What is errorless learning?
Errorless learning is an instructional strategy that allows children to practice skills with confidence. Errorless learning ensures that students are always responding correctly, building their confidence and increasing their knowledge at the same time. Errorless choices on worksheets or hands on tasks reduces the need to prompt a student verbally, and therefore reduces the chance of a student relying on your prompts!
What are the benefits of errorless learning?
There is a lot of frustration involved when learning a new skill… or practicing an old one that you just haven’t mastered yet. Errorless learning takes away that frustration while building student confidence. The repetition in errorless learning tasks is proven to increase student success even when the errorless prompt is faded later on.
How do you fade errorless learning?
Just like with any skill, we want to fade support over time and increase student independence. We are always aiming for 100% independence with any skill! The errorless prompts should be removed systematically until a student CAN respond correctly on their own.
Why else should you use errorless learning?
Errorless learning not only reduces frustration… but can also build motivation. We all feel happier and more motivated when we do well at something. Increasing this motivation and enjoyment of a task can really be beneficial to students learning and reduce behaviors.
How do I know if my student is a good candidate for errorless learning?
Students who become frustrated with new tasks easily, students who are not grasping the information over a longer period of time, students who require high levels of prompting to be successful would all benefit from errorless learning.
Colors is a great place to start with errorless learning! Colors can be tricky because the same color can look very different. This makes it hard for students to grasp this skill….enter: errorless learning.
I created these file folders with errorless learning in mind! The prompt of a blue file folder to match the blue pictures to is right there for students to fully grasp the idea of “blue” which can be a very difficult concept! The student simply moves the blue picture onto the blue file folder to complete it. (next step: have two file folders of different colors open at once and you have an automatic sorting task.)
Level two works with the color word. ALL of the responses are the same, making this task errorless. Student matches the color word on top of the picture. (to make this task more difficult, have two file folders out at once of different colors and you have an instant sorting task!) You could also set this up with the word on the file folder, and the picture has to be attached on top.
Having two levels gives students the ability to learn to match to colors and learn the functional word.
Pairing one color folder with another gives you a third sorting level. Sort the two colors to take a way the errorless factor and increase the difficulty taking the task to the next level.
I will place the affiliate links to the color file folders that match below!
Click the photo below to download the REAL picture Color File Folders!
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