Chapters 5 and 6
Chapter 5- How Can Students Learn From Failure?
Failure- such a scary and negative word. To me, failure has always been a glaring demon that rears its ugly head every time I have difficulties at home with my children or my husband. I have never looked at failure as a positive, at least not until having worked through this book. As I mentioned in my “Happy New Year” post, this is an area that has been a huge struggle for me, and it is an area that I am determined to change. Failure should be looked at as an opportunity to learn, to grow and to use those critical thinking skills. It will take a lot of self-talk during those difficult times when I want to think of myself as a failure.
In the classroom, the difficult task will be to teach the students about the benefits of failure. The book suggests that the best way to do this is to teach the students about the brain. There are many videos on YouTube that can help teach about mindsets and the brain.
Here are a couple that I have showed to my classroom:
I also had the students do some research on the brain so that they understood more about the parts to the brain, what neurons do and any fun facts they found that were interesting to them.
Another topic that is brought up in this chapter is that of rewarding students. As someone who has used a lot of extrinsic rewards to motivate my students in my learning assistance blocks, I have a lot to learn in how to use more intrinsic rewards.
1. What is the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards? Give examples of different way you use to motivate your students. Ar they intrinsic or extrinsic?
2. How will you teach your students about the benefits of failure?
Chapter 6- What Messages Should Parents Hear About Growth Mindset?
Everyone knows that parents play a key role in the lives and education of their children and should of course be informed about their learning. It is also very important that they be involved in the education of growth mindset. What a child hears at home can make or break their learning at school. If parents are continually supporting a fixed mindset while the child is at home, it will be very difficult for a growth mindset to sink in.
I have yet to inform my parents about the students’ learning about the growth mindset. I am not sure how to do this effectively. I do know that the students have been talking about the brain while they are at home, but we have not gone much further than that. There is a newsletter blurb example in the appendix of the book to teach/talk to parents about the growth mindset. I am not sure that this would be enough. I also thought that it would be great to have an open house night where the students could teach their parents about the growth mindset. I have also thought that Student-led conferences might be the best time. This is still an uncertain area for me. I am hopeful that I will get a better idea in the very near future.
1. How will you inform and teach parents about growth mindset?
2. What messages should parents hear about growth mindset?
As Ricci mentioned, “it’s imperative that teachers develop a climate in their classroom where failure is celebrated and students learn to reflect and redirect so that they can approach a challenging task in a new way or with more effort”. (Ricci, 2013) I have a few thoughts about this statement. As I mentioned previously I use a version of Daily 5 in my classroom. Students choose in which order to do their stations and which reading strategy they will focus on for that day. What they did not choose though, was their writing goal. I let them know if they are to focus on adding capitals and periods to sentences or adding descriptive words to sentences, etc. So what ends up happening is that students bring their writing to me for editing and I scan their writing while thinking of their goal and then inform them of where they need to make changes. I would like to alter this practice so that it is more in line with Ricci’s suggestion. I would like to have students reflecting on their writing and figuring out where they need to make changes. My concern, however is that I would have students reflecting and redirecting and not attending to their writing assignments. In regards to rewards, I like to ask students if their work gets to have a sticker. Some of my students immediately say yes and rush off to the bin of stickers while others will think about whether or not they will go and get a sticker.
I find it is very difficult to get the students to effectively review their own or their peers’ writing. I have even gone over the student-friendly performance standards with them, explaining each of the sections and reviewing samples of writing with this tool. Does anyone have any effective ideas for getting the students to do this?
Intrinsic rewards are a self-reflection; a “I feel good about what I just accomplished or achieved.” Extrinsic rewards can be a school wide incentive. In our school, we give students “Gotcha” tickets where we specify the accomplishment or achievement by checking off one of the following: respect, achievement, ownership,responsibility and safety. The tickets are then put in a communal draw where students names are drawn at our weekly assembly recognizing students’ success. Their picture is taken and put on our display wall each week.
It is important to teach students about the benefits of failure. As I mentioned in one of our earlier posts, our school motto is “I can’t…yet!” We teach our students that failure gives us the opportunity to learn, what we may/may not do differently and how can we grow from it. I love the examples by Ricci such as Ruth Wakefield who invented the chocolate chip cookie. I used her as an example last year when I was teaching my grade 2/3 class. Her failure turned into a great success! Something that everyone can relate to!
