Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 9

Good Morning!

Today I will be sharing my thoughts on Chapter 9 of Mindsets in the Classroom over on the Hello Sunshine blog. I encourage you to head over there and link up with us. We would love to know your thoughts on Maintaining a Growth Mindset School Culture.

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classrom: Chapter 8

Good Evening!

Normally I would not be writing on a holiday but my sweet girl and her wonderful daddy are both napping so I have little free time. I am writing tonight about chapter 8 of Mindsets in the Classroom and I will be linking up with the ladies at Hello Sunshine as well.

 This was an awesome chapter. It had so many wonderful lessons and books for all grade levels that we can use in our classrooms to teach our students about the brain and growth mindsets. She gives us ideas for everything from preassessments to teaching growth mindset terminology. I thought I would share two of my favorite ideas with you that I will be using during our first week of school this year.

 She gave the example of using thread, yarn, and rope to show how neural connections grow when we continue to work at something new. Thread is the first stage of the connection. As you practice more and get better at the concept your connection grows which is represented by the yarn. Once your continue practicing and reach mastery your connection is even stronger and is now represented by the rope. She also used the thread to demonstrate how a connection can stay thin and frail or even break if we do not keep trying to learn and make that connection stronger. What a simple, engaging activity to help young elementary students understand how neurons build connections and grow stronger as we learn and practice each new concept. 

She also used a clip from Meet the Robinson's to help students understand that failure isn't the end of something; it is only the beginning. It's something to celebrate because we discovered a way that something doesn't work. Now we look at the problem again and see if we can find a new path for solving it. This is such an important lesson that I think all classes should start with at the beginning of a school year. Students need to know and understand that failing at something is not the end and they need to know that their teachers and classmates will be their to help them find another path to learning the lesson. She includes a list of discussion questions for the middle of the clip and the end of the clip to help with your discussion on failure. I think that young kids would love this and learn from it. Besides, what little kid doesn't remember a cartoon? I've included the clip below.

Remember: KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!

I would love to read your thoughts on this outstanding, idea packed chapter. Link up with us at Hello Sunshine if you can.

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 7

Good Morning!

This morning I am linking up with Hello Sunshine for chapter 7 of Mindset in the Classroom.

 

I like the way that this chapter approaches the gifted title. It really points out a good way to look at the potential that all our students have and that this potential never ends. 

"Too much emphasis on who is gifted creates kids who think they have to be infallible." - Carol Dweck.

Telling a child they are gifted or they are so smart is setting them up to have a fixed mindset. Ricci also points out that it can make these kids into perfectionists which is not a good thing. Kids that have that mentality tend to avoid risks or challenges because they don't want to fail. This is not the mindset that we want our students to have. We want them to look at failure as a learning experience. We want them to keep trying, to face challenges with the thought that they can figure it out as long as they keep trying. This is where the growth mindset comes in. By continually praising their efforts instead only praising their success they learn that it is all about trying. This helps those students who truly do fall in that gifted category remain students who are willing to work hard and keep trying to work through challenges. I love the quote she uses by Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, and Worrell, "What determines whether individuals are gifted or not is not what they are but what they do."

One thing that should never change is how we look at our students. All students have potential. All students can achieve great things if they are given the opportunities and the encouragement to keep reaching for the next level. So it comes down to us making sure that we provide our students with what they need to the very best of our abilities. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts on this chapter. Link up with us at Hello Sunshine if you are able to. We would love to know your thoughts on the chapter as well. 

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 6

Good Morning!

Today I am coming to you with my thoughts on chapter 6 of Mindsets in the Classroom. I will be linking up with the ladies of Hello Sunshine. Join us if you can.

In this chapter Ricci discusses the importance of keeping the parents connected with the growth mindset you are creating in the classroom. She also stresses the importance of encouraging them to use the same language at home. Our students need to hear praise for their efforts from parents and teachers. It helps to build their resiliency. To help with this she gives 4 steps that we can all follow.

1.Use growth mindset praise - make sure that you are praising their efforts and attempts instead of only praising the successes. She offers sample newsletter blurbs that we can reference when sending information home to parents about the language we use in the classroom and its impact on the kids.

2. Model Flexibility - Children are not naturally flexible when it comes to a change in routine, when something goes wrong, or a change of plans. This is something that they learn. One of the ways that they learn this is through observing parents as well as teachers and how they respond to these moments. They need to see us face these situations with grace, calmness, and a mindset that is prepared to try a new approach. This will help them learn to be flexible and to teach them more about the importance of a growth mindset.

3. Adopt a "glass half full" mentality in the home - Adopting this mentality will teach children to find a positive in the situations they face. "A child with "hope" believes there can be a positive side to most situations." - Mary Cay Ricci. This needs to be modeled by parents as well as teachers, with their words and their actions. Our children need to see us face all the challenges that we face with a positive attitude as well as an attitude that is prepared to try a different approach.

