Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted, but we’ve been so busy with the film festival…I can’t wait for all of you to see what we have accomplished! Our theme for the film festival is A Growth Mindset, so we’ve been talking about what that means in many different ways in our classroom.
For example, in gym, we’ve been learning about skipping! We started with single ropes; learning to skip forwards, backwards, on one foot, while we walk, and with a partner. 
Then we tried long ropes. We’ve been introduced to; ‘the snake’, ‘the ocean’, ‘the mountain’, ‘blue bells’, and full on skipping. Turning the rope together is also a huge skill.
We are now experimenting with ‘Chinese Skipping Ropes’. We are learning to work together, take turns, and respect everyone’s diverse abilities. As we continue to practice we recognize that we are all in a different place on our learning journey–but we are all working hard to master these skills!
Whew–what a great bunch of athletes.
Another way we have been developing our Growth Mindset is by building musical instruments for our science unit on sound. We each had to; experiment with, research, choose, design, and then build a musical instrument that would make 2 sounds using various household materials.
WOW! We spend two hours on the building portion–and the students worked together to figure out challenging parts–helping when others needed it. You’ll have a chance to see them all displayed at the Film Festival. You’ll also see the process we went through to make them!
We have also been looking at examples of A Growth Mindset in others. One of our favourite characters is “Maru” the cat on Youtube. We recognize that he has A Growth Mindset in everything he does. We recently watched him learning how to get on a swing–YES, A SWING!
Check it out together here: Maru Swings
Our next challenge is “Reader’s Theater”…
And just like Maru, we’re learning: Don’t Give Up!