The Backwards Bike Trial

At the beginning of the year, I wanted my students experience failure and persistence outside of the arena of math, like the concept of the backwards bicycle. So we changed our dominant hand for a few weeks. This trial leveled the playing field, provided a common experience that was low risk, and allowed students the opportunity to transfer both struggles and successes to another area, math. The positive byproducts of this trial were students became better team members, enhanced their relationships with one another and were more patient with their teammates. Additionally, it was good for kids who don’t struggle with math to actually have an activity to struggle with and either persevere or give up.
As second semester began, I repeated …show more content…
During the first session, the majority of kids remembered we set goals and have been working on them. For a couple it was a big flashback - - they had completely forgotten. If this was the case, the student and I looked over each goal and the steps for success. I wrote a note to check in on these kids next week. A few students realized some of their goals were unattainable, therefore they had let them slide. I called these my favorite mistakes! They gave the us an opportunity to analyze the unattainable goal, talk about what would be realistic, and write a new goal. Additionally, we looked at the steps to success as smaller bites not huge chunks. Our end realization was this was another opportunity for a second chance. After we evaluated our goals on our own, we shared our success/progress in our groups. As I circulated, I heard sincere compliments, encouragement, and saw some high …show more content…
Mistakes were viewed as goals that were forgotten about or goals that weren’t written in a way they could be achieved. These mistakes allowed us to analyze what was wrong and how we could go about it differently in order to achieve success or was it unattainable? Sometimes just breaking down the steps for achievement of the goal differently provided a different plan of attack and sometimes it took the honesty to say, “At this late point in the game, what you want isn’t realistic. What can we do to make the best of this situation, and allow you to turn things around?” This concept of focusing on mistakes and resiliency has made my students more reflective and more insightful.
At the beginning of 4th quarter, the plan was to have the kids write one goal (pushing to finish strong) incorporating the components of homework, class work/teamwork and tests. Under each of these strands they would write their steps to success. I was ecstatic when the kids whined about only doing one goal; some of them already had started writing other goals. We compromised—they had to have the one math goal and at least two