4. Help children find their own niche. - Our children need every opportunity to explore the options that the world has for them. They need the chance to find that area that they can really thrive in. Finding that are helps them to develop confidence in themselves and their abilities.

I love that she gave these four steps as well as the sample newsletters. I feel that these are things that parents and teachers should always be modeling for the kids in our lives. We want them to grow up to be successful and ready to face all the challenges that come their way. These are simple ways that we can help them along their journey.

I hope you are enjoying this book study and all the wonderful lessons it has to offer. Talk to you again Thursday for chapter 7.

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 5

Good Morning Everyone!

I am coming to you this morning with thoughts on Chapter 5 of Mindsets in the classroom.

This chapter is all about failure and how we handle it. If we have a growth mindset we are able to view failure as an opportunity to learn and try different strategies. If we have a fixed mindset than we view failure as a failure and make the assumption that we just can't do that activity or are not smart in that subject. 

Kids can get into the fixed mindset very early in their academic career. As teachers we need to make sure that our classrooms and the way we teach, embrace failure as a learning moment for our students. They need to feel safe and encouraged so that when they do make mistakes they know that they can turn to a peer or a teacher and they will offer encouragement and helpful strategies to face the challenge in a new way. If we have this growth mindset and view of failure in the classroom we will be teaching our students to be risk takers in their learning which can lead to great things. Walt Disney would be an excellent example of this. I love the quote Ricci used from Disney, "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." New adventures await all of us when we embrace the growth mindset and continue to take risks in our learning. 

A final thought is that we need to make sure we are motivating them correctly. We need to make sure we are focusing on intrinsic rewards for these foster the growth mindset and teach them to focus on that positive feeling we get when we accomplish something. Extrinsic rewards are temporary and they don't encourage students to keep pushing forward. It tells them that they can stop as soon as they reach the reward level that was set in place. As teachers we want them to keep moving forward and extrinsic rewards are not going to make that happen. This will be something that I need to work on this next year. I have a tendency to offer extrinsic rewards to encourage my students to reach a goal and that is not teaching them the importance of their hard work leading to accomplishments.

I enjoyed this chapter and I am looking forward to chapter 6. I hope you are able to join. Make sure to link up with us every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at Hello Sunshine!

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 4

Good Evening,

I am returning this evening to link up with Hello Sunshine for chapter 4 of Mindsets in the Classroom.

Critical thinking is an important part of a growth mindset classroom. There are three types of critical thinking: reasoning, making judgements/decisions, and problem solving. As Ricci points out we use all three daily but not always at the critical thinking level. Critical thinking is a deeper level of thought then the decision on what you wear or eat for breakfast in the morning. It is also not a skill that can be mastered. It is something that is constantly growing and changing as we grow and develop more strategies for deeper thinking and problem solving. 

Challenging our students with critical thinking questions is so important. They need to have questions and activities that make them interpret information and figure out ways to problem solve. As I was reading this chapter I was thinking about times when we have done this in our classroom. One way is through number talks. I was introduced to these earlier in the school and loved them. It was interesting to see the different ways that students looked at numbers and represented them. We also did a lot of problem solving in our math journals. Towards the end of the year we did a lot more in reading. We began talking about what lessons we thought the author wanted us to learn from our stories. That led to some very interesting discussions from my little firsties, but they need those opportunities to think through problems and stories to interpret information and figure things out.

My favorite line in this chapter is the last one by Ricci; "We can expect students to embrace challenge only if we make it available to them on a consistent basis." I completely agree. They need the challenge of critical thinking questions and activities on a daily basis. They need the ability to expand their thinking to realize that when they keep trying they can figure the problem out which helps them develop the growth mindset. 

Well, that's all for tonight! Have a wonderful evening!

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 3

Good Evening!

I am back again today to bring my thoughts on chapter 3 of Mindsets in the Classroom. I will also be linking up with the lovely ladies at Hello Sunshine. If you haven't joined us yet I encourage you to do so. This is an amazing book!

This was a very large chapter but it was filled with lots of great information that I found very helpful. I am blessed to work in a private school and have always had small class sizes. This has allowed me to be very flexible in how I teach. This past year I taught reading and math in groups with whole group mini lessons. It was a rough start but we made it into a functional system that the kids seemed to enjoy. After reading this chapter I have so many things I want to change about how I made the groups and how I assessed for them.

She began by discussing previewing and preassessing. I have always done assessments at the beginning of new units but I had never thought to preview the material ahead of time, other than just telling them what the assessment was on. Ricci states that 5-10 minutes of previewing can help a student unlock prior knowledge so that they can give their teacher a better reflection of their understanding on a topic. 

