“Gaining awareness of how we view ourselves and the process of learning and thinking can change how we react to new challenges and life’s inevitable setbacks” (A Mindset For Learning).
With this in mind we have started to identify the traits of a learner with a growth mindset.
According to Mraz & Hertz (Authors of A Mindset For Learning) these traits are defined as:
- Persistence “you try and try again even when it feels hard“
- Empathy “when you feel someone’s feelings in your own heart“
- Optimism “when you do something new, you think ‘I can try,’ and give it your best shot because that’s how you grow“
- Resilience “when you have trouble, you bounce back and try again“
- Flexibility “when one thing doesn’t work, you can try a different way“
We began with persistence (like Maru the cat trying to swing!). After a group discussion sharing our personal experiences with learning skills that were ‘hard’ (required lots of practice), we engaged in a writing activity: Then and Now.
Here are some samples.
Then our group created our persistence poster! They said “persistence means we keep trying. We don’t give up.”
We looked at empathy by reading Hey Little Ant by Hannah Hoose.
Our next poster group said “Empathy means we know how other people feel”.
Finally, over the past few weeks, we have been reading the Frog & Toad stories by Arnold Lobel. Anyone who has ever read these stories knows that Frog is very ‘optimistic‘ while Toad is rather ‘pessimistic‘. After reading the last story, we did a character comparison of Frog and Toad. We all decided that we would rather have Frog’s attitude of optimism! Our group discussion came up with a lot of “Frog-isms” (I can do it) and “Toad-isms” (Blah, I’ll never get it). (So when you hear negative talk, you can remind your child to be more like Frog than Toad!!)
Our last group said “optimism means we think positively”.
Thanks to all our poster creators so far…you can check them out on our classroom windows!
Watch this week as we define resilience and flexibility.