Have you incorporated growth mindset activities in your classroom? Research has shown that teaching students to have a growth mindset contributes to their beliefs about intelligence and correlates to higher academic performance.
What is Growth Mindset?
In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are fixed traits. They believe things like “I’m a bad student” or “I can’t read” instead of developing these skills. In a growth mindset people believe that their abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. In a growth mindset, it is key to incorporate the word “yet” into self-assessment, for example, “I don’t understand how to identify personification in this poem yet.” This statement leaves room for growth and learning to take place and isn’t a finite conclusion.
Let's Start the First Week off With a Positive Mindset!
Looking for ways to incorporate growth mindset activities in your ELA classroom? Here are five ways that I teach the importance of having a growth mindset at the start of the school year! You can facilitate all of these activities with limited prep, but if you would like some templates to help you out, check out this freebie to organize these activities as learning stations on the first day!
1. Banner of Belonging
In order to have a growth mindset, students must first feel safe to express themselves in their learning environment. Creating a safe, inclusive classroom where everyone feels a sense of belonging will have a major impact on your students’ ability to focus, sense of calm, and capacity to learn. There are many ways to create a classroom community throughout the school year. One way that I like to use on the first day of a semester is having students create a “Banner of Belonging” by providing each of them a paper flag that they can write their name on and design as they like with symbols or images of importance to them. All of the names then get strung together and displayed like a banner in the classroom. This serves as a visual reminder of their belonging in the classroom throughout the year.
2. SMART GOALS
Reading through the course syllabus on the first day of class is mandatory at most schools, but it definitely doesn’t set the right tone for learning. Try infusing a sense of imagination and creativity into the first day by including the course syllabus in a series of learning stations. Students will read the syllabus and then reflect on it to create a SMART goal for the semester. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. If your students keep portfolios, you can staple or glue these SMART goals into the front cover. By incorporating goal-setting, the syllabus read-through, transforms from teacher-led instruction to student-led reflection.
3. Literacy Self-Assessment
One of the most important things I do on the first day of class is provide my students with a literacy self-assessment. This enables me to gather reading and writing data through diagnostic assessment as well as get a sense of students’ current beliefs on learning and intelligence. The assessment includes questions about literacy skills that students feel they are proficient in as well as ones they need to work on. It also gathers information about students’ preferred learning environments and learning styles. This will help to promote a growth mindset because it gets students thinking about skills they want to develop and how they can best achieve those results.
4. One Word Mural
A great way to encourage a growth mindset is to ask students to choose their “one word” for the semester. I provide students with a list of words related to growth, learning and progress. They choose a word that represents their goals and add it to a class mural. This serves as a visual reminder of their goal throughout the semester and also gives them a glimpse into the goals of their peers. The vocab benefits are an awesome bonus!
5. Time Capsule Letter
Part of having a growth mindset is being able to envision future possibilities for yourself. One way to help students realize their potential is to have them write time capsule letters to themselves that they can open at their exam or on the last day of the semester. The idea is that students should write down their goals and describe skills and accomplishments they hope to achieve by the time they read the letter. The letters can be contained in a time capsule jar somewhere safe in the classroom as a reminder of their accountability to pursuing their goals.
What other growth mindset activities do you love to facilitate with your students? Join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram!
