reframing failure as iteration

Psychologists are expected to go through therapy themselves on the theory that you have to know what it feels like to be on the other end. 

That was the purpose of my lesson last night:  to have teachers try to answer questions they routinely expect their own students to answer. 

"What's the main idea", we ask our students.  Are we sure they know what a main idea is?   We aren't born knowing, so it would be better to ask a more specific question to help guide them toward the main idea.

Another typical question-type focusses on details, but often it focusess on the wrong ones.  An old children's joke goes:
There's a bus going through the city.  The first stop it picks up 6 passengers.  The next stop it picks up 4 and drops off 2...  This goes on for a while as the second child busily tries to keep up with the passenger count until the joker asks with glee...What was the bus driver's name? 

How often do we ask students to focus on details that aren't entirely relevant?

I asked everyone to look at the following video and answer the questions below:
http://www.edutopia.org/made-with-play-game-based-learning-iteration-video (If you want to read more, look at the related blog post on edutopia here:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/boss-level-student-led-learning-rachelle-vallon)

What key words, phrases or concepts would you need to know to understand this video?  How do you know they're important?  How can you find out what they mean?
We listed Rube Goldberg machine, iteration and ownership because these words were important to understanding the video, they recur frequently in the video and they are useful to know (we rejected the term "boss level" because it's a phrase that's too specific to the school in the video).

What is/are the main idea(s)?  How do you know?
We focussed on the idea that learning happens best through trial and error.  Not coincidentally, that's the title of the video and related blog post: "Reframing failure as iteration allows students to thrive".

Which details are important?  How do you know?
Anything to do with how the students work through the iteration process was considered important here: the fact that they work in groups, the fact that the teacher adopts more of a hands-off approach, the fact that they have to show their work to other groups as the various stages of iteration, etc.

All of these questions would fit into the second stage of a listening lesson which looks like this:

• Before listening: introduce the topic (Bloom's taxonomy levels 2-4)
• During listening: guide students to comprehend  (Bloom's taxonomy levels 1-2)
• After listening: students react to the text in some way:  (Bloom's taxonomy levels 4-6)