Growth Mindset in Room 119

This year I'll be introducing your children to a 'Growth Mindset'. In a growth mindset we want students to know that the ability to learn isn't fixed and that it can improve if a student works hard. The brain is like a muscle, it can be strengthened through effort that is put in when solving challenging problems. Your child will explore how mistakes can be a great way to learn new things,but only if a student perseveres with the problem. I'll show that effort is required to grow and master new skills and knowledge and we will work on developing a work ethic to make this possible. Students will be challenged to conquer their fear of making an attempt to solve a problem, working hard and possibly having a result of failure. I'll advise students not to compare themselves with others, instead they should be inspired by the successes of others and look for ways in which they can learn from these successes. And finally, but most importantly, students must learn to accept criticism and look at it as a way to improve the current state of their abilities.

I'll be focusing on giving students prompt and specific feed back about their work, both individually and as a class. Verbal feedback, before, during and after working is the quickest and easiest way to help elementary students. However, I think it is also important to use learning goals, success criteria and rubrics to give students feedback on rough and published work. Students will think about verbal feedback and feedback from rubrics and decide what criteria they should focus on improving in the next task.

Although I am very focused on giving feedback, this does not mean that I will be giving students 'marks' on these assessments. I feel that marks can lead students one of two ways. One can lead them to doing work only to "get a good mark", which is something we want to get away from in a growth mindset. I'd rather see students using feedback to set their own goals and working hard improve themselves as students. The second thing that marks can do is make a child feel like they are being defined by the grades they are getting, I'm 'smart' because I get good grades or "I'm not good at _____" or "I can't do it" because I get poor grades. I'm sure many of you have heard remarks like these before or have even thought them yourself. You all know that test scores and marks do not define who your child is, but when 5-12 year old children are constantly bombarded with marks, it is hard for students not to see it this way and develop a fixed mindset. This fixed mindset is where students believe there intelligence is fixed and that they just have to deal with the ability level they are at. So you won't see many test or assignments coming home with marks on them. If you are concerned about your child's mark's, please feel free to contact me at any point and we can arrange to meet and see your child's work.

I've include some info-graphics below and a video that will further explain the growth mindset if you are curious or if you'd like to use some of these ideas at home.