The learning process

One of the lessons I taught last week involved classifying imaginary organisms and creating a dichotomous key. I gave the students some freedom to choose how they would classify their organisms. I explained the first step and allowed them to continue on their own. In the middle of the lesson, I noticed that many of the students were doing it incorrectly in a variety of ways. I was able to work with each pair of students to see what was going wrong. By the end of class, they had all succeeded in creating a working key. When I first noticed the errors, I wondered if I had failed to communicate clearly but later I thought that maybe their errors were a necessary part of their learning process. I'm glad they were engaged enough to stick with it through the lesson. This experience has helped me see that its ok for students to not understand something complicated the first time through and maybe it even supports their learning in the long run - assuming they are able to get it right eventually.