Growth Mindset

Definition: The belief that our basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains, and talent is the starting point. This view leads to a love of learning and resilience (grit) that is essential for great accomplishment. (Dweck, 2015) Those with a growth mindset believe that they can get smarter, more intelligent, and more talented by putting in time and effort. (Positive Psychology)

Motto: "You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way." ¹ I am open to failure and learning from it.

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The Strengths Spotlight Podcast Series: Listen to the Institute of Positive Education descriptors of the strengths that include integration strategies.

What it Looks Like and How to Encourage:

• Embracing challenges, sustaining effort, trying new strategies, demonstrating flexibility and adaptability

• Support reflection not just around intelligence but around exercising other Character Strengths that support change and growth

• Use the term "challenge(s)" and language around proactively engaging strengths and taking on challenges

• Situational analysis (Teachable Moments)

Teacher Strategies to Personally Strengthen and Engage Their Growth Mindset:

• Grow your awareness of the strengths by making them more visible. Depending upon your learning style and preferred modality, choose tools from your instructional toolkit to apply to yourself. Examples: Audio Recording (have a friend interview you to record your very own "strengths podcast"|Concept Mapping|Outlining|Sketchnoting. Find ways to show how you combine strengths in some situations while also connecting to your talents/abilities, skills, interests, and values.

• Read the article "How to Leave Your Comfort Zone and Enter Your Growth Zone" for personal growth strategies. Look to adopt strategies that can work with your students.

• Resources for Learning - Growth Mindset is such a well-researched topic. Here are several resources to help with your learning:

  • Dr. Carol Dweck's TED Talk

  • Growth Mindset vs Fixed + Key Takeaways from Dweck's Book

  • Praise and Mindset video

  • The Science of Growth Mindset in Education

  • Review the strategies from the Psychology Today article "15 Ways to Build a Growth Mindset"

Character Lab Growth Mindset Teaching Strategies and Tips: How to offer age-appropriate versions of the strategies? Note: There are dozens and dozens of tips from Character Lab. These choices are filtered for elementary school and practicality to bring this strength into the culture of one's classroom.

• Can I or Can't I?

• Choosing Challenge

• Cultivating Confidence

• The Other Side of Stress

• Turn Weakness Into Strength

• Use WOOP to set goals supported by Character Strengths. (WOOP Worksheet from Character Lab. A more scaffolded worksheet.) Grades 3-5 lesson. WOOP App: Android | IOS

• Agency - "Although no one has absolute control over destiny, we can do a great deal to control how we think, feel, and behave. By assessing our life situations realistically, we can make plans and preparations that allow us to make the most of our circumstances. By doing so, we gain a sense of mastery." (Hales, D., 2021)

The term "agency" is used a lot these days in describing the empowerment and self-confidence we want our students to experience as they make decisions in their lives. It connects to growing their sense of self-efficacy and understanding concerning their locus of control. These two concepts connect to the self-talk in whether we see ourselves as internals or externals regarding our belief regarding whether we are in charge of how we affect our lives or if we see life affecting us. No set strategy is offered here other than to continue to expand the vocabulary of your students by adapting these psychological terms to their developmental levels. You can search the web for lots of resources offering strategies to support student agency.

• Character Day - Find ways to participate and elaborate on the activities offered for this annual event.

• Engage in the Language of Growth Mindset - Understood.org provides PDF downloads of questions, situations, and action plans to immerse your students in the language of a growth mindset.

• Guiding Mantra - Work with your students to create their personal mantra of growth mindset self-talk applying terms such as "I can ..., I am learning to ..., I am trying ... and I am going to ...".

• Growth Mindset Folder - Access the PDF activities in this folder.

• Inward-Outward ³ - Think of ways to use the strength internally for your own wellbeing. Think of ways to express the strength outward to benefit others. Example: In- Engaging growth mindset in which setting really grows your self-confidence and "can do" attitude? Out- Applying a growth mindset in which the situation helps others to overcome obstacles.

• Leaving Your Comfort Zone - Positive Psychology put together a nice graphic with descriptors that you can adapt for your classroom.

• Lessons Database - Access the MindSet Kit offers resources and lessons.

  • Assessments for A Growth Mindset (2 lessons)

  • About Growth Mindset (3 lessons)

  • Celebrate Mistakes (5 lessons & classroom activities)

  • Introduction to Growth Mindset (slideshow)

  • Praise the Process, Not the Person (3 lessons)

Find lessons at the Heart-Mind Online resource site provided by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. Find lessons at the Greater Good in Education resource site provided by the Greater Good Science Center (University of California - Berkeley). Positive Psychology offers several classroom practices and 8 activities to make growing a growth mindset a part of your class culture.

