As educators, we often strive to make learning as smooth and easy as possible for our students. But what if I told you that embracing a bit of struggle could be the key to deeper understanding and long-term success? Enter the concept of “productive struggle”—a powerful approach that encourages students to tackle challenges head-on and persevere through difficulties.
What is Productive Struggle?
Productive struggle is all about creating a classroom environment where students are given challenging tasks and the “just right amount” of support they need to work through them. It’s not about letting students flounder without help; it’s about providing just enough guidance to keep them on track while allowing them to grapple with the problem-solving process.
As teachers, this is sometimes tough! We like to rescue…after all, didn’t we go into teaching to HELP students? It is hard, but we have to realize that the best way to HELP students is to let them do as much of the work as possible.
Why is Productive Struggle Important?
Challenge Builds Resilience
When students face challenges and learn to overcome them, they develop resilience. This resilience is crucial not just for academic success, but for life in general. They learn that it’s okay to make mistakes and that persistence pays off. I love to teach my students important vocabulary like:
GRIT
RESILIENCE
PERSEVERANCE
STRUGGLE
These terms truly become a part of our classroom conversations with practice!
Productive Struggle Enhances Understanding
Struggling with a concept forces students to engage more deeply with the material. They need to analyze, synthesize, and apply their knowledge in new ways, which leads to a stronger, more lasting understanding. The research is pretty clear. Students need to try things in different ways and have successes and failures to develop those neural connections.
Here’s the part some teachers miss, however. It’s not enough for the teachers to know this brain research. We have to tell our students too! Tell them that not know is not only ok, but it grows their brain! Let them know that struggling actually helps in the long run. Think how FREEING that might be to a student who thinks that getting things quickly means you are “smart”!
Productive Struggle Promotes Growth Mindset
Encouraging productive struggle helps foster a growth mindset. Students begin to see challenges as opportunities to grow rather than insurmountable obstacles. They understand that effort and persistence can lead to improvement and success. This is such a great mindshift for students. Like I said earlier, when students think working quickly or getting the right answer immediately means you are a good student, we know we have some work to do.
Growth mindset is a tricky concept, and there are some things to watch for. If you want to learn a little more about some precautions related to teaching about mindset, check out this blog post.
Productive Struggle Prepares for Real-World Problems:
Life is full of complex, unscripted problems. By incorporating productive struggle into our teaching, we prepare students to face real-world challenges with confidence and competence.
I have written time after time about how often we take the thinking away from our students. We teach addition with regrouping and then give the a bunch of addition word problems to do. They don’t need to make sense of the problems–they just keep adding!
We want to give students two things. They need the skills necessary to solve any problem they encounter in the future. Secondly, they need the mindset to be willing to try!
How to Foster Productive Struggle in Your Classroom
Choose Challenging Tasks:
Select activities and problems that are just beyond your students’ current abilities. These tasks should require them to think critically and apply what they’ve learned in new ways. When we create the right climate, students can grow to LOVE the challenge!
I have a ton of different types of activities I use for this, but one of my favorites is shown below. These problems either have many answers or many ways to get to an answer. So many students are used to filling in a box with an answer, and it’s really important for them to see that sometimes it’s not that simple!
Provide Strategic Support:
Offer hints, ask guiding questions, and provide encouragement. The goal is to keep students from becoming frustrated while still allowing them to do the heavy lifting. Learning to ask little “unsticking” questions. Simple things like, “What could you try next?” or “What is a different strategy?” can move students from being frozen to having a next step.
Encourage a Positive Attitude:
Celebrate effort and persistence just as much as correct answers. Reinforce the idea that struggling with a task is a normal and valuable part of the learning process. Class meetings to talk about frustrations and successes normalizes this process.
Create a Safe Environment:
Ensure that your classroom is a safe space where students feel comfortable taking risks and making mistakes. Encourage collaboration and support among peers. I love to make it clear when I don’t know an answer and how I tackle that. The same is true when I make a mistake–I model how I handle it.
Students love to know that we are all in this together. Learning is a journey!
Final Thoughts
Embracing productive struggle in the elementary classroom is a shift that can lead to significant benefits for our students. It helps them build critical skills that go beyond academics, preparing them for future challenges in school and in life. So let’s encourage our students to lean into the struggle, knowing that the effort they put in today will pay off in resilience and understanding tomorrow.
Let’s start creating those opportunities for productive struggle and watch our students grow in ways we never imagined!
Would you like a FREE MATH TASK to let you give it a try? I’d love to know how it goes!
Interested in more?
Click the images to learn more about these resources that can help you dig into productive struggle with your students!
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