Saturday, September 2, 2017
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Resources for Teaching Growth Mindset
Understanding Growth Mindset
Strategies for Addressing Mindsets
Growth Mindset Within Math
Giving Better Student Feedback
Link: https://www.edutopia.org/article/growth-mindset-resources
AN EASY ACTIVITY TO PROMOTE GROWTH MINDSET
I love to start the year with Peter H. Reynold's books like The Dot and Ish. Both books are great for teaching kids that it is okay to take risks and make mistakes. Those books also go very well with this growth mindset activity we worked on. Read on to find out how this activity worked out in my classroom.
I started this school year with an activity that I saw on Twitter. I wrote out these words on plain paper and then read each word to my students so they would know what each said. For each word I asked for a show of hands to see how many kids had an idea of what each word meant. The only ones that I didn't get every hand up for were persistence and dedication. So we talked about those words as a class and I shared what those words mean to me. I also gave a specific example for each of those words.
Then I spread each paper around the room with markers and asked students to go to each word and write or draw what the word means to them. I told them it had to be a silent activity so that their friends could really think about each word.
I have a fairly chatty class but you could hear a pin drop during this activity. Some of the ideas they came up with were just so great.
The most important part of the lesson came at the end when we shared all of their ideas. I asked them to tell me why they thought we were talking about this, why was this an important conversation.
Here is the answer I got from one student, "...because it's okay for us to make mistakes. If we don't make mistakes we can't learn from them. And in order to make mistakes we have to have courage to take risks sometimes, even if we are worried we might get it wrong. In order to take risks we have to put in some effort and persistence and we will eventually be successful".
WOW!
Just. WOW.
Kids are so bright!
Give this activity a shot in your classroom.
We are excited to announce that we have created two new group activities designed to help students practice, learn, and reinforce growth mindset concepts in a fun and interactive way: the Mindset Works Hot Potato Game and the Mindset Works Popcorn Game! And best of all, they’re free!
In the “Mindset Works Hot Potato” game, students review core concepts and ideas straight from the Brainology student curriculum. In groups, pairs or individually, students test their understanding of the growth mindset, how the brain works and learns, and effective study strategies. (Grades 4-12.)
The “Mindset Works Popcorn” game also introduces students to many of the main core concepts and ideas underlying the growth mindset, how the brain works and learns, and effective study strategies to boost learning. This game is perfect for students who have not used Brainology (or for Brainology students who would benefit from more scaffolding). (Grades 4-12.)
We hope you'll enjoy the brain-games. If you try them, let us know how it went and how your students liked them.
The Mindset Works Team
Link: http://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/keystage2-ks2/ks2-learning-aids/ks2-learning-aids-growth-mindset
Friday, July 14, 2017
Highest Good Education
One Community is developing an open source and free-shared all-ages Highest Good education® program we call The Education for Life Program. This page is the overview of this program and includes links to all the major open source components. This page is organized like all our other open source portals and includes the following sections:
- What is Highest Good education
- Why Highest Good education
- Ways to contribute
- Consultants
- The Highest Good Education Open Source Portal (Collaborative resource and information hub)
- Additional Highest Good education details
- Summary
- FAQ
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Teaching as Leadership
http://www.teachingasleadership.org
Set big goals
Create a welcoming
Create a culture
Do well what must
Adjust course as
Set big goals
Know exactly what success looks like
Set big goals
Students make dramatic academic progress when, from the very beginning, teachers develop a clear, ambitious vision of success. Highly effective teachers know exactly where they want their students to be by the end of the year and realize that a bold (and some might say crazy) vision of student success can actually drive student achievement.
Powerful, big goals that are measurable, ambitious, and meaningful (B-1) are developed by considering four questions:
Related reading
Develop a desire for academic success
Invest students & their families
Many highly successful teachers (and experts) boil the idea of student investment down to two factors: the students belief that they are able to achieve at high levels alongside their desire to do so. Or, stated more simply:
Student investment= "I can" x "I want"
For any endeavor, consciously or not, students are asking themselves "Can I do this?" and "Do I want to do this?". Your responsibility is to be sure that every student answers yes to both questions. Here are three key elements of doing so:
Create a welcoming
environment
Create a safe, welcoming environment (I-5) that fosters self-worth, compassion, shared responsibility and academic achievement.
Create a culture
of achievement
Offer relevant, appropriately challenging academic content
Maximize the impact of all these strategies by informing, involving and investing students’ families and other influencers (I-6)
How to get from there to here
Plan purposefully
Before taking any action, strong leaders ‐ be they in a board room, an operating room, or a classroom ‐ define the ultimate result they want, make clear how they will know they have succeeded and only then choose and design strategies to that end.
Think of purposeful planning ‐ for any type of plan, large or small ‐ as comprised of these three sequential principles:
Vision
First, develop a clear vision of success from which you can "plan backwards"
Develop a clear vision by setting big goals (B-1)
Assessment
Now ask yourself, "How will I know that my students have reached that vision"?
Plan
With the vision and assessment in place, you are now ready to design your plan.
How to differentiate your plans (P-4) to fit your students
Follo
Every action matters - the large and the small
Execute effectively
Effective execution happens in the details of our everyday work. It means we follow through on our actions, big and small, so that we are not just doing what we intend to do but are actually having the effect we intend to have. For strong teachers, effective execution means ensuring that everything we do contributes to the goal of student learning.
We see three general characteristics exhibited by strong teachers as they implement plans:
Do well what must
be done
Teachers must develop knowledge and skills that enable them to be effective executors: communication skills. management skills, pedagogical content knowledge, understanding of the community's cultural norms, etc.
Insist on seeing reality
Do students get it?
Are they engaged?
Are they meeting behavioral expectations?
Adjust course as
circumstances change
What adjustments, if any, do
you need to make to ensure that students achieve your vision of success?
you need to make to ensure that students achieve your vision of success?
These strategies manifest in six teacher actions that make up effective execution:
w this process for all types of plans, including:
- Long-term plans and unit plans (P-2)
- Lesson plans (P-3)
- Behavior management plans (rules and consequences) (P-5)
- Efficiency plans (procedures and routines) (P-6)
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