Building a Growth Mindset in 5th Grade Using Multiple Sources

Building a Growth Mindset in 5th Grade Using Multiple Sources

My students had worked on the Growth Mindset philosophy last year, and I wanted to build upon that foundation. I decided that using mixed media and multiple sources would be most interesting for them. I knew I wanted to work up to the Darth Vader and Yoda posters, put together by Nigel Holmes, which are pretty high level texts.

In order to access the ideas from that source, I needed to scaffold up and provide a lot of discussion time.  I started out by putting the text from the two sources into two different word clouds. I thought that they would turn out obviously different, but because the main vocabulary words are so similar in each source,  it was hard for my students to distinguish the differences. The format of the word cloud did catch their interest though, and they were able to have discussions on what words they noticed and what they thought the text would be about.

Next, I showed them the first 5 Class Dojo Growth Mindset videos. They were almost too babyish, but students were able to soak up the concepts quickly, which was the point of using them as a source.

I had students work through this document during the week, and after the videos, I asked them to reflect on what language was sticking with them. Here are some of their responses:

After watching all of the Class Dojo videos, what language are you remembering most?

I learned that although you get stuck never give up. I am remembering that they never give up. And they are trying their best. And helping each other. That your brain is like a muscle. I remember that they said I can do it a lot. They also said that your brain is a muscles, and in order to become smarter you have to do challenges to build muscles and work it out. The language i’m remembering most is even though you fail you keep on trying They are trying to teach to not give up and to do anything you want in life. Mistakes are a step to success

After that, based on the video, Austin’s Butterfly,  I modeled how they could help me change from having a fixed mindset to a growth mindset if I was given specific, and supportive feedback.

I started with a very quick and basic butterfly and told them that I didn’t like it, and was going to give up. They discussed what they could say to me so that I would keep trying. I took some of their suggestions and tried again. I spoke my thoughts out loud to them about how it was hard and didn’t feel good, but that I would try to take their suggestions. We repeated that process one more time, and I modeled how successful I felt at the end! Here are some of their suggestions:

Mrs. Hoyt is trying to draw a butterfly, but is having a tough time. What advice do you have for Mrs. Hoyt?

Take your time, add more color, add detail to the body, and different designs Use more color. Keep trying My advice for Mrs. Hoyt is to do more designs on the wings, add a face, take more time, antennas, and fix the body.

This was a natural transition into introducing them to The PIT. They thought this was hilarious because we had just discussed wearing deoderant, but they only needed to giggle for a short bit before we could move on. The PIT is the place you go in your mind when something is hard, or feels uncomfortable. Students thought to themselves about some strategies for getting out of The PIT. They recorded them on the doc, and chose their favorite one.

Then, they lined up facing each other and shared their idea with their partner. I told them that the purpose of this sharing was for them to hear ideas from their friends, and share their own with others. I told them that it was important they they listen to their partner as well as share. After each round, I had one of the lines move 2 people down and share again. They got to hear from 5 different people before I had them go back to their seats and add the ideas that they heard to their chart.

Then, I asked them do a quick draw on a sticky note with the one strategy they thought they would use the most. This chart has turned into a resource for any student who is stuck.

Next, I read the book Ish to them. After they got the idea that anything could be done in an “ish” way, they did an ish sketch on a sticky note.

They came up with all kinds of “ish” drawings. The students tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves, so this book sent an appropriate message to them that perfection is not the expectation, but commitment to the process is.

Finally, they were ready for Darth and Yoda. I had our Special Education teacher read over the text with a few students ahead of time. Then, I strategically partnered them up for success in reading. One partner would be Yoda and the other Darth Vader. They needed to read the contents of one row at a time, discuss the differences, and take notes on their understanding. It was interesting to watch them grapple. I told them that working with the text was the goal and that if there was a tough word that they needed to try to figure out the overall meaning of the row with their partner. Some students looked words up, but most just engaged in a lot of reading and discussion.

The final assignment was for them to write a quick summary about what having a Growth Mindset means. Here are a few of their responses.

Having a Growth Mindset to me is to never give up because when you give up you are doubting yourself. When you doubt yourself sometimes you think you are not good enough . If you have a growth mindset when you fall you will get up.  People with a fixed mindset when they fall they can’t  get up and they think because they feel they aren’t good enough.

