However, we know students with fixed mindsets do exist. The fixed mindset is quite the opposite as a growth mindset. A student with a growth mindset might not take on challenges and will easily give up on tasks. 

 

Carol Dweck states, “In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb.” Reading this quote made me think of the students in my classroom, and as teachers we are going to have students with growth mindsets and fixed mindsets. As educators we have the power to foster the growth mindset.  It is our job as teachers to instill change and teach the growth mindset from day one
.

 

From The Articles that were assigned the above four thoughts and idea's were what I really focused on and connected to. The baseline concept of people with a growth mindset having the belief that they are capable of anything also helps to tie into the importance of focusing on the process. It also helps to connect with a teacher who is fostering a growth mindset which will help teach the concepts of perserverance as well as helping students to develop the skills need to handle accept and move on from failure.

I really liked how you can tie different idea's in each of the assigned articles to create a general base concept or idea of the importance of growth mindset. I found it interesting looking at the checklist of how people with a growth mindset learn. Since I started my research on Growth Mindset last year a theory of mine has been that Growth Mindset needs to be fostered at a young age and must be feed and cultivated throughout a students academic career. The comment above that focuses on students decrease in favorable views of themselves as they get older I feel is connected to not having a foundational understanding of growth mindset and not having that belief system continously being cultivated in them over time.

 

1.     Providing Challenging Tasks- Let your students know the problem they are doing is challenging and get excited for them. Let them know they can do it! The second-grade teacher in the video did this. I honestly never have tried that before, but I can see how powerful it is.

2.     Talking about Struggle- This allows students to share with their classmates where they had problems or where they were stuck. It also shows students that they were not the only one with a problem. I saw this modeled many times when I was student teaching/ coteaching 5^th grade math. Now as an EL teacher, I can see how this could be very beneficial for student’s language skills as well.

3.     Celebrate mistakes- It is important we recognize mistakes as learning opportunities. We can help students see where/ why they made a mistake and not focus on the wrong answer, but the why.

When teaching my students, I am always trying to make connections to things they have experienced. Sometimes, I will share personal stories to validate how a topic made a connection in my own life.  This lesson directly would relate to my mom in 2007 when she suffered a massive stroke and suffered severe brain damage.  The doctors at the Mayo Clinic worked extensively with us to help her make her brain reconnect many of the connections that were lost.  She had to learn to talk, walk, count, eat, write and as much as possible remember all over again. She has come so far since then and it is amazing how much the brain can grow not only when we are young but after a traumatic experience. 

Another take-away I had was praise wisely. This is an area that I need to intentionally work on. Praise the process, effort, strategies, focus, perseverance, and improvement. Don't praise intelligence or talent. With kindergarten students, it's always easy to tell them how smart they are or give them a high five and a good job. I need to make my praising more meaningful and not just praising the intelligence. 

I also really liked how Carol Dweck said the yet/not yet concept is building greater confidence. Let's not waste anymore lives. 

I am really enjoying Carol Dweck. How powerful to teach our students “Not Yet” instead of giving an F.  F means fail and what does that do for our students’ self-esteem.  By stating, “Not Yet” you are embracing the idea of it being part of the learning journey, The good struggle. The big challenge. My students are getting smarter by how they are taking on challenging tasks and mastering them by being encouraged to not give up. 

Another idea I liked was praise wisely. In special education I think I praise the process, effort, and improvement but I want to make myself more aware of always doing it appropriately and not praise intelligence or talent. I need to make my praising more meaningful. 

I also stopped to think about the effect peer feedback can have when working on a project.  I remember as a student feeling all nervous when a peer would read through a rough draft of mine for fear that they would judge my work.  I think that if we lived in a society where mistakes were welcomed and more normalized, I wouldn’t have felt that way and could have taken more of an advantage from the feedback I did receive.  

I like the visuals that come with these lessons.  It is a great way for kids to see in writing what we are teaching them when it comes to making mistakes.  One of the things I say when a “mistake” or “wrong answer” happens is “I like how you are thinking”.  It does not push the student away from their answer and allows classmates or myself to engage in further discussion to understand their point of view and guide them down the direction the lesson was intended. Sometimes, the mistake is mine. I teach students who are bilingual and or very literal in their thinking and this reminds me to be sure my students have an understanding of the vocabulary or context of a word we are using. 

