Almost daily we do a math problem in our math journals. Yesterday the students got a problem, and in all honesty it was a hard one, that they had to think through. The problem said something like, two students, Sue and Mike sold 200 candy bars. Sue sold 30 more candy bars than Mike. How many candy bars did Sue and Mike each sell? Yesterday the students had time to work on it, and think about it, then today we started to work through the problem. This was hard and it made them think, which is also sometimes hard and scary because who wants to be wrong. And a lot of students gave ideas for solving that were "wrong" however those "wrong" answers helped us work together to figure out how to solve it. It also provided an opportunity for a great class discussion on how it is okay to be wrong, but we can't give up, we must keep going. There is a solution and if we keep working together we can figure it out. No one is mad or upset when we don't get it right the first time, but if we keep going we will get it, and we will be better for working hard! "We can do hard things!" I think this is a valuable life lesson that they might not understand completely now, but step by step my goal is to help them believe in themselves so they can say proudly, "I can do hard things!"
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