Transcript - AI Generated
[0:19] Well guys, today I'm going to be talking to you and giving you five strategies that you can use to promote a growth mindset in your classroom.
Now growth mindset has been around for quite a long time you can go and read books by Carol Dweck and there's a whole bunch of others that talk about mindset and you know others talk about it as grit as well but essentially the growth mindset if you're not sure what it is is the idea that you can you can continue to improve yourself based on the effort that you put in essentially and so it's not that you're born smart or dumb or that you're born talented or untalented it's actually about you know I'm born a particular way but then I know that if I put my mind to it if I put in the effort if I train hard I can improve in whatever it is and actually get to the point where I am an expert and there's plenty of research now that supports the fact that people with a growth mindset who think that you know they can improve the outcomes by improving their efforts and going about the learning process better the people who have that growth mindset tend to be more successful in life and that is in lots of different ways of defining success not just about money.
And so this episode I'm giving you five strategies, five strategies to promote that growth mindset in the classroom.
Five strategies to promote a growth mindset
[1:40] And they're not overly complex, the first one is to encourage students to use the word yet when they encounter challenges and so we're going to talk a little bit about using the word yet a lot in your classroom.
Number two is going to be when you're giving feedback to actually focus on the effort the students have put in, the strategies they've used, their perseverance and overcoming barriers and that kind of stuff rather than labelling them as oh you're so smart look you got that right or being talented you're amazing you're talented look look how good you are.
Actually focusing on well you must have trained hard to be able to be this good that kind of stuff.
[2:15] The third one will be emphasising that mistakes are actually a natural part of our learning process and making sure that students understand that they see that and all kinds of stuff.
The fourth one is to break down complex problems into smaller steps and provide feedback along the way and remember that feedback focusing on the effort, strategies and perseverance of the student.
And then the fifth one is to demonstrate a growth strategy yourself for your own behaviour and the language that you use in the classroom.
First strategy: Encouraging the use of the word "yet"
[2:46] Well, let's dive into the first strategy, which is to start using the word, yet.
And this is just encouraging your students to use it and you using it yourself.
And this is about the idea of basically, if you hear a student say, I don't understand that, right? I don't get this.
[3:03] You want to prompt them to actually add the word yet at the end of their statement.
So they're saying, I don't understand this yet, or I don't get that yet.
And then that automatically enforces or reinforces the idea that they can get that, they can understand that.
They just haven't got there yet, they've got to work on it, they've got to keep improving themselves, they've got to go back and revise something or they've got to practise a particular skill again so that they actually get there.
And so having that yet put onto the end of these kind of statements helps your students to go well this is where I'm going yeah I'm not there yet but I can get there right that yet means that I will get there whereas if they just left at I don't understand this then either they're waiting for someone else to do the work and explain it to them again or they just think they're never going to get there and so you want to be shifting their focus to that yet so that they're constantly going well I don't get this so this is hard for me it's hard for you now, but it won't be in another six months when we come back to it, because you would have done it and applied it so many times that it's gonna become easy for you.
And so you're doing that and you're reinforcing the idea that understanding and skills are developed and that they're not just ingrained innate things that people are born with.
Second strategy: Providing feedback on effort and strategies
[4:22] Okay, so that's one, that's a simple, very easy to apply strategy.
[4:27] Two, the second strategy to promote mindset in your classroom is the feedback, right?
And this is making sure our feedback isn't just focusing on the fact that they got it right or got it wrong, and you're not praising them because they're smart, you're not praising them because they're talented, you're not praising them because of who they are.
You're praising their efforts, you're giving them feedback about their perseverance, all that kind of stuff.
So focusing on the strategies students use.
So if they get something wrong, you go, oh, I can see here you've actually used the wrong strategy, try this strategy instead.
And then the student goes, oh, okay, I can do it. I just used the wrong process in doing that. And then they go, oh, look, I spelled it out. I got it right.
Yeah, and particularly, you know, think of maths and that kind of stuff.
There's a very clear strategic process of science, very clear strategic processes for going through things.
And if a student gets that process wrong, yeah, it's the process.
They're just gonna go back, I'm gonna learn that process better so that I can then get that right. And so that's focusing on strategies in your feedback.
You can focus on the effort as well.
So maybe they've not put in enough effort and we've seen lots of kids who don't put in enough effort, right? It's not often because they don't care about whatever it is that you've asked them to do.
