Mindprint Toolbox

Search Results

Please wait...

Instill Growth Mindset

Tags

Social-Emotional Learning All Ages Strategy

Skills

Flexible Thinking

Instill Growth Mindset

All students, regardless of their strengths or needs

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Students will develop a growth mindset.
  2. Teacher Takeaways: While self-belief, or growth mindset, cannot replace aptitude or overcome all weaknesses, it is true that all students will perform significantly better over time if they believe that their work and effort will lead to better results. Cultivate growth mindset by modeling and reinforcing growth mindset language and principles (next slide) in all environments.

Growth Mindset To-do’s

  1. Praise the student's effort, not the outcome. Students will learn over time that if they keep working hard, the positive outcomes will follow, even if they are not immediate.
  2. Set mini-goals with students, so they can work incrementally towards achievable outcomes. They will feel the rewards of accomplishment and be motivated to keep going.
  3. Demonstrate positive thinking. Fight the urge to react negatively to mistakes, since children tend to model the behavior they see more than what they hear.
  4. Encourage laughter whenever appropriate, including the ability to laugh at your own mistakes. Laughter breeds positive feelings. The ability to take one's own mistakes in stride is key to recovering more easily, learning from mistakes, and moving forward.
  5. Help students view mistakes as a steppingstone to future success. Every successful person has stories of the failures they had to overcome along the way.
  6. Have students play the Mindprint game to remind them that the most successful leaders had to overcome enormous obstacles and mistakes.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Research shows that students who believe they can develop and increase their knowledge and capabilities outperform over time. Further supported by research about the malleability of the brain, it is critical that students are motivated to exert the effort and take ownership of their learning. Read the research of Carol Dweck and others on growth mindset, grit and other ways to motivate students.

Best-suited for students with weaker: Metacognition (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)