What's your mindset?

Isn’t it ironic that students usually limit the idea that hard work impacts achievement everywhere else in their lives except the classroom? In school, they believe achievement can only come from innate ability. “He’s just smart,” or “I’m not good at math.”

Carol Dweck, in her amazing book Mindset, challenges us to bring the playing field mentality of “no pain, no gain” into the classroom.

A growth mindset is based on the principle that our basic qualities are things we can cultivate through our efforts. We, as teachers, need to help students link successes to their effort and hard work. There is great power, lifelong affects, in knowing that hard work pays off. Let students in on this.

 

 

Here is a wonderful teaching idea we observed in classrooms that helped instill a growth mindset.

Stars and Stairs Feedback:

 

	Begin with a positive, but make sure the positive comment provides detail as to what is so great about it. Then, your students know what they are doing well. A simple “Excellent work” will not offer the feedback students need. How about something like, “Excellent work, I really love the way you showed all your steps with such clarity. It really made it easy to follow!”
	Now, include a growth point. We all have them & students need to know where they need to go to see progress. This instills a growth mindset. You can begin by using one of the following sentence stems: I wonder how it would look if next time you…. What do you think if next time you…? I noticed on the second step you…when you should have…Next time, try…

 

 

 

 

"Bump in the Road"

 

Have you ever noticed that in almost every learning situation, we invariably “hit the wall”?  It’s that moment when you’re not sure what next step you need to take get to your goal.

 In my tutoring sessions with adult learners who are preparing to take their GED tests, there is the added challenge of dealing with lost time in their educational journey and the frustration of forgotten skills.

 

Here’s a little idea to use with your students in any learning situation.  It allows for formative assessment (the kind that helps you as the instructor) and for immediate effective feedback for your students.

 

We hope you’ll try it and share your comments on how it works for you!

 

Place some post-its on students’ work areas.

 

As you work through a lesson, with either a whole group activity or students working independently, be on the look-out for that “bump in the road”.  That’s the moment when students suddenly begin to flounder or in some cases experience that super “aha” moment.

 

Periodically stop the lesson and have the students share on their post-it their confusion/ question/ comment. This allows all students to share in the responses in a collaborative way.

 

Be sure to use these post-its later for your own instructional planning to provide each student with the customized help they may need.

 

Always re-visit these recorded “bumps” to ensure that students feel empowered and more confident with the progress they are making,

 

Here’s a helpful look at formative assessment and effective feedback in action:

 

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=184938

Remember the day when...

Remember the day when Mrs. Pearse couldn’t stop laughing at herself because when she was reading to us she said “fart” instead of “fort?”

Okay, so I hate to admit it, but that was last semester in my college assessment course. And I literally couldn’t pull myself together to finish the reading. Do you know what happened at that moment? We became a family!

It is important for teachers to create a welcoming environment. When children feel comfortable, safe, and accepted, they are more willing to take academic and social risks. We develop a sense of community when its members share common experiences. There are endless ways to do this. Of course, I may not recommend saying “fart” in your class. J

Here are just a few we either used or observed being used in other classrooms.

1.     Pull a prank on the class – There are so many ways you can prank your class. See the hilarious video of teachers dancing behind students! Even just watching it together builds common memories.

2.      Create a famous quote book of your favorite student quotes for the year. Revisit it at different times and giggle about them and how they were used and how no one would understand the book but this class.

3.      Have a class mantra. Make it different every year. Last semester it was “Make it work” by Tim Gunn.

4.      Share in “secret class jokes” together. One day one of my students was presenting on the solar system and in all seriousness he shared a very important fact – “Uranus is filled with gas.” Well I broke out in laughter, because really – that’s funny. Another time, one of my students asked me how he should estimate. I suggested, “Rough.” He asked, “How rough?” I said, “Rough, rough.” It was at that moment that I realized I was barking like a dog. Of course, a student from that class reminded me of this several years later, and she was hysterical remembering the moment!

5.      Have a class song – recently it was Salena Gomez’s “Who says…” Have you listened to it? It has a wonderful message for children.

We'd love to hear your favorite "Remember the day when..." memories.

"Soft skills" and hard work are needed for success!

