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"Bonus Book" Anchor Assignment

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2. Educate staff about brain's malleability

3. Educate staff about praise

4. Educate teacher about brain's science

5. Teach students about brain

6. Educate parents

7. Monitor, evaluate, and review school's protocol

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Michael Jordan "Failure" Nike Commercial

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p. 146-150

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-The physiological Brain & malleability of the mind

-Importance of mistakes and examples of persistence

-Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

-Teaching Optimism

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p. 88

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p. 85

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Mindsets and Equitable Education Article

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'Nation's Report Card' to Gather Data on Grit, Mindset

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'Nation's Report Card' to Gather Data on Grit, Mindset

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The nation's premiere federal testing program is poised to provide a critical window into how students' motivation, mindset, and grit can affect their learning.

Evidence has been building for years that these so-called noncognitive factors play a role in whether children succeed both academically and socially. Now, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often dubbed the "nation's report card," is working to include measures of these factors in the background information collected with the tests beginning in 2017.

"Teachers self-report spending 10 percent of their teaching time on noncognitive skills. That's more time than students spend on any subject other than English and math-more than they spend on arts, for example," said Chris Gabrieli, an adjunct lecturer with the Transforming Education project at Harvard Graduate School of Education and a co-founder of the National Center on Time & Learning in Boston.

"It's not a question of whether schools are going to do more working on noncognitive factors," he said, "it's of whether we are going to have any instrumentation at all that lets us know which things are working and which things are not."

Researchers from the Educational Testing Service described the project at a symposium here last month at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science. The background survey will include five core areas -grit, desire for learning, school climate, technology use, and socioeconomic status-of which the first two focus on a student's noncognitive skills, and the third looks at noncognitive factors in the school. These core areas would be part of the background survey for all NAEP test-takers. In addition, questions about other noncognitive factors, such as self-efficacy and personal achievement goals, may be included on questionnaires for specific subjects to create content-area measures, according to Jonas P. Bertling, ETS director for NAEP survey questionnaires.

Careful Wording

Researchers tested different variations of the questions with 140 students in grades 4, 8, and 12 from a representative sample of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds in a three-state area around the District of Columbia. Students were led through a 90-minute interview, in which they answered the survey questions and then discussed their individual thought process in responding.

For example, students across all grades showed no difference in how they rated themselves on questions that asked them about their mindset in different contexts, and they reported preferring general questions rather than those specifically about school, said Jan M. Alegre, an ETS researcher.

"A majority of students preferred questions that went beyond a simple yes or no, whether they did something or not," she said.

Small changes in phrasing make a difference in how well students respond to the questions. For example, "4th graders didn't know what 'thinking abstractly' meant. ... Students had difficulty describing what experiencing failure meant and what it meant to be committed," Ms. Alegre said. As a result, the researchers changed survey questions asking whether students had "experienced failure" to "making mistakes" and changed "committed to goals" to "continue to work toward my goals."

The background questions will go through a third and final round of review in spring 2016, before the questions are administered beginning with tests in 2017.

Not for Accountability

Schools will not be judged based on the NAEP noncognitive measures of their students, but other such tests for accountability purposes may be on the horizon.

A coalition of seven California districts that have received waivers from some federal accountability requirements are developing a new accountability system, in which 40 percent of a school's evaluation will take into account school culture and students' social and emotional learning. Within the latter section, researchers are completing the field testing of growth mindset, self-efficacy and self-management, and social awareness measures with 9,000 students and 1,000 teachers. Mr. Gabrieli said the new measures are expected to be in place next year. He is helping to develop the new measures.

However, while poor performance on academic accountability measures can lead to sanctions in many districts, coalition schools with poor ratings for noncognitive skills will simply be paired with a higher-scoring mentor school.

As measures of noncognitive skills become more ubiquitous, Mr. Gabrieli said, it will be important to track disparities between students' reports of their mindset and tenacity, and teachers' observations of them.

"I have often seen in data collected in smaller samples this tendency for teachers to rate students on separate [questions] basically the same, as if they have one view of Johnny as a good kid or less-good kid," Mr. Gabrieli said. "It's hard to get teachers to follow the rules of 'this construct is about self-regulation and that one is about interpersonal skills.' "

Published in Print: June 3, 2015, as NAEP to Gather Data on Grit, Mindset

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Correction:

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'Nation's Report Card' to Gather Data on Grit, Mindset

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The nation's premiere federal testing program is poised to provide a critical window into how students' motivation, mindset, and grit can affect their learning. Evidence has been building for years that these so-called noncognitive factors play a role in whether children succeed both academically and socially.