 

Along with that, the first time I learned about meta cognition was in college. I look back to my middle school years, and I feel I would have been more successful if teachers would have taught this. I would have actually processed more and reflected on my answers. Instead of just rushing through something. It is so important to think and reflect upon your thinking. I have so many middle schoolers who just “go through the motions” or “give minimal thought.”

classroom.  The way the high school teacher approached homework honestly is so effective and beneficial to students.  I can remember so many times crying because I didn’t understand the homework and just being expected to turn it in without my questions being addressed.  I never got to ask my questions before the homework was turned in and we moved on to the next days material.  This was honestly groundbreaking to me.  I teach kindergarten so we don’t have homework but if I change grade levels this could be very important.  The second video with the third graders seems exciting.  I would maybe tweak it a little bit to accommodate students who are nervous or shy and have them work with a partner or on their own and see how that goes.  I would have been very scared to film a lesson all by myself but may have been okay if I had a partner.  Although if they did this same assessment for every unit I am sure the kids got more comfortable as the year goes on.  My school has been diving into the app seesaw which allows students to upload a picture of their work and then do a voice recording explaining their answer which this reminded me a little bit of our schools work with seesaw.

 

Next year in my classroom- I am going to be doing a corner that students can earn for working hard and persevering on challenging tasks. I am going to decorate it with comfy chairs and some choice things. I am not sure the details of this, but students can earn working in this corner. I think this year my focus was behavior, but I think this will allow for students to want to be well behaved and focus on their work to earn this time. 

“Tiger up” I absolutely loved this idea! I think it is so empowering to see teachers give their students time to struggle in the classroom. The struggling eventually leads into learning. 

 

The teacher in the video from The Teaching Channel said, “I don’t want them to expect things to come easily all the time.” 

 

This had me thinking about one of my students this year, who always wanted my help for every assignment. He always had a question and never fully embraced the struggle. Even though he was more than capable of finding the answer on his own. He truly had never just experienced challenging situations. Also, he was very persistent, and this was a challenge for me because I had to truly train myself on allowing him time to struggle. He would constantly raise his hand and ask me questions, when I know he could have found the answer on his own. 

What do you do when you have students who “can’t embrace the struggle?” 

“I like a challenge!” 

 

This is not something I often hear in my class, however, going into next school year, it is something I really hope to make present in my classroom. I think embracing the struggle, allowing wait time, and high levels of differentiation. 

 

I really enjoyed the article by Pearson for 5 tips to put challenge at the heart of your primary classroom. My position next year is slightly changing so this made me excited. I will be doing a split position at the middle and elementary school. 

 

When working with students at all different levels sometimes in the same small group, it involves a lot of multi-tasking, organization, and patience. Also, A LOT of differentiation. I hope to continue to provide challenging tasks for my students who are at different levels. I think one way I can do this is allow students to respond in different ways, this will also allow students to practice different skills (writing and speaking). It also does not take a lot of time to reorganize, but it can be a supplementary activity for students who finish early. They could practice their speaking skills. I also think this will be beneficial because based off the recent WIDA scores, I thought my students speaking scores would have been slightly higher. 

I’m not a parent, but hope to be one someday, and I really like the idea of having family meetings and creating a manifesto to display in the house.  If it is made as a family each year, my children will feel a sense of ownership in it - which I know I would have appreciated as a teenager.  

In order to make growth mindset successful, teachers can provide resources for parents. I loved the graphic giving examples for parents. I often have many parents saying, “What else can we be doing?” Also, I think often times, parents don’t know what to say when their student is struggling on a challenging task. I hear several parents say, “I don’t know how to help my kid. They teach math so differently now in school.” I hear this and I am not even a math teacher. I think parents need to understand two things. 1. Math is taught differently 2. Focus on the bigger picture…. It’s not about the actually math concepts, it’s about learning how to coach and support your child through something challenging.

 

One of the biggest thing’s parents need to understand is the idea of saying, “You are so smart.” This saying has many negative effects regarding how students think about themselves and intelligence. 

 

However, as an ESL teacher, I could see this being challenging. It is something I would love to do. I think providing resources for my parents would be great at the beginning of next year. It would be a great add on to my Growth Mindset Unit, however I have a couple families who do not speak English at all.

Do you have resources for Spanish and Somali?