Dr. Carol Dweck is seriously famous. She started a revolution 30 years ago helping educators change a paradigm about effort and motivation. She and her colleagues were interested in how students' attitudes about failure affected effort. She noticed that some students rebounded while other children seemed to give up at even the smallest setback. She looked at thousands of students and their behaviors she determined that children could have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. These terms describe the beliefs and dispositions people have about learning and intelligence. If a student believes they can get smarter, they understand the relationship that effort makes them stronger. They will put in the time and be motivated toward higher achievement.
Grow their mind and their heart because they love to learn.
What can you do to help influence a Growth Mindset? It's as easy as 1, 2, 3...
1. Your mindset Matters
This quote is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a growth or fixed mindset. Not only does it matter for students but more importantly with teachers. When you believe that a student can achieve you will see progress in small increments and persist against all obstacles. Teachers in this District who have the highest achievement and growth have a growth mindset and will making learning inescapable for their students. They see it as a personal challenge that every child every day learn. They don't see achievement as a ceiling but a journey. Consider the graph below and think about how you could use strategic feedback to grow achievement.
2. Praise and Feedback:
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| He loves school! |
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| Choosing the Right Book! |
Dr. Dweck would say that praising effort has more influence on achievement than praising intelligence. During a study she found that students who worked on a puzzle and were praised for their ability reached a ceiling of effort and stopped when the puzzle became more challenging. In converse, a group who was praised for effort during the task continued to persevere when the task became more challenging. What does this mean for you? Specific feedback during the task recognizing effort is more powerful than praise after the task. During walkthroughs last week I noticed many of you have been teaching kids to independently read and intentionally helping them to build stamina. In this example teachers demonstrated that all students (second graders in Katie Naughton's room and students in Megan Millar's BSP) can read and understand. Megan's Millar's students were asking to independently read and one specific student was reading independently for over 15 minutes on Friday afternoon (they started at 5 min.). Katie's students participated in her think aloud demonstrating how to choose a just right book. It was an authentic experience as Katie used books at her reading level to demonstrate. She then guided students as they choose 'just right books'.
3. Apply Professional Development:
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| Interactive 'Reading Voice' Board |
Applying professional development practices in your classroom grows your mind as well as that of your students. This is a teacher behavior that has proven to build a growth mindset in educators and students. Think about how successful you feel when you've learned something and then implemented it in your classroom and find that it made a difference! Carol Bigley is really vocal about this everytime she applies feedback and sees how it works. She shares how it worked and is joyful. I also was in Paige's room this week and saw the poster posted in this picture. She made an interactive board to help students apply voice when reading. This was professional development Julie delivered to her 5th grade team. Paige applied and is teaching kids this practice to monitor their comprehension. She also made the icons for Abbey and Audrie. This strategy will help kids understand text AND build a growth mindset. I've no doubt that it will have double the impact on achievement in 5th grade.
What will you do next?
How will you apply the strategies of building a Growth Mindset