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Survey: Student Success Calls for More Than Academic Skills

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Survey: Student Success Calls for More Than Academic Skills

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Social-emotional skills matter

A majority of educators responding to an Education Week Research Center poll said social-emotional learning is an effective way to improve student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and improve school climate. But there are some telling gaps in perception between teachers and administrators.

Of the responding administrators, 60.5 percent said more than half of their school's students have strong social and emotional skills. Of responding teachers, 46.5 percent said the majority of students at their schools have such skills.

Administrators also had a rosier view of their school's climate, student behavior, and engagement and motivation than teachers, the survey shows.

Leaders of districtwide social-emotional-learning initiatives say those gaps in perception are a major challenge to the success of such efforts.

The eight large districts that have worked with the Chicago-based Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning to launch districtwide, comprehensive social-emotional-learning plans try to get principals, teachers, and other school staff on board by holding regular meetings, administering teacher surveys, and working with outside evaluators to gauge whether the programs are being implemented consistently across all schools.

The survey asked about a broad range of topics related to social-emotional-learning strategies and programs, school climate, and student engagement.

The Education Week Research Center administered the survey in April to a random sample of edweek.org registrants who had previously identified themselves as classroom teachers, instructional specialists, or school-based administrators.

Of 709 total survey responses, 562 qualified for inclusion in the study based on self-identification as a teacher or school-based administrator. Educators who do not work at the school level were excluded from the analysis.

The center did not use weighted adjustments to account for geography, respondent characteristics, or school factors.

Of all respondents, 49.9 percent said their school pays "about the right amount of attention" to social and emotional learning, 48.2 percent said their school pays "too little attention," and 1.9 percent said their school pays "too much attention."

Published in Print: June 10, 2015, as Survey: Students Need More Than Academic Prowess

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Survey: Student Success Calls for More Than Academic Skills

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A majority of educators responding to an Education Week Research Center poll said social-emotional learning is an effective way to improve student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and improve school climate. But there are some telling gaps in perception between teachers and administrators.

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Carol Dweck's - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

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Carol Dweck's - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

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Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

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1. What are some ideas you have for working in lessons on growth mindset so

that it integrates with your upcoming curriculum topics?

2. What standards could you model or assess with these lessons?

3. What ideas do you have for implementing a sustainable school system for maintaining a growth mindset culture here at Green Gables?
4. What is one new idea or learning you have gained as a result of these three chapters?

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What are Some Ways School Staff Can Maintain a Growth Mindset School Culture?

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What are Some Ways to Help Students Adopt a Growth Mindset?

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Can Gifted Education and a Growth Mindset Belief Coexist?

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1. What messages should parents hear about growth mindset?

2. According to the author, how does the label

“gifted” or “highly capable” manifest a fixed mindset? Why should we use it sparingly, if at all?
3. What, if any, modifications could be made to your school and/or district approach to highly capable students ?

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What Messages Should Parents Hear about Growth Mindset?

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From my session:  "Balanced Assessment and Empowering
     Student Ownership of their Learning Through Assessment Data"

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From my session:  "Balanced Assessment and Empowering
     Student Ownership of their Learning Through Assessment Data"

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Learning from Failure | Biz Kids Lesson Plan | Lesson 213

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Have you ever made a decision you regret

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Lesson focuses on how failure is part of the engineering process. Students work in teams and learn about many inventions and advances in engineering were brought about after a mistake or failure. Students research an example of such an innovation and develop a presentation related to how the tenacity of the engineer allowed him or her to move past a failure and into the realm of innovation. Students reflect on the value of moving on after a failure or setback, present the results of their research to the class, and provide examples of how the innovation they researched has impacted society -- only because the engineer didn't give up.

Age Levels:

8 - 18

Learn how engineering can help solve society's challenges.

Learn about teamwork.

Learn about problem solving.

Anticipated Learner Outcomes

As a result of this activity, students should develop an understanding of:

innovation

engineering

teamwork

Students explore how mistakes and failures are a part of engineering and explore many examples of how engineers and others created materials, products, and processes after facing a failure or mistake. Students work in teams to research and present about a product, materials, or process -- they explore the people involved, the challenges they faced, and the hurdles that had to be overcome in order to succeed. They present their research to the class, participate in discussions with other teams, and complete a reflection sheet.

Alignment to Curriculum Frameworks

Curriculum alignment sheet is included in PDF.

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Lesson focuses on how failure is part of the engineering process. Students work in teams and learn about many inventions and advances in engineering were brought about after a mistake or failure. Students research an example of such an innovation and develop a presentation related to how the tenacity of the engineer allowed him or her to move past a failure and into the realm of innovation.

