Assistance in Learning

In reading chapter 4, I was thinking of all the ways I tried to assist my small groups in guided reading this year, and what was or was not successful. Whenever the group would fall apart, it was usually due to frustration or not wanting to be wrong- there was no desire to explore if going down that path meant finding out that their prediction was incorrect. When I would think about it later, we really do give our kids mixed messages. We encourage correct answers so often that the idea of exploring and possibly being wrong is not appealing at all. By third grade, they are so concerned with the right answer that it is really a struggle to encourage brainstorming. I don't know if there is a way around this- an easy catch phrase to use that I haven't heard of yet, or a better strategy- but please share if you have encountered this before! That is where I stalled while reading about the Directed Reading- Thinking Activity.
What truly worked with my groups, and for all grade levels, were games. Administrators prefer the term activities, so we'll go with that. This taps into the affective domain- making it fun helps the information to sink in. So I love the Mystery Clue game idea. I'm still trying to think of ways to implement it. Any activities I use- synonym/antonym matching, file folder games- gets them excited because they think they're getting out of real work. In actuality, they are still learning. I have a game called Headbandz- each player puts a band around their head and put a card in front of the band facing out so the student can't see it. The other students give clues about what they see on the card, helping the student figure out what is on the card. This can be done with text features, CVC words, vocabulary- anything can be adapted to work. The down side with activities is the whole winner/loser thing, but again, if anyone has suggestions for getting around the inevitable gloating/pouting that happens in the end, I'd appreciate them!