[5:34] They don't put in the effort and so we want to try and encourage our students to put in the effort and go hey You know Think of something that you've done before that you've successful that you are very successful at you know How much effort have you actually put into that?
You know, and so for those of you, you know, i'm a pdhp teacher So I teach a lot of you know, health and movement and that kind of stuff generally and so the kids who are actually, Problematic for in my classrooms often not the same kids are the problematic in your english classrooms and stuff like that But if you think to a student, if they're struggling in English, but you know they're really good at soccer or they're amazing at gymnastics or something, ask them, how much effort do you put into that?
And they'll tell you, they train every day or they train three times a week, two hours each time they train, they've got games on the weekends, and they've been doing it for years.
[6:19] And then you go, right, well, you've put in a lot of effort to get that success.
In order for you to be successful in this, we need to put in effort here as well.
And you're not saying that you want them to put in the same amount of effort necessarily unless they have a goal you know if it's English and they have a goal of being a journalist or something and then they do need to put in that kind of effort so they can refine their ability to critique and write and all that kind of stuff to that level whereas if they want to be an elite soccer player or something then that's where they should be putting in that much effort but they still need to put in effort at other places but not necessarily the same amount but just just identifying and showing to them how effort is what leads to the satisfaction and the success in the fields that they say that they enjoy right and so you can say well here in my subject too if you put in some effort right just put in more effort than you're currently doing you will get better results.
[7:10] Okay and then the other thing is perseverance. Perseverance helping your students to overcome those barriers and so giving them feedback that says hey I actually saw how you overcame that issue in this process. You couldn't work out.
[7:25] You know, what a coefficient was or you couldn't work out how to actually structure this paragraph so that it was persuasive and you went about overcoming that barrier.
You went and learned stuff. You went and had a conversation with this student who you know is really good at this subject area and that's how you then developed it.
And so you're actually praising the fact that they put in the effort and overcame something and showed perseverance, not on the fact that they got it right in the end, right?
So you don't want to negate all that effort. And the other thing that this would do is it'll switch it around.
[7:55] Okay, you'll have kids in your class who aren't putting that effort but are doing well and you can actually say to them Hey, you should be doing better because even though you're doing well compared to other people, right?
You're you're not putting in the effort You're not persevering beyond what you could be doing and so you start to encourage them and calling them to account go Hey, you could get a lot better at this if you wanted to let's shift the bar for you in terms of where you're heading your goals and let's increase your effort so that you're actually progressing at the same rate as other people who are putting in the massive amounts of effort because they're going to catch up to you in fact they'll probably overtake you if you don't start putting in effort right that's something that we can focus on as well with our students as we're giving that feedback and so this is not just necessarily feedback on a task this is feedback in general that you're giving as well any conversations you have in your class let these kinds of things you're focusing on strategy effort and perseverance dominate that kind of talk that happens in your class around success rather than talent and you know being smart and that kind of stuff.
Hard work and dedication over innate intelligence.
[8:55] So we want the students to understand that hard work and dedication are the keys to improvement not being born smart.
Being born smart means you can't improve even a smart person can't improve they're stuck at that level so when they come across someone who's smarter suddenly they're like I'll give up because this person's smarter than me.
No that person is just putting in more effort right it's about getting back to the things to actually create.
The end results of great outcomes.
So focusing on the process and how they can continue to improve in our feedback.
Now the third strategy is when we're dealing with mistakes.
Okay, and we want students to know that mistakes are part of learning and so let's celebrate mistakes.
So when we find out, you know, when someone comes and goes, oh, I keep getting this wrong, I can't get it right, you go, awesome, right?
This is a great chance for you to learn because now we've found something you can't do.
If you could do it, you're not learning anything. But now we've found that you can't do let's focus on it.
Let's improve Let's make sure we're developing our perseverance as we do this and we're going to be successful in, Overcoming this and the mistake is fantastic because we've identified where you need to improve But mistakes are amazing and so we can highlight this in the whole process of learning I love this guy called Mark Robar.
My son's really into him as well.
He's an engineer He used to work for NASA and he now has his own YouTube channel And he has these things, little boxes that he sends to kids.
They're called, he calls it Crunch Labs, I think.
[10:21] And one of the things that I love most about what he sends with it, so he sends the child this whole package that they're meant to put together and it comes with a video.
And the video explains how he went about creating what they've got and the whole engineering stuff behind it.