One of the more urgent challenges for our children today is developing interpersonal and communication skills in a world that seems to thrive on individual pursuits like video games and texting,

In Learning That Never Ends skills like collegiality and collaboration are addressed.   A “one for all and all for one” approach to life is an essential ingredient in order to succeed in today’s global economy. In spite of that, our current educational system typically promotes individualism and independence.  Yet, it is really a sense of interdependence that is vital to successful and satisfying functioning in the adult world!!

         Different learners walk to different beats. Working collaboratively provides ways to develop regard for ourselves and others!

One of the Things I love about you!

 Lifelong Learners see learning as valuable. In order to see learning as valuable, however, students must first see themselves as valuable. Our students can achieve unlimited success if they can identify and trust that they are worth the investment.

 

Here’s a teaching idea I love to use to help students accept and like themselves.

One of the Things I love about you!

Every year, usually after I get to know my students and have taken the appropriate time to build a sense of community, I give them a blank piece of computer paper and ask them to decorate it with their first name landscape style, neatly written and big. But I never revealed why.  

 I take the papers home that night and write one sincere compliment about each student on his/her paper - graffiti style. Be especially thoughtful because your students will use your compliments as a springboard for their own.

The next day, give each student his/her paper back. Allow them a moment to enjoy what you love about them. Provide clipboards if you have them and sit in a circle somewhere if you can. We went in the gym (Older students love this too. I did it with 6^th through 8^th graders).

 Explain that each of us has wonderful and unique qualities that have added so much to the class and today is a perfect time to celebrate the “one thing I love about you.”

 Have students pass their papers on the clipboard to the left and have each person add an additional thoughtful compliment about each person on his/her nameplate.

I especially love when you direct the passing. It’s funny that way. I would direct by giving them a moment of silence to choose something they just love about that person and then say, “Okay, 1, 2, 3 pass.” I would just keep repeating this which gets to be silly, but also keeps order.

 I have had students come back three years later with their paper in hand and share that it helped them get through many a painful day in high school.

 The video clip is a great follow-up to this activity. Students sometimes feel the pressure that they just aren’t good enough. But truly, they are! They are perfect!

 

What's your windshield like?

Lifelong learners are reflective - The power of self-assessment

 Self-assessment is the opportunity to mull over an experience and evaluate it. When we teach our students how to self-assess, we are really handing over the responsibility to understand to them.

And that is a beautiful thing!  

 Here are a few favorite ways to help students self-assess their understanding:

 

1.  What’s your windshield like? – If your understanding was a windshield, how might it look? Clear? Streaky? Muddy? Model what each description would mean for your students. Share and explain your answer and make a plan how you can begin to spray that windshield clean.

 

2.  Paint color strips – Go to any paint store and pick lots of three-color paint strips. They naturally go from light to dark. Have students choose their favorite colors and use them as a self-assessment tool. As your lesson progresses, stop and ask your students to point to where their understanding is so far. Light – totally get it, Middle – kind of get, but may need a little clarification, Dark – no clue yet. This will help you revise your teaching, form small groups, and confer with students. It also teaches students to be proactive learners and fight for understanding.

I’d love to hear some of your favorite ways for students to self-assess! It is always fun to try something new!

Oh, the temptation...

We, as teachers, parents, coaches, and/or youth group leaders want all the children in our lives to be successful and happy. But how can we make it happen? 

Here’s just one idea from Learning That Never Ends.

Lifelong Learners are tenacious! In order to help build our students’ tenacity, my coauthor and I knew we needed to teach them how to control their impulses. Here’s a great teaching idea to do that.

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment indicates that good impulse control is psychologically important for academic achievement and for success in adult life. In this popular test, several children wrestle with waiting to eat one marshmallow in hopes of a bigger prize.

1.   Share a little background about the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, but don’t give away the results.

2.   Show the clip below. It is adorable

3.   Then, have students do a Think/Write/Quad/Share using some thoughtful writing prompt. An example could be “What lesson can you take away from the video clip? How can you apply that lesson this week in your life?”

4.   Then do the big reveal! Show and tell your students that Stanford actually followed the lives of those students in the marshmallow tests and those who had the self-control to not eat the one marshmallow were more successful and more fulfilled adults.

5.   As an exit ticket, have your students revisit their journal entry and then dig deeper into what this may mean to them.

