April 19, 2017

   

Educational Excellence

Intentional Instruction

Collaborative Community

Growth Mindset………………..Helping Students Face Failure

One of the areas where students struggle is with the idea of failure. Whenever possible, take opportunities to discuss the value of failure.

We can all learn from our failures, and it is important for all of us to challenge how we view ourselves as learners.  As we age, many of us get more rigid in our thinking.  Young children can often serve as guides because they are learning and making new mistakes daily.  Developing a growth mindset is knowing that learning is not just about producing the right answers all the time.  It is about giving yourself permission to improve constantly, to make the effort, to think outside of the box, to create, innovate, and to stretch your brain and grow.  

Asking students to analyze a scenario, quote, or movie clip can be an effective way to engage students in a discussion about the value of failure.

Here are some examples of famous failures that you could discuss and analyze with your students:

• ·        R.H. Macy: The founder of Macy’s department store failed at 7 previous business attempts.
• ·        Colonel Sanders: Harland Davis Sanders’ famous chicken was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it.
• ·        Thomas Edison: He conducted experiments on his concepts 9,000 times before he created the lightbulb.
• ·        Post-it Notes: A scientist at 3M Company was working to create a super-strong adhesive; it was a failure. Instead, he accidently made a reusable, pressure sensitive adhesive that later was utilized in sticky notes. 

Growth Mindset………………..Words that Matter

Changing your words can change your mindset. With a positive mindset, mistakes are for learning from; something new is an exciting challenge; hard work brings results; the world is a great place to be. Notice the difference in language used in describing the negative versus the positive. Changing your mindset can be brought about simply by changing the words that you use. Your choice of words, talking to yourself and to your children, is an important way in which you can create a happy world view.

You can help your children to develop a positive mindset by helping them to change the words that they use.

Words are powerful and our brains believe what we hear. Help your children, and yourself, to hear the right sorts of words that are going to create a great world in which they are happy to be and, consequently, in which they will succeed.

*Staff Shout Outs* 

**Everyone is AWESOME!**

April 12, 2017

   

Educational Excellence

Kudos to the teachers who are using specific, targeted reading strategies with their guided reading groups! 

Intentional Instruction

Our journey continues with the Growth Mindset.  We now move into learning how students learn from failure.  Einstein said, “Failure is success in progress.”  He also said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new”.

The growth mindset is characterized by a willingness to try new strategies to find a better result.  The learning process is filled with mistakes and setbacks.  Learning is messy.  Real learning in your classroom with twenty-two different kids, with twenty-two different brains and twenty-two different perspectives is messy, loud, and unpredictable.  You can plan how to navigate those inevitable mistakes.

1.       Normalize mistakes.

a.       Inform students they’ll make mistakes and the mistakes will help them learn.  Having a consistent process for tackling mistakes makes students feel that mistakes are routine and expected, not embarrassing and uncommon.  Students need opportunities to experience failure at school so they understand that failing is not something to be covered up or feared, rather it is important and a natural experience from which they learn.

2.       Value mistakes as learning opportunities.

a.       Turning mistakes into valuable learning opportunities is also key to normalizing them. 

3.       Coach students through setbacks.

a.       Coach students when they make mistakes  Don’t fix the problem for them.  To benefit from the mistake a student has to work through it.

Strategies to help students:

1.        Ask three before me (teacher)

2.       Open-ended questions used by the teacher to provoke problem-solving in struggling students.  Give students time to answer.  “Why do you think this happened?”  “What’s another strategy you could use?”  “How might you avoid this mistake next time?”  Encourage students to think through the cause of the mistake and develop strategies to fix it.

3.       Reflection Journal—use to reflect on their learning

4.       Pre-flection activities-before learning occurs ask students to think about potential obstacles. 

5.       Use the mistake as part of learning

Remember, we as professionals are also “learners” and it’s okay if we mistakes too in our learning.

The Growth Mindset Coach by Annie Brock and Heather Hundley

Collaborative Community

Classroom management is an art. For some teachers, managing a classroom is natural and comes easy, while others struggle to find a balance and must test different approaches. Even when you have firm control, you may worry it will slip away at any moment.

Regaining control and resetting your class may be an uphill battle, but it’s never too late in the school year to meet it head-on. It may take rethinking your philosophy on classroom management or reaching out to a colleague or mentor for help.

Unfortunately, there’s no one solution that will magically transform your classroom—you may have to implement a variety of tactics—but we do have a few tips to consider as you set out to regain control of your class.

1. Focus on being a good teacher.

It’s natural for you to want to be liked by your students, but just because your students like you doesn’t mean you’re an effective teacher. Your number one priority is to educate your students, and you can’t do this if you’ve lost control of your classroom.

Focus on being a good teacher, earning your students’ trust and respect, even if that means strictly enforcing classroom policies your students don’t like, but you know are valuable to maintaining order in your class. If you allow your class to walk all over you, you won’t be able to effectively teach them, nor will they trust, respect, or like you.

2. Be firm and consistent.

Knowing that your number one priority is to be a good teacher, you have to be firm and consistent with rules, policies, and the associated consequences of those rules being broken. Your students will eventually adjust if you set firm rules and are consistent in their implementation, but also keep in mind that those who are abiding by your rules should be rewarded. If you’re calling home for students who are being disruptive, you should also call home for those students who are respecting your classroom and setting a good example for their classmates.

3. Turn weaknesses into strengths.

If your students have a weakness for talking during class, let them talk. Take time during your class to foster group discussions about your lessons and what you’re studying, and if the discussion begins to stray, guide them back to the conversation. If a student refuses to stay on topic or continues to disrupt the discussion, remember to be consistent and firm when it comes to consequences.

4. Collaborate with your students.

Sit down with your students to draft a list of behaviors and expectations they believe are necessary to successfully learn and for you to help them do so. Students understand what’s appropriate and not appropriate in a classroom, and they’re a world of knowledge when it comes to what should be expected with them. Once you’ve drafted a list of expectations, have your students sign off on it and hang it on your wall so it’s easily accessible.

5. Reward well and often. 

Discipline isn’t just punishing a student for not following the rules, it’s also rewarding a student for respecting their teacher and their classmates. Whether you decide to do whole class calls as mentioned above, or have other ideas for rewarding those students who model good behavior, acknowledgement of positive actions is equally important when it comes to regaining control of your classroom.

*Staff Shout Outs* 

Kristen English for embracing a new way of doing “Morning Work”.

Melissa Horan for implementing a center menu and holding her students accountable during station time.