But one of the things that he shows often in there is how many times he failed.
And so he's got this one that's about, he created this little conveyor belt where a duck comes across the top and you're meant to shoot the duck, it falls over, and then as it passes, it ticks something over so that it's counting how many times you've shot it, and then it goes underneath, and as it goes under, it goes back the right way up, and then it comes back up, and it's standing again, right?
And so he's just got these two ducks that are cycling around, and you shoot them down multiple times, but they pop back up for the next time you're trying to shoot.
[11:04] And he shows the kids, you know, that this actually took him 20 or 30 different tries to actually get the duck to do this so that it would fall over and pop back up and that it could fall over in both directions depending on which side you were shooting from.
And he's got this whole process that he shows, but the failing, just the constant failing that he's, and he constantly iterates, and this is part of the learning process.
You have to fail so that you can keep getting better and find the right result.
So when you fail, it's not that you've got everything wrong.
It's just that, okay, that doesn't work.
That's now something we know. We've learned something. what else could we try that will work?
What might we adjust or modify to get this to work better next time?
And so celebrating those mistakes and go, all right, this is our chance now to learn. We now know that doesn't work. That doesn't get you to where you want to get.
What can we do to improve that? And so we start to provide opportunities for students to share and to learn from their errors or to reflect even on how they overcame barriers and setbacks.
Reflecting on mistakes and overcoming barriers.
[12:02] And so we can have students share what they're doing in class.
We can have them go, right.
[12:07] This guy failed right and you go look everyone you know this person failed how cool is that right and you're actually celebrating and making failure a good thing in your class and then you can build in time for students to reflect so you might use like a google, form or any kind of survey form where you might have a series of questions that are scaffolded for them or maybe you don't need that because you're dealing with seniors or something but you start to give them these opportunities to reflect on their learning and go where do they make mistakes, how do they overcome those mistakes, what mistakes might I make in the future, what strategies could I use to overcome them.
[12:40] You know, identifying what parts of the mistake, you know, what actually led to that, how can I adjust that going forward, all that kind of stuff, having the students to think back on their barriers, think back on their setbacks, think back on their mistakes, and then what they learned from that and how that then improved what they were doing and so just ingraining this kind of thing into what's happening in your classroom sets your kids up to having a better growth mindset and seeing that effort and you know overcoming perseverance all that kind of stuff is what sets them up to be successful in your classroom.
And it requires really a really good classroom culture because you don't want to say oh look everyone this kid made a mistake everyone laugh at him okay that's that's not a growth mindset kind of culture in your class and you want to set up the culture where you know when a kid makes a mistake you know maybe you ring a bell and everyone cheers or something right this is something that should be positive in the learning process and so we create a culture that shows that mistakes and stuffing up and getting things wrong is actually a good thing in the process of learning.
Shortening feedback loops to increase learning progress.
[13:43] Okay, our fourth strategy is to shorten the feedback loop.
Okay, so we're gonna break down larger learning processes.
Right, so when we have these larger things that we're kinda trying to get our students to do, we're gonna break them down into smaller steps because that's gonna increase the feedback.
[14:01] Right, we're shortening those feedback loops so that they can say, okay, I haven't quite achieved this.
What do I need to do? You're either getting feedback around that, maybe increase their effort over here, or maybe they need to overcome this barrier.
Maybe they got this mistake and so they have to fix that and so they're learning and they get feedback that is happening And then they go, okay, I've achieved that now.
The next step is here I'm going to get to there and The breaking it up into those steps creates that feedback so the students can look and go Look, I've already I've come this far and now I've just got this little bit left to go so they can see their progress It shows them the effort that they've got to put in to achieve the longer-term goal because what happens with the longer-term goal is that they Actually move outside of that zone of proximal development.
[14:39] Right so that area where it's a challenging enough task but it's one that they're likely to succeed in and so if you give them a really big task that's what sometimes they look at it and go this is so far beyond what I can already do I don't see how I'm going to get there and so by breaking it up into those steps they can go well I can get that first step I know I can get to the third step right this week so let's let's work on that and then once they're there they go okay it's only two steps further than I'm going to get there and I thought I wasn't going to get there at all and so breaking it down shows them that it's actually really achievable and gives them the steps the processes to get there but it helps them to develop the idea of this is the effort that's required to get to that end goal I need to be able to do this and then to be able to do that right until they know what to work on and developing and putting in the effort for those things and they're persevering and overcoming those barriers and the steps that they get wrong and make mistakes and they're getting celebrated you know all this stuff kind of comes together and creates a fantastic culture in your classroom but really helps our students to see.
