Growth Mindset

Dear Families,

As I mentioned at Open House, one of my goals for the year is to help students develop and/or strengthen a growth mindset.  We have done many activities to help us learn about growth mindset and the language of growth mindset, and we’ll continue to do many more throughout the year.  Some of the activities we’ve done include:

• viewing Brain Jump with Ned the Neuron 
• categorizing phrases that show a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset (I give up vs. I’ll use some of the strategies I’ve learned).
• working in small groups to create phrases we can say in place of phrases such as: “This is too hard,” “I can’t do this,” “I give up,” and “I don’t understand.”  
• reading The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett.

Students worked in small groups to define growth mindset.  They decided that:

• “A growth mindset is a positive thought that you think about your work.”
• “Growth mindset is being determined.”
• “Growth mindset is feeling confident in yourself and trying your best.”
• “When you challenge your brain, your brain will have positive thoughts, and with all of that you will get smarter.”  

I’ve enjoyed our lessons together explicitly teaching your children about growth mindset, and I’m looking forward to incorporating this work throughout our days together.  Two articles were available to families at Open House that shared more information about growth mindset.  If you’d like a copy of these articles, please let me know and I’d be happy to send them home.

Have a fabulous weekend,

Mrs. Houston