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Mistakes are Expected, Respected, Inspected, and Corrected Poster

A continual focus in my classroom is helping my students build a growth mindset.  One quote I’ve seen time and time again when it comes to growth mindset is “Mistakes are expected, respected, inspected, and corrected.”  I’ve seen this quote attributed to Jo Boaler and her “How to Learn Math” course.

This summer, I decided that I wanted to post this on the wall in my classroom as a reminder to students.  I looked online to see if anybody else had already made a poster, but I didn’t see anything that really caught my eye.  Though, there might have been a great one that I just missed somehow…  To be honest, I didn’t spend all that much time looking.

Here’s what I came up with:

Mistakes are expected, respected, inspected, and corrected poster for growth mindset

I originally wanted the words at the bottom to be printed on two different colors of paper and be alternated, but I accidentally loaded two sheets of orange paper in my printer.  So, orange it is!

Mistakes are expected, respected, inspected, and corrected poster for growth mindset

Free Download of Mistakes are Expected, Respected, Inspected, and Corrected Poster


Mistakes are… Poster (PDF) (4509 downloads )


Mistakes are… Poster (Editable Publisher File ZIP) (1700 downloads )

For the Publisher file, you’ll need to also download these free fonts: Wellfleet and Caviar Dreams.  If you don’t want to deal with fonts, just download the PDF version.

Want more posters for your classroom? Check out my posters page!

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35 Comments

  1. Thank you so much for sharing your resources. You continue to be an inspiration to me.

  2. This is great! I'm thinking about my own growth mindset/mistake wall and this will be a great addition! Thanks!

    – @mskleinbart

  3. Thank you for sharing your ideas and resources. After 20 years of teaching primary grades, I am to teach 6th grade math this year. I am excited, but nervous! You have inspired me to try your great ideas.

    1. Hi Sarah,

      You should just know: I have your sign hanging in my 8th grade classroom this year, and it is my most-referenced math decoration (maybe I need a word wall, but that's another discussion)! My students have all memorized it and can repeat it back in unison :). I constantly reference it when I make mistakes in class, when students make mistakes, when I teach new concepts and skills, and when we do test corrections after every test I give. So thank you again! It has really made a difference in my students' math experience this year.

  4. Thank you for sharing this! I have just started reading Jo Boaler's book, and I'm excited to use this in my own classroom as a starting point!

  5. Great reminder for kids that mistakes are a part of learning. Thank you for sharing. Pinned onto our "Ideas for Classroom" board!

  6. This works for little children and adults too. We all need a little encouragement and not to forget that learning is a lifelong process. Thanks for sharing Sarah!

  7. Love it! Simple and easy. Have you noticed a difference this year in how your students viewed mistakes? I want to have more growth mindset posters up in my room, do you have any others that you've used that students have responded to?

  8. Thank you for sharing your amazing work! My first day of teaching is tomorrow, even though I am a little terrified, I have been incredibly inspired by your ideas. Growth mindset for the win!

  9. Hi Sarah, I love your poster. I'm wondering if you would be okay with me capturing an image of this and putting it on our Math Framework that we are building for our school division. Our framework is under construction and can be found at mathframework.com. I'd like to put it in the Numerate Environment section.

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