economic background of the school’s demographic. 

What does the research say?

Dealing with failure and developing healthy coping strategies are essential for children. It was discovered that children who utilise positive or action-oriented failure strategies are more likely to have a higher sense of self-worth and better academic attainment (Mantzicopoulos, 1990; 138). Whereas other research shows that, ‘high achievers use more positive coping strategies, mainly accepting responsibility, and less negative strategies, anger, inadequate reactions, and disengagement, than low or average achievers’ (Rijavec and Brdar 1997; 37). These studies suggest that as educators, concerned with the holistic development of children, we should strive to include moments of failure within the school experience.

We should strive to include moments of failure within the school experience.

What about students who may be better acquainted with failure? 

Some pupils may have experienced failure a lot more frequently throughout their education and childhoods. Being labelled as a ‘slow reader’, placing last in sports day, facing rejection from peers, and receiving sanctions for poor behaviour are just some examples of this. These students still need support in learning how to bounce back from failure, with some studies suggesting that children from low-income or poverty-stricken households are likely to display zero to low threshold resilience compared to their more fortunate peers (Sattler and Gershoff, 2019).

What can we do as teachers to practice ‘failing’ with our students?

The Learning Pit 

My first idea about how we could stimulate a failing experience, related originated with psychologist, Guy Claxton’s theory of throwing children into ‘the learning pit’ (2017). This occurs when we give students a challenge or pose a difficult scenario, stand back, offer little assistance, and observe whether they can draw upon prior knowledge and skills to climb out of the pit. 

This method works effectively in certain classroom environments, for example, if you pose an unfamiliar mathematical problem, a nuanced philosophical debate, or a tricky scientific experiment. Learners may fail upon their first or second attempt, but with enough resilience, learners can usually complete the desired goal. Claxton’s model is a useful tool to utilise within a concept-based learning classroom. Still, I sought a task, model or activity in which failure was a finality and second chances were not allowed. 

The Big Fail Game

This led to the birth of ‘The Big Fail Game’, an active workshop of purposeful and deliberate losing and reflection. My co-facilitator and I selected several activities in which participants would experience defeat on a group and individual level. I’ve listed a selection of these and as always, feel free to take what works, leave what doesn’t and adapt the rest for your own classrooms and students. You may do one activity or you may do five, teacher discretion is advised.

The Chair Game, Chair Zombie or Penguin (Ages 10 +) 

Breakdown

• Chairs are spread across the space, facing a variety of directions. There should be a chair for every participant. 
• Choose someone to be on it. That person must stand up, directly across the space from their empty chair. They aren’t allowed to run, only walk. 
• The remaining participants must work as a team to stop the person from sitting down, they do this by swapping chairs. 
• The person on it is allowed to sit down in any empty chair.
• Expect participants to be really bad at this game to begin but allow for a few rounds to see if they can sustain the teamwork for over a minute.

The Rock, Paper, Scissors Chain (all ages)

Breakdown

• Take the rules of rock, paper, scissors and adapt for a big group.
• Everyone plays in a pair first, the winners play the winners, and the losers link onto the back of a winner, making a long chain.
• Eventually, the group will be left with two long chains, headed up by the final winners. 
• 50% of the class will ‘lose’, with it all coming down to one person. 

The Human Knot (all ages)

Breakdown 

• Have participants stand in a circle and reach their hands into the centre.
• Instruct everyone to grab two hands each, right hands to left hands and left hands to right hands*.
• Give the group 2 minutes to untangle themselves. 

*You could be really mean and not mention this part, rendering the knot impossible to untangle. 

House of Cards (all ages)

Breakdown

• Split into teams and allocate 3 minutes to make the tallest card house possible. 
• Option to ask the groups to repeat the activity in front of a desk fan. 

Group Counting (Ages 10 +)

Breakdown

• Ask participants to stand in a circle or any configuration which allows them to see one another. 
• Explain how you want them to count out loud with one person saying a number at a time. 
• If two or more people say the same number at once, everyone must start again.
• See how high the group can count to, without using any non-verbal signals or patterns. 

Board Games (SEN and Younger Ages)

As a 1-1 or teaching assistant, you may have the time to play a board game with a young person. Whether that be Snakes and Ladders, Jenga or Draughts, play to win and allow that pupil to experience losing. 

Questions for Deeper Engagement 

How does it feel to get things wrong in a group setting? Are you embarrassed, frustrated, confused, angry? 

Do you find yourself taking a step back or wanting to shout at others? 

Stopping and developing a new strategy together- does everyone stick to it? Are there diverging opinions? 

Do you need to re-evaluate and try again?

How do you deal with competition? 

How does it feel if you’ve tried your best and you still didn’t win?

How does it feel to see others win?

How did it feel when someone was trying to tell you what to do? 

Can we think of a way to self-regulate and try again? 

Final Takeaway

As teachers, we always strive for success for our students, at times even providing them with the ‘answers’ to stop failure in its tracks. However, this type of pre-emptive behaviour robs students of the independence, courage and perseverance which comes with getting things wrong. So, I challenge you, as an educator, to provide these opportunities in your classroom and remember that even at secondary level, no one is too old to learn how to fail with grace, humility, and resilience. 

Want Some More?

Check out a few episodes from Elizabeth Day’s award-winning podcast, ‘How to Fail’. Take some inspiration for yourself or your students here… https://www.elizabethday.org/podcasts

References

Claxton, G. (2017) The Learning Power Approach: Teaching Learners to Teach Themselves. SAGE Publications. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NLNCDwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions

Mantzicopoulos, P. (1990) ‘Coping with school failure: Characteristics of students employing successful and unsuccessful coping strategies.’ Psychology in the Schools, 27(2), pp.138-143.

Rijavec, M. and Brdar, I. (1997) ‘Coping with school failure: Development of the school failure coping scale.’ European Journal of Psychology of Education, 12, pp.37-49.

Sattler, K. and Gershoff, E. (2019). ‘Thresholds of resilience and within-and cross-domain academic achievement among children in poverty.’ Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 46, pp.87-96.