In order to teach our students about growth mindset and take steps to integrating the mindset into their daily lives, we chose to dedicate at least 30 minutes of instruction per week to teaching them about growth mindset. In these lessons we taught them the basic understandings of growth mindset, and discussed how we can transfer these understandings to our own lives.
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Growth Mindset SurveyTo begin and conclude our project, we had our students complete the survey to assess their mindset. Questions asked students to consider what they might do or think in certain situations. Some questions were more directed to their language acquisition. Doing this survey at the beginning and ending of our project allowed us to see how their mindset changed or developed over the months of our project.
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Fixed vs. Growth In our first lessons with our students, we introduced them to the idea/definition of growth mindset and compared it to a fixed mindset. Completing a SMART Notebook matching activity solidified the definitions for the students. The activity asked the students to match the statement with the mindset that it best went with. This activity allowed for the opportunity to connect these statements to moments in their life, such as the frustration they feel when they are struggling with a reading or writing activity.
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Visual AidThroughout our lessons, we utilized Class Dojo Youtube videos to aid our instruction. The videos were excellent in delivering the information in a different way (to our students), and provided a fun narrative about a character who is also learning how to grasp a growth mindset and apply it to their own life. The image to the left is linked to episode one of the short series, which helped to introduce the concept of growth mindset to our students.
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Workout Your BrainIn one of the first lessons, we found it was also important to discuss the basic anatomy of the brain. We chose to keep this explanation simple, but still felt that it was crucial to the students understanding of a growth mindset to know how it exactly all works. To simplify the anatomy of the brain we discussed:
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The Power of YETIntroducing 'The Power of YET' provided another tool for our students. We discussed how adding 'yet' to the ends of our statements can transform it from a fixed mindset statement, to a growth mindset statement. When we use the word 'yet', it allows room for growth, and in order to ensure our growth we can make goals. We discussed the importance of making goals and how outlining strategies can make goal achievement possible. We then created goals and strategies to work on for two weeks. Our goals were related to reading and writing. Many students created goals such as "I can't read all my snap words yet" and strategies such as "so I will practice reading every night". The linked PDF shows an example of the goal tracking sheets we utilized for this activity. Students took them home for two weeks and then returned them back for a final reflection. By creating these goals and strategies on their own, as well as tracking them independently at home, it can lead to self-regulation skills. By giving students the tools to improve on something at their own will and discretion, it allows them to begin thinking about how they can utilize this in other areas of their lives.
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Transform Your Room into a Growth Mindset ClassroomTo continue to encourage students to take on a growth mindset, it was important to immerse them in the language of positivity, resilience, and perseverance. Placing posters and phrases around our classroom served as a good reminder, and allowing our students to color and place the posters added an extra level of engagement. We put the posters around our classroom so we could look at them whenever we were feeling frustrated, or had a fixed mindset about something. The images/coloring pages are linked to websites with free resources available.
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Goal Setting as a Class
As a part of our writing unit for fiction writing, we incorporated growth mindset goal setting at the beginning. The card reads "I set a goal for myself and I want to..." with an area left blank for students. We wrote things such as
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Goal: Identify which students choose to persevere when presented with a difficult task, and which students do not demonstrate a growth mindset when selecting tasks.
Activities: Students will have a chance to try three activities, three will be very difficult while one will be obviously easier and achievable for all students. At the end students will be asked to choose which one they would like to return to at another time. Students that choose the fourth task (the easiest one), are not demonstrating a growth mindset. |
Persevering in the classroom
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