 

Spiraling Upward

We all know what it feels like when our mind and spirit begin to spiral downward. And we also know how frustrating it can be to watch a student, one of our children, or a dear friend allow that spiraling to take them to a very dark place. I have to admit, I've even been there myself.

I want to share an idea from our new book, Learning That Never Ends. The idea is called "spiraling upward." It is quite simple. First you have to know yourself enough to recognize when the mental spiraling downward begins - from the onset. Do you begin by some negative comment about yourself? Is it a short, but dangerous statement of hopelessness that you let slip out and take hold? Do you postpone something that will end up being a positive thing for yourself because of fear?

The trick is to catch hold of that first negative thought or action and shut the spiral down - literally - cut it out. Do some action to stop it from continuing - a quick loud clap works for me, sometimes I physically throw away the thought. Then, here's the important follow-up piece. Visualize this spiral building upward, on curl at a time. Breathe in, breathe out and mention to yourself that you are able to do something good for yourself and that things really do work out. Now take a positive action - this could be a first step to a project you need to do, or it could be as simple as getting your two feet on the floor and getting up.

I taught this method to my students and allowed them to see that they too could have control over their emotions. Our students need to know they have some say in how deep and dark they allow themselves to go. Spiraling upward is a great tool for helping our students become more resilient, tenacious, and self-efficacious.

Give it a try!

I spent the good part of my week preparing pre-service teachers for the new teacher tests. These new tests (PAPAs and PECTs) are killer! My college students have taken them over and over again, some with little success. And yet, as teachers they engage their students with purposeful, meaningful, and relevant lessons. In fact, they used many of the ideas from Learning That Never Ends, and created an environment that modeled lifelong learning for their students. I got rave reviews from both their cooperating teachers and their supervisors. I literally would put my grandson in their classes and be thrilled!

I cannot count how many tears were shed this summer over still another failed module (and by <4 points). I have written to the Department of Education in my state and have spent days trying to break the code of these tests as well. I question the motives of the creators of these new tests, as the only preparation that is suggested to us college instructors is to buy more textbooks from their company. I won’t do that!  

I would love to know what anyone else is doing to help their education students pass.

 

This is my first post about Learning That Never Ends, but it has been 20 years in the making.

You see, I had the privilege of living in the district where I taught.  Because of this, I got to see many of my students grow up around me. I began to notice something over the years; the students who valued learning and saw it as important in my class as sixth graders were the same students who experienced great success as adults. I discovered a pattern. These children, although coming from diverse backgrounds and family situations, all held common traits. I came to describe these commonalities as the qualities of a proficient lifelong learner.
Over the next ten years, I continued with my observation and research on what it takes to become a lifelong learner.  I identified certain qualities that all proficient lifelong learners possess.

Lifelong learners share the following common qualities.

1.      Lifelong learners are tenacious.

2.      Lifelong learners are reflective.

3.      Lifelong learners are metacognitive.

4.      Lifelong learners are divergent thinkers.

5.      Lifelong learners are self-efficacious.

6.      Lifelong learners see learning as valuable.

7.      Lifelong learners are collaborative.

I have always been a proponent of the idea that “the best defense is a strong offense.” I needed to broaden the focus of my teaching. Even more, if students are not aware of the qualities it takes to become a lifelong learner, their capacity to become one is obviously limited.  I was back to the drawing board. What could I change in my instructional practices to instill these qualities in my students? 

That was ten years ago. During that time, I tested hundreds of ways to promote the qualities of a lifelong learner. Little by little, my students began to embrace these qualities and with the use of the ideas from this book, they began to use them more instinctively. I discovered that the qualities it takes to become a lifelong learner can be developed in all children, with proper guidance.  This was ground breaking information and at that point I knew I needed to share it with as many teachers as possible.

I then shared my discoveries on empowering all students with the qualities of a lifelong learner with a friend and well respected administrator, Mary Dunwoody. The end result is our new book, Learning That Never Ends, published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in September.

This work is a result of many years of determination and research. My passion is to empower all of our children with the qualities it takes to be successful. My dream is to level the playing field so everyone has a fighting chance regardless of the limitations forced upon them and my belief is that if teachers, parents, youth group leaders use these techniques, they are giving our youth a fighting chance to have what it takes to be extraordinary!