[15:33] Learning as a fantastic thing and all the difficulties that come with it and helps to develop that growth mindset for them.
That's how you might highlight student progress in their learning and help them to constantly look forward, to their future progress even once they achieve that longer goal right you can say all right now we're here and then the next bigger goal is over here let's break that one up right and we're going to keep going we're going to keep progressing based on our efforts based on our perseverance based on you know us developing ourselves, in that learning process and using other people to develop us as well because it's not just about developing ourselves.
[16:08] Okay our last point, point number five the strategy that I want you to use to Modelling a growth mindset by sharing and overcoming mistakes.
[16:11] increase the growth mindset kind of culture in your classroom to help your students with this growth mindset is to model it.
Okay, I think one of the greatest things that we can do for our students is just model things over and over and over again.
And so you wanna share the mistakes that you make with your class and how you had to work and overcome it.
And that can be right at that time, right?
I've just made a mistake in the class or maybe I've planned something for this lesson and it's not working.
I'll go, hey guys, I'm sorry. You know, this plan that I've got for this lesson, it's not working, I've stuffed something up, I've overlooked a particular step or something.
We need to change, we need to iterate because I've made a mistake.
So let's brainstorm together, come up with a solution to overcome my mistake.
[16:55] And that is in the learning process. It'll help me as a teacher to learn, it's gonna help you guys.
Let's do this. And so that becomes a learning process for them, but also they see you modeling a growth mindset.
But you're like, hey, I made a mistake. How good is that? How can I improve?
That is great for your students to see.
And so sharing your mistakes, you can also reflect and share some of the past mistakes.
You know, I've had heaps of mistakes as a teacher, or even just generally in life, things that I've stuffed up and learned from and how I've adapted and kept going afterwards.
And so sharing your mistakes is a fantastic way to help your students to develop that growth mindset and to see that you're not judging them because they got something wrong.
You're gonna judge them more because they give up or because they don't put in the effort, right? that's more what we care about in our classrooms.
Learning Together: Modeling Perseverance and Effort
[17:40] Another way that you can model it is that you can learn something new with the students and get things wrong next to them Okay, so when your students have to learn a new skill, so sometimes for example in, In one of the subjects I teach regularly we used to have to teach the kids a new skill Right, they had to learn a new physical skill and it would say for example Juggling or throwing with their non-dominant arm and so you can join the students in this process And you can go, okay guys, I don't know how to juggle yet either, so I'm going to learn with you.
And they can see you stuffing up and continuing, but you want to model the perseverance, the effort, so that at the end of, say you're going to do it over two or three weeks, by the end of that time, you will be able to go, look, look what I've achieved based on the effort that I've put in.
[18:25] And so you can then talk to other students about what they're doing, what effort they're putting in, how often they are practising, that kind of stuff.
And then you can apply it to other things that you're learning with them.
So maybe you're learning how to break apart essays and how to write them really well, or something like that.
And you can actually show students, well, hey, look, you're learning this point of essay writing.
I'm actually doing a course at the moment where I'm learning from a journalist about how to write persuasively and create really good arguments and stuff.
And so here you can see how I've gone about that process, but I'm still trying to learn this bit. They've told me this new element and I wanna incorporate that.
Maybe you can get your class to help you with that new learning that you've got. And that's a great way of modelling things and even what the guy does, you know, Mark Robert in his crunch lab stuff That's modelling.
He's showing you hear all my mistakes Okay, and so when the kid then makes a mistake trying to put together the box that he's sent them It's not a big deal.
Embracing Mistakes and Creating a Growth Mindset Culture
[19:17] You just undo it redo it and get it, right?
And so we can go through this now we can help our students We can set up a great growth mindset culture in our classrooms So my five strategies that were in this episode were to use the word yet more often okay adding that to the end of student sentences, making sure we give feedback that focuses on strategies, effort and perseverance not just on smart or talent.
[19:45] We want to celebrate mistakes in our classrooms, want to break big tasks into shorter ones to shorten the feedback loop for our students and And fifth, we wanna be making sure that we model a growth mindset to our students.
So go and give that a go in your classroom.
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So, thanks so much. I look forward to giving you another episode in just a couple of days.