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Effective Failure: Teaching Students The Power of Mistakes

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Effective Failure: Teaching Students The Power of Mistakes

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By Monica Fuglei

In the classic storybook "The Little Engine that Could," the little blue engine's self-doubt when challenged to climb a steep mountain turns to triumph when, with hard work and confidence, it succeeds. The little engine's "I think I cans" turn into "I thought I coulds" as it sails down the far side of the mountain.

What if the little engine learned from its mistakes?

In the classroom as in life, however, sometimes the best lessons are not learned by completing a challenge. What the book fails to support is the idea that there is as much, if not more, opportunity for learning and success in mistakes and failure.

One marker of success identified by several researchers is a student's ability to persist - and occasionally fail. Both Malcolm Gladwell and Amanda Ripley point to a student's commitment to trying to solve a problem on their own, without knowing if they'll prevail, as a key element to their overall future success in education. As educators, a key to our students' future achievement may be teaching them to struggle and be willing to fail.

Teaching students it's okay to try again

To get students who are willing to fail, we have to create a classroom culture that values effort as well as success. When discussing the importance of classroom culture to encourage effective failure, third grade teacher Jen Saul says, "You have to normalize error. They have to know that it's okay to try and try again."

Saul's process of encouraging both persistence and effective failure starts with individual student work on problems, followed by group work, followed by student-led solutions. This personalized learning allows students to see each other struggle, to clarify and explain, and to see their peer group as active participants in their education.

The process of trying, failing, learning, and trying again is an essential piece of life. As education moves from rote memorization toward a focus on critical thinking, it is even more important to arm our students with the capabilities to try, fail, and learn something from that experience. Looking at the normalization of failure in classroom culture could be an opportunity to learn how to expand effective failure to the primary and secondary education arena.

How to add effective failure to your syllabus

In his college composition courses, professor Edward Burger actively rewards students' failure by incorporating routine reports of failure into students' final grades. This grading strategy rewards risk and persistence while helping to support a classroom culture that embraces failure as a part of the educational process.

For their "quality of failure" grade, Burger has his students contextualize their failure as a part of the educational process. Students excitedly share their failures along with their triumphs as a class-wide learning experience. This allows them to see their peer group as active participants in learning.

A Stanford course designed around learning from mistakes

Some college classes are even designed directly around the process of making failure effective. Stanford engineering students who take Mechanical Engineering 203 spend their semester turning an idea for a final project into a variety of prototypes.

Because students are not yet trained specialists, their prototypes often succumb to failure during testing and are then redesigned and retested. This process helps encourage students to take on the unknown, persist with the challenge, and learn something from every turn - exactly the sort of qualities we want in tomorrow's innovators.

Incorporating and rewarding such experimentation and failure in our own students might be difficult to work into the lesson plans, but will pay off in the long run. And before you get too anxious about trying, remember: if (or when) our assignments or in-class exercises fail, even that is an opportunity for learning.
Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.
Sources

Rebecca Zook, Malcolm Gladwell on Math and Persistence, Zook Tutoring

Annie Murphy Paul, Likely to Succeed, New York Times

Persistence in Problem Solving, Teaching Channel

Edward Burger, Teaching to Fail, Inside Higher Ed

Bjorn Carey, Learning from Mistakes: Stanford Engineering Course Builds Students' Confidence by Encouraging Them to Fail, Stanford University

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By Monica Fuglei In the classic storybook "The Little Engine that Could," the little blue engine's self-doubt when challenged to climb a steep mountain turns to triumph when, with hard work and confidence, it succeeds. The little engine's "I think I cans" turn into "I thought I coulds" as it sails down the far side of the mountain.

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How Can Students Learn from Failure?

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Here is a project I've done with students on rethinking failure and mistakes.

The project is for them to create a motivational poster about failure. To gather information, we watch a handful of videos and read a couple short blog posts. Here they are:

First we watch this Michael Jordan commercial:

Here are some of the ideas my students write down from that clip:

I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.

Failure leads to success.

Failure is good in many ways.

Without failure its impossible to succeed.

You'll never get good at something until you make mistakes.

Failure lets us know what we need to learn.

Here are some of the ideas my students take from this second Michael Jordan video:

Failure can give you strength.

It may not be God that give you talent but it is your effort.

Failure leads to talent.

Pain can be motivational.

You have to start small to create big.

Some of the names like Lucille Ball, and Ulysses S. Grant were not recognizable for my students, but others such as Michael Jordan and The Beatles were. There are many lessons to be taken from this video, but perhaps none are as powerful as the idea that mistakes and failures are never the exception - they are the rule.