These preassessments are such an important part of a differentiation. They show you where students are struggling and what they already know.  These can also help you place students in correct groupings that will help them with their struggles and challenge them at the same time. She stressed that you must only measure their understanding in the areas that you are assessing. So if it isn't a spelling assessment, don't worry about the spelling. This is something that I am guilty of but more when it comes to grammar. She also stresses the importance of using different formats and effective questions. I like using different formats because I find it fascinating how my little firsties think. 

Assessing the data that these assessments bring forth is important. I typically create a graph with what was assessed and the names of the kids who struggled. This way I can find overlaps a little easier. This is also what I use when I create my groups. I tend to change my groups every nine weeks in reading because we run several formative assessments to see how they are doing. That usually results in adjustments. I love being flexible in my groups. It was difficult for my at first but once I got a little better at it I was able to see how much more my students learned. I also had fewer behavior issues doing this because my groups were changing and students figured out that eventually they would probably end up with a friend. Math changed a little more often because we use Saxon math so concepts go by very quickly and I need to switch a lot more to help students out. 

One thing that I will always need to work on is management. Every class is so different and the way they handle things is different. I need to make sure that my expectations are posted and very clear when they are in groups.

One of the things she closes the chapter with is the importance of formative assessments. I never used to do a lot of these but I have changed the way I teach so much over the last few years that now I do quite a few. I like having my kids write answers on the Promethean board because it focuses their attention and it allows me to see what they know and what they don't. It also is very casual to them because I usually allow them to call for classmate help if they get stuck. We also do games to help us test our knowledge on a subject. My class this past year loved Around the World. We  must have played that in every subject. They enjoyed it and I got to see who knew the information and who didn't. I feel that I need to work more on the enrichment side of things though. I definitely did not do as well as I would like in this area last year. I struggle with ideas for solid enrichment ideas that are not always worksheet based. It is one of my goals for this summer and next school year to find better enrichment activities. 

One thing that I have never done before but would like to do this year is exit slips. I like the idea of giving the kiddos a question at the end of every class about the topic we covered to see what they learned.

Well that is all for now. Talk to you all again tomorrow with the awesome chapter 2 of Teaching with Intention.

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 2

Hi Everyone!

Today we get to look at chapter 2 of the awesome book Mindsets in the Classroom and I will be linking up with the lovely ladies at Hello Sunshine for this.

In this chapter Mary Cay Ricci gives steps on how to build a growth mindset school culture. I focused a lot on the 5th step which was all about teaching students more about the brain. I think I focused in on this more than the others because I will be teaching science this year with a curriculum that doesn't teach my little firsties anything about the human body which is definitely an important piece. 

 If you read the study that Ricci mentions in this section that was conducted by Marshall and Comalli you can see how important it is to start introducing how our actions and senses are controlled by the brain. Students learning about the brain as early as preschool helps them understand how much their brain really does and really helps them as they develop a growth mindset. They need to understand that with effort your brain can make new connections and learn anything. I use a lot of Magic School Bus books and episodes in science lessons and their are some really good ones that can help teach students about five senses and brain connections. I like The Magic School Bus: Explores the Senses. Sqool Tube also has several kid friendly videos all about the nervous system that you could use in a mini lesson.

Teaching lessons on the brain to your students will also help us teachers become more familiar with the brain and how all these connections are made. It is just as important for us to learn as it is for our students. We need to make sure that we understand so that we can let go of our fixed mindset and embrace a growth mindset just like we are asking our students to do .

As you teach these lessons, send notes home to parents about what you are doing in class. This will help to educate them as well. They need to change their fixed mindsets and learn to encourage the growth mindset that you are building in their students. It is important to work as a team because students need to hear the encouragement on their efforts from everyone around them.

Well, that is all for now. I hope you all are enjoying this book as much as I am.

Ashley

Mindsets in the Classroom: Chapter 1

Good morning!

So I am back again with another post. I believe this is officially the most time I have spent on my blog since I received a little encouragement last year to get it started again. I guess old dogs can learn new tricks : ) Anyway this morning I am linking up with my lovely friends over at Hello Sunshine for the Mindsets in the Classroom book study.

My statement at the top about old dogs learning new tricks actually ties in quite nicely to chapter 1. Those who have a fixed mindset get stuck with the idea that there are just some things that they will never be good at or some things that they will never be able to do. I am definitely one of those people, but the fact that I am writing this blog post shows that I was wrong when I believed that I could never be a blogger and talk with other teachers across the nation because technology and I do not always get along. An amazing friend convinced me I could do it and has helped me learn along the way. We need to be that person for our students. We need to encourage them and show them that there is nothing that they can not learn. They don't need to learn it quickly. All that matters is the effort that they take to learn it. If they put in the effort they will make it.

Thanks for letting me share!

Ashley