Blog 3 Growth Mindset/Collaboration/Student Agency Kimberly Trott

Blog 3 Growth Mindset/Collaboration/Student Agency    Kimberly Trott

The growth mindset versus the fixed mindset presented in the TED video by Carol Dweck was a nice reminder that some students are very self-directed and seek to gain knowledge in the classroom while other students are in a fixed mindset.  Even smart kids can be in a fixed mindset if they do not choose to seek growth in what they are doing in the classroom. Growth mindset students enjoy learning for the pleasure of personal understanding.  There are also a small group of students that actually see school as a place to learn and treat it and the teacher as a facilitator of this knowledge.  I find many of the ESOL students in my classroom show this ability.  Over the years, the students that actively seek my help, ask for clarification, and then seek to correct inaccuracies in their understanding are the minority of students.

After reviewing the student agency chart several topics stuck out:

The most difficult ones to implement as a teacher for me are the use of effort and practice to grow, growing from setbacks, seeking feedback, actively participating,  using effort and practice to grow, finding personal relevance in the assignments, and how the material and what they do in the classroom will impact them and their community.

   

Seek Feedback: as a teacher, I need to incorporate more feedback and revision activities in the week.  When I offer students the opportunity to revise their work most choose to keep the grade they have rather than revise the material.  I need to not make it an option.  The revision needs to be part of the grade and assignment for all students; even good work can be revised some.

Active Participation: In many of my low performing classes, active participation is lagging. The challenge is finding a way to hold their attention and inspire dialogue that is meaningful and respectful of other students.  This is a challenge.  PBL should be able to address this if you have enough high quality rubrics that assess active participation and self-behavior management.

Impact Self and Community: This is something that would be pretty easy to implement.  This topic can be addressed by setting aside a small amount of time to discuss with each student his or her affect upon the classroom atmosphere.  I actually like this idea a lot. They could fill out a self-assessment each week and compare it to my assessment of them in a short one on one meeting.

Using Effort and Practice to Grow: This goes alongside the idea of the student seeking feedback to grow.  Most students who fail a test or make a low grade realize that it is the result of poor classroom work skills or a lack of actively learning the material that is to be assessed.  The goal would be to implement a way to make students participate in this if they are not.  Example: Maybe a student who writes so poor that it is hard to grade their paper; you grade it, and say next time I am not grading it if the penmanship is not better.  If it is not, you should make them redo it or they suffer the consequences. 

Growing From Setbacks: One idea here might be to include a dialogue box at the bottom of every test or quiz and after handing back the test have them write a refection about why they made the grade they did.  It could be part of the assignment grade.

Find Personal Relevance: This can be implemented by the teacher and is done in PBL.  As a teacher, you must find a way to incorporate the relevance of the classroom into the wider world.  Teachers can help students see how what and why they are learning will affect their life beyond school and have relevance in the future.