The word ‘failure’ has very negative connotations. I do not think anyone would like to be called a failure or want to admit that they have failed. However, failure is something that we are all met with in life.The word ‘failure’ has very negative connotations. I do not think anyone would like to be called a failure or want to admit that they have failed. However, failure is something that we are all met with in life.
Failure means a lack of success or not meeting an intended outcome. I’m sure we can all look back to a time in our lives when we did not succeed or achieve in the way we had expected. Whether that was a lower test score than we had anticipated or not passing a driving test or not getting a job that we went for. Failure, regardless of whether we like that word or not, happens at all stages of life and we should be getting our children ready to experience this. We need to teach them how to overcome and move on from failure, something which even adults struggle with.
In Primary, we teach our children to be resilient and adaptable through our Personal Learning Goals. To be resilient, we teach them to improve by practising, to try again with a positive attitude and to realise that learning might not always be successful. To be adaptable, we teach them to try different strategies and to regulate their own feelings. These are the foundations for overcoming failure. The effort you put into your learning or work is more important than the outcome in the long term. If children are only ever praised for the results of their tests, rather than the effort they put in, they will not know what to do when they fail. We learn from our failures which will help us to be more successful in the future. Children who always do well in school and haven’t had to try as hard as others to succeed sometimes find life as an adult difficult because they haven’t learned the strategies to overcome failure when they eventually meet a situation where they have to try hard and it doesn’t come easily. Praise your child for their effort as well as their test results. Teach them to be resilient and adaptable when they do find things hard.
Rachel Williams
ASSISTANT HEAD CORE CURRICULUM
YEAR 5 TEACHER