This is what I think of growth. I think growth mindset means that you can learn something  from your mistakes and get better at it.  Also never giving up. Another thing by learning new stuff this will grow your mind.That is what I think of growth mindset.

I think a growth mindset means to always believe that you can do it. When I read the paragraphs with yoda I noticed that it was all about the things you think might be bad actually help you get better. When Mrs. Hoyt tried to draw a butterfly the first time she had a fixed mindset because she said it was bad. At that moment she was in the pit. When we gave her criticism she took it very well, and drew a butterfly that she liked better. Also when we watched the Class Dojo videos mojo felt the same way when he didn't get the math problems. He eventually tried and tried again and got better. That's what I think a growth mindset means.

It was a week’s worth of work that will set the foundation for the rest of the year.

My Wonder Wall

Kids have a lot of questions, but how often do we give them an opportunity to ask them? This year I am trying out a Wonder Wall in my 5th grade classroom. Whenever students have questions, they can post them on the wall, and periodically I will give them a chance to research some answers.

Here’s what it looks like so far:

My goal is to work up to Genius Hour, but I want to scaffold up to it in a way that teaches students how to ask a good question and how to research effectively. So far, I’ve given them interesting sources, a chance to discuss them, and a designated space for wondering.

One routine we have every morning is a practice of noticing. I put an image up on the projector and they pull out details. We have worked on the quantity and quality of their noticings, and are working to define quality descriptions of details. It’s a great start to the day when students are asked to look at details, write about them, and have a chance to discuss their ideas. It only takes 5-10 minutes, but it is my favorite morning routine. I have seen these skills transfer into writing, speaking, and listening.

Here is one image students worked on:

Source: https://www.facebook.com/NewsOMatic/?fref=photo

Students silently wrote down a few details they noticed about all 4 quadrants and then chose the most interesting detail that they wrote. They shared that idea in a circle of friends where others listened and responded with, “I agree with you because…” or, “Interesting, I would like to add on to your idea.” From that discussion, they were encouraged to post a question on the Wonder Wall.

Students wanted to know

• Why there was smoke coming out of the ground?
• Where the bulls were going?
• And how many animals there are in the world?

I wouldn’t have known they were curious about those things if I had just moved on.

We read an article about the Refugee Olympic team together at the start of the Olympic games, and that generated some great questions for the wall.

• Why did people have to leave their country?
• Why would someone want to make children become soldiers?
• Why is there war?
• Why doesn’t the refugee team have any medals?

I also showed them the website Wonderopolis. They had a chance to read whatever they wanted, explore the site, and come up with wonders.

They only had 15 minutes on it, but they posted the following questions on the wall:

• Why do peaches have fuzz?
• Why do we have emotions every single day?
• Why does your stomach hurt when you eat?
• How do websites remember so many usernames and passwords?
• Who invented numbers and letters?
• Why did the Greeks have a different alphabet?

I am so jazzed about the potential this wall has for sparking curiosity. These kids are going to do a lot of reading, writing, speaking and listening this year.

My next steps will be to investigate the difference between a Googleable question and a BIG question. We will practice crafting BIG questions, and I’ll give them some time to research. We’ll hone our searching skills, and practice writing and presenting. Eventually, we’ll work up to a larger Genius Hour type product. I can’t wait to see what they create!

And by the way, there are a bunch of standards we are covering with these activities. BAM!

BreakoutEDU on the 1st Day of School? Why Not!!

BreakoutEDU on the 1st Day of School? Why Not!!

I designed a Breakout for the first day of school, and the energy was electric. The kids have been begging for another one, every day since. After participating in a BreakoutEDU session at the Stanislaus GAFE Summit this summer, I was intrigued. In order to really understand all the pieces though, I had to make my own. That’s just how this girl’s brain works!

I started out by thinking of the things I would normally do the first day: Put students in ABC order by their first name, have them join my Google Classroom, get them to explore my website, etc… Then I worked out how to make those tasks into clues. It took me many pages of scratch paper, a Google drawing, and several hours of my summer to put it all together, but it was so worth it!!

Here is my map with all of the pieces, put together on a Google Drawing.

I started it off with a Google form I wanted to them to fill out so I could get to know them better. At the end, they saw the following message. My intent here was to get them familiar with the logo.