After discussing these videos, I hand out this small collection reading on mistakes and failures. Click on the picture to see the PDF.

I then provide the kids with larger poster paper and other supplies so that they can create a motivation poster on rethinking failure and mistakes.

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Here is a project I've done with students on rethinking failure and mistakes. The project is for them to create a motivational poster about failure. To gather information, we watch a handful of videos and read a couple short blog posts.

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Children's Guide to Critical Thinking Video Series

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Children's Guide to Critical Thinking Video Series

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For Young Students (Elementary/K-6) Critical Thinking in Everyday Life: 9 Strategies Developing as Rational Persons: Viewing Our Development in Stages How to Study and Learn (Part One) How to Study and Learn (Part Two) How to Study and Learn (Part Three) How to Study and Learn (Part Four) The Art of Close Reading (Part One) The Art of Close Reading (Part Two) The Art of Close Reading (Part Three) Looking To The Future With a Critical Eye: A Message for High School Graduates Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking For Young Students (Elementary/K-6)

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Critical Thinking Links for 4-6 Teachers:

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Critical Thinking Links for 4-6 Teachers:

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The 4-6 Teacher Bundle includes instructional design materials for grades 4-6, elementary products for classroom use, and materials to help the teacher learn and begin to internalize the concepts of critical thinking. The Thinker's Guides included in this set help deepen a teacher's understanding of the foundations of critical thinking.

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Critical
Thinking Links for K-3 Teachers: 

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Critical
Thinking Links for K-3 Teachers: 

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The K-3 Teacher Bundle includes instructional design materials for grades K-3, elementary products for classroom use, and materials to help the teacher learn and begin to internalize the concepts of critical thinking. The Thinker's Guides included help deepen a teacher's understanding of the foundations of critical thinking.

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The Power of belief -- mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach

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Why is Critical Thinking Important in a Growth Mindset Class Culture?

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Dr. Chris Clayton's "PortaPortal" for Educators

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The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTEÂ®) is the premier nonprofit organization serving educators and educat

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1.      
How does a teacher’s mindset about a student’s
learning ability directly connect to the responsiveness and effectiveness of
instruction?

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1.      
How does a teacher’s mindset about a student’s
learning ability directly connect to the responsiveness and effectiveness of
instruction?

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Why is a Differentiated, Responsive Classroom Important to a Growth Mindset Culture?

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Link to MindUp
Curriculum (mentioned on page 19) for K-2, 3-5, 6-8, if you would like to see it. 

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Link to MindUp
Curriculum (mentioned on page 19) for K-2, 3-5, 6-8, if you would like to see it. 

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This research-based curriculum features 15 lessons that use the latest information about the brain to dramatically improve behavior and learning for all students.

Each lesson offers easy strategies for helping students focus their attention, improve their self-regulation skills, build resilience to stress, and develop a positive mind-set in both school and life. The lessons fit easily into any schedule and require minimal preparation. Classroom management tips and content-area activities help you extend the benefits of MindUP throughout your day, week, and year.

Posters: Each of the three books comes with an age-appropriate colorful poster with fascinating facts about the brain. Getting to Know and Love Your Brain: Full color * 2 sided Poster * 20.75" x 16.25"

Grades PreK-2 shows the three big helpers in the brain. One helps make smart choices. One helps protect from danger. And one saves memories and ABCs. Students will be challenged to identify the three helpers.
Preview Poster for Grades K-2

Grades 3-5 shows the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus-three parts of the brain that help students think and react to what happens around them. Students learn how these parts work together to make a happier, healthier, brighter person!
Preview Poster for Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8 challenges the older students-to react or to think it out, that is the question. As they learn to use the three key players in the brain to tell the difference between true emergencies and stressful situations, they'll be better at handling situations and have more time to enjoy life!
Preview Poster for Grades 6-8

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This research-based curriculum features 15 lessons that use the latest information about the brain to dramatically improve behavior and learning for all students. Each lesson offers easy strategies for helping students focus their attention, improve their self-regulation skills, build resilience to stress, and develop a positive mind-set in both school and life.

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What are Some Ways to Begin Building a Growth Mindset Culture?

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Mindsets in the Classroom: Building a Culture of Success and Student Achievement in Schools

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What are Mindsets and How Do They Affect the Classroom?

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1.      
Based on the data on Table 1 on page 11, what
implications for teaching mindset are made clear? 

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1.      
Based on the data on Table 1 on page 11, what
implications for teaching mindset are made clear? 

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What does this mean for classroom instruction and culture?