As we are preparing our students for inquiry, Laura and I decided we wanted to try to build a GROWTH MINDSET and move away from the fixed mindset a lot of children have - giving up quickly, being upset when they make mistakes, not understanding that learning takes time, and that your brain is constantly growing.
So we read the research presented by Carol Dweck. Her studies with her colleagues from Standford University show that students who understand that intelligence is not something you are born with will have higher success rates in school. Laura and I hope that building this growth mindset in our own students will help with their confidence levels, not just for inquiry but in all other subjects, math especially.
We got our information from Khan Academy, which has full lesson plans for teaching Growth Mindset in the classroom and links to a lot of helpful articles and videos:
https://www.khanacademy.org/coach-res/reference-for-coaches/how-to/a/growth-mindset-lesson-plan
My class started off by watching a YouTube video that shows how anyone can learn anything:
So we read the research presented by Carol Dweck. Her studies with her colleagues from Standford University show that students who understand that intelligence is not something you are born with will have higher success rates in school. Laura and I hope that building this growth mindset in our own students will help with their confidence levels, not just for inquiry but in all other subjects, math especially.
We got our information from Khan Academy, which has full lesson plans for teaching Growth Mindset in the classroom and links to a lot of helpful articles and videos:
https://www.khanacademy.org/coach-res/reference-for-coaches/how-to/a/growth-mindset-lesson-plan
My class started off by watching a YouTube video that shows how anyone can learn anything:
Then we discussed how our brains grow, and how if we never made mistakes and just gave up right away, we would never really learn much of anything.
The next day my class looked at negative self-talk (which is a FIXED MINDSET) and I had students work in groups to come up with what we could say instead that would lead to more of a GROWTH MINDSET.
We talked about how saying "I'm great at this" might not help if you're really having trouble with a concept, and maybe saying "I won't give up" or "I'll keep trying" would work better.
In the end, we made this bulletin board to show how we can change our words to change our mindset!
The "I can't do this.....yet!" is our favourite thing to say in math class.
My goal here is to give students more confidence as we move into the inquiry process - I want them to feel comfortable enough to explore and try new ideas without fear, especially as we explore how technology can help us with inquiry.
Have a great day! - Maria
My goal here is to give students more confidence as we move into the inquiry process - I want them to feel comfortable enough to explore and try new ideas without fear, especially as we explore how technology can help us with inquiry.
Have a great day! - Maria