Next I had them line up in ABC order by first name to get their class numbers. I recorded their names on the number chart, and put the list right underneath this sequence of numbers on the board. This would lead them to the 5 letter word lock.

Then, I showed them the Google Form that would be their lockbox for the day (My next breakout will be with a physical box and locks, but the digital one worked great too!). Each lock is set with Data Validation so they had to put in the exact code in order to break out.

I explained how a Breakout worked and that a key piece would be teamwork. I made it clear that for this Breakout, they could help each other, share ideas, and that the whole class was one team. It was helpful that each student had a chance to enter the codes in on their own Chromebook so that they all felt success.

The date lock came from this poster I had on one of my bulletin boards. I put the Breakout logo on the bottom as a clue, but it was the last clue they discovered!

To get to the directional lock, they needed to join my Google Classroom and open their first assignment. I posted the Classroom logo with my class code in several places around the room. The students had never participated in a Breakout before, so I gave them more hints than I will in the future.

The discovery of this lock took about 15 minutes, and went something like this:

Me: Does anyone know what this logo is? (Pointing to the Classroom logo)

Them: Yeah, Google Classroom.

Me: Hmmmmmm.

Them: (Not getting the hint)

Me: (5 min later) So… Has anyone joined my Google Classroom yet?

Them: No, how do you do that?

Me: I don’t know, can anyone figure it out?

(They used Classroom last year so they knew how to get to it)

Them: OK, I’m in classroom, but I don’t see yours! How do we find it?

Me: I don’t know! Is there anything on the screen that will help?

Them: (The excitement is building, and buzzing around the room) Hey! Click the plus sign!!!!

Them: It says I need a code!!! What is your code??!!!

Me: I don’t know!! How can you figure it out?

One of them: (Yelling across the room) I found it!!! It’s right here on the board!! Type in z1dd4l!!

A bunch of them: I’m in!!! There’s an assignment!!

(They open the assignment)

One quiet student whispers to her team: I figured out the directional lock.

It took a while to trickle around the classroom, but they eventually all got it. Now the energy is spiking and there are kids all over the room with Chromebooks. They are working with different people, asking for help, sharing ideas, and watching for the next person to pick up a trail. I can’t stop smiling.

The next clue involved a note I left on their desks to welcome them into the room in the morning. After they read it in the morning, I told them to put it in a safe place because they would be needing it later.

The clues here led them to a page on my website with an infographic where they discovered that I had 6 job titles, 2 college degrees, 3 hobbies, and 3 professional pillars. This was the number lock.

(Thanks @creativeedtech for the template and idea)

I had shared this infographic with them earlier in the morning, and one student figured out that the note referred to the infographic. He asked where he could find the infographic, and I told him it was on my website. That clue trickled around the classroom, and they eventually discovered a bit.ly link on the board that took them there. Number lock solved!

The first pair that broke out had the best facial expression. I wish I had captured that to share!! They all helped each other figure the pieces out, and we gathered at the carpet for a reflection session.

Here are some of their comments:

“It felt good when I was the one who discovered what the clue meant.”

“I liked the challenge.”

“I liked the teamwork.”

“It was exciting.”

“I was glad when someone helped me.”

It was a winner of an activity that achieved the main purpose of a BreakoutEDU: Collaboration. I will definitely be doing more, although now that I get the ins and outs of the whole piece, I will gladly use one that someone else has already built!!

Thank you, Mark Hammons and James Sanders for sharing this goodness with the educational community. You can join the movement here: http://www.breakoutedu.com/ There’s a very active Facebook group and Twitter feed as well where people are sharing ideas all the time. Not only is this getting students to collaborate, but educators too! @breakoutEDU

Epic Genre Sort

One of my goals this year is to create a culture where reading is prolific. In order to kick that mood off, I wanted the students to explore the classroom library. I thought about passing books around in a circle, or doing some book talks, but I decided to go big and make it memorable.

BAM!!

I had the students go up one at a time and grab 5 books off the shelf to spread out on the floor. We pushed the desks back to make more room and made sure to keep a path around the perimeter so we didn’t step on any.

After they were all out on the floor, we discussed genres. They told me what genres they could see on the floor, defined them, and held up an example from the pile. Here’s our rough draft, all in their language. Next, I’m going to show them some definitions from other sources and have them rewrite our definitions so that they are more precise.

