Using Your "Mistake Intuition"

We have all experienced that little voice in our heads that says "something's not right!"  When students are learning new things there is a natural step where they will be making lots of mistakes and working out all the kinks - during this step they need constant reinforcement and encouragement to get them on the correct path.  Once they have learned something, then their "mistake intuition" can start taking over and they can begin to self-correct their mistakes.  When I know a student is in the self-correcting stage I will start pushing the responsibility of noticing and correcting the mistake onto them.  

The first signal that they think they have made a mistake is usually  a turn of the head towards me as if to ask "is this right?"  After they do this a few times I usually say "would you like to ask me something?"  Often they will have a question right in the front of their mind!  For some students it takes a little bit for them to form their question as they were listening to their intuition and did not really have their question formulated.

Once they ask their question to me I will determine if this is a question they can answer themselves.  If so, I will say "okay, ask yourself that question and see if you know the answer."  Then after this happens a few times I will tell them that any time they have a feeling that they want to ask a question, they should ask themselves first.  Sometimes there is not even an exact question, like with the students who have the intuition that something is wrong.  For other students there is not even a hint of a question, but rather a tiny little pause where their brain is trying to resolve what they are playing with what they are seeing.  For each student it is a little different what the signal is.  But the important thing is to let them know about what their "mistake intuition" signal is and let them know to start using that as a practice strategy.