Growth Mindset

“I will never be that smart!”

“This is too hard!”

“I give up!”

“I can’t do this!”

When school work becomes difficult, students have a tendency to say the phrases above. We’ve all felt frustration and we’ve all wanted to give up. This is why we’ve been focusing on changing our words to help change our mindset in fourth grade. We are working towards replacing phases like “this is too hard” with “this may take some time and effort.” Before we dive deep into the content we will be covering this year, it is important that students understand that they are capable of more than they think. The last few days we have been discussing having a growth mindset through a number of different activities. We read The Most Magnificent Thing, we did a growth vs fixed mindset word sort, and we did quiz-quiz-trade with different scenario cards.

The last activity we did this week was read and discuss the book Giraffes Can’t Dance. We talked about how it feels when you think you can’t do something and see that others are having an easier time. After this discussion, we agreed to outlaw the phrase “I can’t!” and replace it with “I can!”. Students then personalized an “I can!” that will hang in our classroom for the rest of the year as a reminder that they can do anything they set their mind to!