Where do you already implement growth mindset in your classroom? How can you add extra focus on growth mindset during a unit focused on problem solving?
First things first; have a growth mindset of your own and model it and demonstrate it every day. The simplest tactic is to show your work. Show that taking the time and going the distance step by step will produce expected results. As a supplemental activity, I have students work one of the online typing lesson/test apps and give “extra credit” for achieving increasingly higher performance benchmarks (i.e. 36wpm/96%, 45wpm/@96%, 60wpm/98%, 72wpm/98%). Their performance will improve with practice and directly affect their coding proficiency and accuracy.
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In accordance with our school district’s initiative to implement literacy, I am focusing on content area literacy skills (numerical and text reading). I am noticing the difficulty some students are having with reading comprehension skills. Specifically, content area reading. Therefore, I will assign technical reading and writing assignments applicable to what students are already learning.
One assignment that I gave a couple of weeks ago was to read assign articles suggested in the curriculum, think pair share and develop a presentation, in groups, based on their common findings. Consequently, students did quite well collaborating and by improving the technical reading and writing skills. Overall their problem-solving mindset seemingly and eventually becomes more depth.
Hopefully, I can keep this same momentum throughout the year.
I am adding to this post based on another project that we have completed:
I have already implemented growth mindset in all my classes because failure will not be an option. As I facilitate, students will approach problem-solving matters and be able to reassess as often as needed with my immediate input and redirection.
Specifically, as we started to aggregate data for the communications and data chart from Unit 1 students were instructed to make mathematical connections with the data that they collected and without using the computer or calculators. We calculated the sum, average, mean, median and mode. Some students had difficulty and some students did not. Most students were not familiar with using an excel spreadsheet therefore I demonstrated because most students did not know how to apply these formulas on a spreadsheet. Although using formulas was not a requirement for this lesson, we took it to another level that was “something new” for most of the students.
Parents have sent emails out of concern about future expectations of this class and two parents have sent emails stating that their child is enjoying ECS up to this point.
I will continue to advocate this ECS – Coding class continuously by sending quarterly newsletters to parents. I have already sent the first quarter newsletter to as many parents that I could reach and I am highly confident that this will be a great year.
I implement growth mindset all the time, as I try to continuously challenge my students. Teaching in an inner city school, I constantly challenge the culture of being static and fixed. Giving students a daily A-Ha moment is awesome.
I have to keep a log of how much I have learned personally and also keep a log of my students and where they have been in the past several weeks in Code.org. I can almost see them passing me with their ideas and thoughts going crazy!
The longer I teach, the more I see a need for a growth mindset. If students are going to be successful in society, they are going to need this mindset. I think a great way to create a growth mindset in the classroom is through the culture for learning in your classroom. I use words such as challenge when teaching. I challenge the students to attack the problems I give. I challenge the students to find a different method than the person next to them. I preach that different ways of thinking are a good thing. We try to find as many ways of approaching a problem as we can. This tends to be easy in Math Classroom, and in the ECS curriculum. There are opportunities for growth, you just have to take them when you see them. Don’t let those teachable moments pass.
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I loved the idea of modeling it yourself. I’m already teaching Unit 3 this semester and have a great time learning new html codes to teach the students or to have them challenge me with some and let me guess what they do or where they would go.
From Day 1, I told students that some of them already know more than me and that it’s okay. Also, when giving instructions and tasks in the class, I keep it very open ended. At first, it was very unnerving for the students to have such open minded instructions, but soon they realized that their ideas are important and unique ideas are not only acceptable, but welcome!
I implement a growth mindset by encouraging my students to be creative and think outside of the box in a safe environment.
Student are always encouraged to always encourage to work hard and do their best in all that they do. In the problem solving unit, students are reminded to always be open-mined and tackle each problem using the 4 steps of the problem solving process.
The more I teach, the more I seem to use growth mindset. I have basically no time limit on project completion because each student is an individual learner that learns at his/her own pace. I encourage thinking outside the box when solving problems.
To focus on growth mindset, I will praise my students for their hard work and perseverance during the unit focused on problem solving.
Project based learning is how I encourage growth in mindset. They work collaboratively to solve a problem and are encouraged to express their opinion and creativity.
Growth Mindset needs to be implemented the very first day of my class. I let my students know upfront that my class is a safe environment to grow, one that will never criticize or chastise new ideas–but instead, welcome them with excitement and support. I also let my students know that I am not out to get them and cause them to fail this class–if they don’t get the concept today …there’s always tomorrow and the nest day for it to click. This relieves the pressure to learn everything in a box and allows them to think outside the box as well.
Growth mindset needs to be observed closely while I am deliver the lesson or asking questions daily. Observing the efforts of the shy student, find out what will get his attention and encourage him/ her to participate on group activities/ projects. They work collaboratively to solve a problem and are encouraged to express their opinion and creativity.
Project based learning is our school standard and I believe this encourages a growth in mindset. Students work collaboratively to solve problems in various classes and sometimes cross curriculum. They are encouraged to express their opinions and creativity to include construction feedback to all instructors involved without fear of receiving a bad grade or reprisal. We use the Gold Standard training provided by Buck’s Institute which is paid for by the school.
I implement growth mindset in the beginning parts of the classes I teach by explaining how I learned most of what I’m teaching them. No one just knows how to do things on a computer, everybody learns how to do it. When I start a lesson, I state the basic goals of the lesson as well as an extended goal. Everyone should learn and grasp the basic goal. The extended goal is there to extend the thinking and build upon the basic. Students have to apply themselves and work hard to achieve the extended goal.
One way I could add extra focus on growth mindset would be to add some intermediate goals between the basic goal and the extended goal to provide a type of scaffolding for students to see their progress.
One way I implement a growth mindset in the classroom (Digital Visualizations) is by using project planners. Students plan their own goals in a program. For example, “I would like to create a 3D endless runner using Maya and Unreal.” Each day students write and visually express what they achieved, how they struggled, problems they ran into and how they solved them. Once they have completed an original project they create tutorials using Camtasia to teach others how they achieved their goals. I am consistently reminding them that the “struggle is real, and if you are not struggling you are not challenging yourself.”
The way I implement growth mindset in my classroom is to allow my students to share their views. I allow them to start assignments by writing their thoughts then they listen to each of their peers to see if their are ideas can add to their answer. The students are allowed the freedom to try different ways to solve a problem. The students get to decide which approach best solves the problem. My students are encouraged to take risk and reflect on the process so they can continue growing as students.
I implement growth mindset in critical thinking. I believe that if can get the students to think outside of the box, they will have developed a growth mindset, and fixed will be behind them.