Informing and teaching parents about growth mindset could be demonstrated in many ways. I like the idea of an Open House, as well as students teaching their parents about their own growth mindset. Some teachers in our school are using Fresh Grade to show student learning, as well as providing an opportunity to share, reflect and enhance their learning through portfolios. Staff have found that students have shown a greater ownership of their learning, and they are proud of their portfolios because they are able to share it with their families. This allows parents to see their child’s growth. They can go back and reflect on their journey and see what projects they would have done differently than when they first completed them. This allows families to see their child’s growth mindset grow throughout the year.
The difficult thing with the “Gotcha”-type reward systems, I find, is that the students requiring the most support or behavioural changes seem to be the students who get recognized a lot more than the students that behave on a regular basis and float “under the radar” so to speak.
I do love the idea of the portfolios. What a wonderful way to showcase how a student has grown over a year! Fresh Grade seems to be a great way to support the portfolios. I had high hopes of trying this program this year, however, I felt that I had too much on my plate and this would only add a lot more work. How do you feel about the workload it takes to use Fresh Grade?
I agree strongly that “Our goal is to encourage students to internalize the belief that their own actions and behaviors, not external factors, guide them to achievement or failure.” I think that this is very empowering. We have the control, the ability, the opportunity, to be successful, since it is our actions and attitudes, and not random external factors that influence us the most. I feel that if students believe this, then they will have more resilience to deal with failures and set backs. They know that through their own behaviour, they have the power to change things and try again.
I have used extrinsic rewards such as earning choice time for completing tasks or following instructions but I feel that it is partially intrinsic since the child knows that their behaviour was what led to their success and therefore they earned their choice activity through their own actions. Does that make sense?
Our district recently added a short video on growth mindset in math by Jo Boeler to our grade one parent presentation. I enjoyed talking to the parents about this topic as part of this annual parent chat.
I think that the idea of failure is a huge struggle for most people (adults included). Often people see failure not as a learning opportunity but, as a “sign of weakness” (sometimes I think I am even included in this!). I think that the idea of failure being an opportunity for growth is something that needs to be taught to our students in Kindergarten and continually reinforced throughout their time in school. It is easy to get into the mindset that failure is bad- but, it’s all about looking at failure differently. I don’t think that most people view Michael Jordan as a failure and don’t even take into account the numerous times he has failed- it’s just about looking at the situation in a different way….
I love the celebration of failure and of demonstrating how we learn more because of it. I try to tell my students that I am more interested in their process, than in their answer, especially in math. I always ask them how they got their answer. I find that at the age I teach (grades 6 and 7), they are a lot less willing to fail in front of others. Most likely due to a combination of feeling embarrassed and of never before having experienced an environment where it was okay to fail and make mistakes. I see this as a bit of a challenge for my class and also that they have such negative self talk sometimes and will give up on something they see as too hard before they even really try. I have talked with my students already about how important it is to make mistakes and that that is the moment when you really learn and when your brain is working the most. They do really like learning about how their brain works. I have not yet talked with parents about growth mindsets, but I think this would definitely help, especially if they are using the same language as we are at school and if they also support failing as an opportunity to learn.
I have been dealing with negative self-talk and mistakes as failure from my 7 year old son. It is so disheartening to think that at such a young age he is already struggling with a fixed mindset. My husband and I are desperately trying to change this view and celebrate the mistakes, but our son is so entrenched in the fixed mindset at this point it will take some time and effort to get him out of this track and into the growth mindset journey.
I think there needs to be a whole new teaching in all of society about the benefits of failure. We have always been taught to try to obtain 100% in everything we do. Even though we all know that we learn from failure, it has such a negative connotation. “You failed!” GASP! CRY! SCREAM! Does anyone have any ideas on how to educate parents as well as students? I know I hate failing myself.
Reading these chapters at this point in my life was timely. I personally have been challenged in the social-emotional area of my life and while reading I discovered that I have been quite stuck in the fixed mindset and wanting to give up on relationships that deserve pursuing. I need to interpret more of the failures as opportunities to collect data, reflect on them and make some adjustments in the way I communicate with this person.
As educators we sometimes develop negative “fixed mindsets” about some of the strategies that various parents of our students or our students themselves use and we need to consciously motivate ourselves to reflect on and take steps to understand them as we develop our “growth mindset” (I don’t understand why they do that….. yet?”).