'I am going to fail!' - tales from the learning pit

As a growth mindset promoting school we have started coaching our students to be more resilient learners and to show GRIT when tasks are demanding.
I was recently introduced to James Nottingham's concept of the learning pit and I am experimenting with the use of this in my lessons to help pupils to understand that greater challenge can lead to better learning. I think that I have been guilty of protecting my students from failure in an effort to avoid a loss of confidence, and I was keen to see how resilient my year 8 learners are when they are 'thrown' into the learning pit.

Year 8 French and Spanish learners had finished their daily routine module and were preparing to complete assessed tasks on the topic. I wanted to help the students to gather all of their knowledge to summarise the topic. The new MFL GCSE will require students to be able to translate and as a department we are trying to develop translation skills in our KS3 learners. I, therefore, chose to give my learners a two page translation on the topic of daily routine. I noted their reactions at different points during the lesson.
INTRODUCTION OF THE TASK
Pupils were told that they were going to be given a challenging translation activity to complete. They were advised that for the first five minutes they needed to read the task without beginning the written translation. I wrote their initial reactions down:
'I am going to fail..'
'This is too hard'
'I will never be able to do this'
'are you trying to kill me?'
'is this for older kids, Miss?'
'I just can't read it'
I felt the usual compulsion to bail them out, but resisted the urge to give them any help or reassurance. Within a few minutes the comments began to change:
'I will try though, Miss'
'I know some of this already'
'I know most of it actually'
'It sort of makes sense'
'I think that I might be able to do it'
GIVING THEM A STRATEGY
Some of the pupils clearly wanted to get on with the task but were challenged by the obstacles that I had deliberately placed in the text and others were still looking at me with a face of panic. When planning my lesson, one of my aims was to provide the students with translating skills and I sensed that at this point in the lesson, they would be most receptive to my coaching. I stopped the class and modelled how to tackle the translation by breaking it up into sentences.

Then breaking the sentences into components or 'chunks' and working out the meaning of each chunk using the super sentence structure that they had been taught.

GETTING THE JOB DONE

After this five minute coaching session, all learners started to tackle the task and when they hit a hurdle it was interesting to see how individuals coped. Pupils made learning tactics suggestions themselves which also helped the others. 

'Miss, each paragraph is about something to do with the day'

' Miss, is it OK if I highlight all of the words that I don't know?'

'Miss, can I use a dictionary to look up the leftover words'

'Yes, but Miss has taught us that we won't find conjugated verbs in the dictionary' (Yes- he did actually say that!)

'It's about a day so we can sort of work out the order that they do things'

' I am guessing that she is talking about her family because you always tell us to do that to get better marks'

'should I write it as I speak in English because the words don't exactly match' (At this point I was able to mention that the art of translation is to decode before translating into their own language)

'Is that word to do with leaving because of the English word 'disperse?'

'It sounds like the word marmalade. Is that what it means? I will check'

'I can't find verbs so I will look at the notes in my book because we have useful verb lists in there'

Halfway through the lesson pupils were starting to use phrases like 'It's easy' 'we're fine' and 'we are using the ideas that you gave us' 

OFF TASK BEHAVIOUR 

The behaviour for learning was not perfect, but it was clear that off task distracted behaviour was only happening when pupils hit a bump in the road. I observed and noted behaviour such as hair plaiting, turning round, chatting, listening to gossip, giggling and making silly guesses about the words designed to make someone laugh. I quietly noted the behaviour on the board and the pupils looked shocked. I explained that they were probably behaving like that because they were stuck and had not tried to use their translation tackling tactics. I told them that they should start to try to notice when they weren't working and to be mindful of this. When their attention wanes, they should be aware of it and try a different learning tactic. 

I DID IT!

By the end of the lesson, what had seemed like an impossible task had been achieved and pupils were very keen to show their work to the class. They did not appear to expect rewards, but old habits die hard and I couldn't resist giving out stickers! They were even more proud of themselves when I told them that I had borrowed the original text from a GCSE reading paper. It is reassuring to realise that resilience can be coached if we avoid the temptation to save them from failure and that seemingly fixed learning habits can be changed.

Thanks for reading, Becky   BexK06