When I asked them to raise their hand if they had their eye on a book that they wanted to read from the mess on the floor, they enthusiastically raised their hands. #missionaccomplished

We started by pulling out some of the more specialized  genres like graphic novels and biographies. We pulled out non-fiction titles as well.

Some of the kids were starting to stress out about the mess, so it was time to put them back. I put a sticky note on each table with a letter of the alphabet and asked each kid to pick up 3 books from the floor and put them on the correct table (Alphabetical by author’s last name).

Finally, they put them back on the shelf with the sticky note label (for now).

It’s a work in progress, but the students led it, worked together, and have a great sense of ownership over our library.

We all breathed a sigh of relief when we had a clear space on the carpet again. I’m doing this every year from now on. It was quite a leap to let go of my own system of labeling and organizing, but it felt so right!

The First Week of School

First Week of School

Welcome to my brain.

Source: http://www.speech-therapy.com.au/assets/uploads/brain.jpg?415a70

I found out I was going back to the classroom on April 14th, 2016. I had been away from my own class for the past 4 years working at a district and county office, supporting teachers from TK-12th grade. I knew immediately that coming to Westlake Charter School was going to be a good move for me. I immediately started smiling more thinking about getting back to the ground level with kids.

At first, I didn’t know if I would be teaching 4th or 5th grade, so I just started collecting. My collection looked like this:

It was a spew of ideas with no focus or structure. I knew a few things for sure.

• I wanted to have students help define the culture of the classroom.
• I wanted to integrate student choice.
• I wanted to be clear about my academic expectations, and I wanted to gather feedback from students.
• I wanted to create an atmosphere where reading was exciting and prolific.
• I wanted to scaffold my teaching of academic conversations.
• I wanted to fully integrate technology in ways that weren’t even possible when I was last in the classroom.

I started fleshing some of the ideas out and made a First Week folder. I fully wrote out some of my lesson plans, and the ideas began to take shape a little bit more.

I found out for sure I was going to be teaching 5th grade, and started working with my team. We spent 2 days defining what it meant to each of us to teach, lead, guide and facilitate 5th graders. It was exhausting and exhilarating. Our day ended looking like this:

I was also able to go to a Google Summit with the Tech Team at Westlake and we all discovered BreakoutEDU. We discussed throwing in a breakout the first week of school as a teambuilding activity. I started designing, and came up with this:

Now things were starting to take shape. I had a student and parent survey crafted, a website put together, and my list of things I wanted to teach the first few weeks.

Then came four days of Responsive Classroom training. My whole team was involved in the training, so we were able to have a few concrete conversations about how to implement the ideas.

Responsive Classroom is based on creating a culture where students feel involved, included, safe, and able to learn.

I had a chance to meet and work with some amazing educators from all over the state for these four days. We brainstormed, tested out ideas, tried out different components of the program, and helped each other see how implementation would be possible. As we processed each component of the workshop, my first week started becoming more crystallized.

I now have a plan for how to facilitate student hopes and dreams, which will lead into class rules. The products created from that series of activities will go on the board to the right where I was going to have students define what they would contribute to the class culture. What was a vague idea has now become clear.

In the center board, students will be collecting lines from their reading that make an impact. They will write them directly on the blue paper so that we have a collection of quotes from a variety of great books (Thanks for the idea Carly!). We will be doing some Growth Mindset work as well (Don’t worry, I have the missing T to add to the title!). All of the boards are blank so that the students can contribute the content. I am excited to see the transformation of my ideas become their reality!

I knew that I wanted to teach students to have high-quality Academic Conversations that were focused and built upon each other’s words. I now have a plan for how to introduce the concept using Instructional Modeling.

I knew that I wanted to teach my students about how to gather evidence from sources and talk about them in a meaningful way in order to get to deeper production of work. I had started collecting sources to build this skill from, and I knew I wanted to work on this a little bit each day as part of a routine.

Now I have a plan for building this skill within the structure of a Morning Meeting.

It’s all starting to come together, and it’s feeling fantastic. I can’t wait to see how I have grown as a teacher in the past four years. Thank you to everyone I have learned from and all those that will continue on the journey with me. Westlake Explorers- Let’s go!