• My Favorite Mistake - Reflect upon mistakes that you made last week. Which one did you learn from the most? (Making Wellbeing Practical)

• Sketchnoting to Paint the Strength Picture - Guide your students to make visible their self-understanding of how they currently engage with each strength. A secondary activity is to have your students sketch out new ways they can exercise each strength. We know that going from thinking about ideas to then making them visible often leads to taking action with the ideas. The first step to this strategy is to teach your students about sketchnoting. You will find applications of this tool across all areas of your curriculum. :) Students can take pictures of their sketches to upload to Seesaw to then explain their thinking.

• Strength Chart - Teachers have lots of ways to bring strengths into the language and culture of their classrooms. A teacher at one of my schools connected to the school's core values by having the names of students on small sticky labels that he stuck to the core values poster. He would place the student's name by the value on the chart in the following ways that are adapted here for the strengths. One technique is for students who want the class to support his/her effort to grow strengths to have his/her name placed beside the designated strength(s). A second strategy is for teachers to verbally highlight students who are applying their strengths at the moment in class. The teacher then puts the student’s name by strengths on the chart.

• Superhero Creation - Challenge your students to create a superhero who maximizes this strength. One approach is to have your students draw a picture of the character with a biography that describes how the superhero uses the strength in his/her life. You can provide categories such as physical, intellectual (thinking), emotional, and social as to how the superhero demonstrates the strength. This activity could take the form of playing cards that students then create games around.

• Wellness Time - Like Google's 20% time, have wellness-oriented independent time learning time for this strength. The students set a goal, design a plan and produce some type of finishing artifact/project to make their learning visible with a reflection component.

• Other possibilities - Growth Mindset Superhero marketing, Student-created videos highlighting growth mindset stories, building growth mindset practices into class cultures, high school IB students using CAS time to produce age-appropriate videos for ES students answering questions of “What does having a growth mindset look like? How can I grow my growth mindset?”, older student buddies and their ES partners from time to time share examples of engaging their growth mindset, incorporate into co-curricular activities like field trips, after school activities, assemblies, etc.

Grade(s) Specific Teaching Strategies: The following ideas are offered as jumping-off points for teachers to build from and adapt to their needs.

EC-K>

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Storybook readings, digital media, and share time by teachers and students to build understanding.

• Growth Mindset Wall- Teachers introduce the concept of a growth mindset by sharing pictures of people and their contributions to the community.

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

1-3>

• Grades 1-2> possibly doing some storybook readings and use of digital media. Eventually could lead to students writing their own storybooks that show their growth mindset actions.

• Growth mindset wall in each classroom where students post examples of their efforts.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

• Weekly Contribution Seesaw Journal post: will need to develop prompt and potential categories for students to draw a picture of and/or take a photo of their growth mindset actions. They then voice-record their response.

4-5>

• Design a lesson around the question “How do you think people succeed?”

• Journal - Google Doc or paper version. The teacher provided prompts and in time work with students to create new prompts. Could be a section of their portfolio.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Work with student ideas to learn and strengthen having a growth mindset.

Learning About Purpose:

Websites>

Character Lab

Books>

Parent Engagement:

• Ask someone to video record the strength in action and publicize the efforts via social media (#----------) and the school website.

• Family Tree of Strengths: Provide parents with definitions and what strengths can look like in action. Provide a family tree graphic organizer with space for names and the individual’s main strengths. Offer prompts to guide parents to explain how family members and earlier generations lived specific strengths.

• Have students take their character cards home to teach their parents about their strengths.

• Strength-based Parenting - Share with your parents the Dr. Lea Waters website which includes resources and information on her book. Here is an article to help with your understanding of strength-based parenting.

• Use our various communication pathways to inform parents of their children's engagement in their growth mindset.

• Teachers offer ideas for parents to share with their children examples of their weekly growth mindset actions.

• VIA Strengths Survey: Send parents information about the strengths and the English language Strengths Survey that they can take. The results can offer a discussion starting point for families. Teachers send specific reminders to have family talks around the purpose reflection products the students produce.

Character Lab Research References

Character Lab Image Source

¹ Embedding Character Strengths. Institute of Positive Education. With permission.

² Niemiec, Ryan M., and Neal H. Mayerson. The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief: a Character Strengths Approach to Finding Calm in the Chaos of Daily Life. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.

³ Niemiec, Ryan M., and Neal H. Mayerson. The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief: a Character Strengths Approach to Finding Calm in the Chaos of Daily Life. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.

Hales, D. (2021). An invitation to health: Taking Charge of Your Health (19th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning