Mindset

Celebrating mistakes during Math lessons. Students are reminded of the main message from one of Jo Boaler’s growth mindset video. On a regular basis, teacher deliberately choose students who have made a mistake and congratulate them for making the mistake. Reminding them that their brain will now have an opportunity to grow as they try to work out their. Teacher has to offer the opportunity and support for students to identify and correct their mistakes before inviting them to share what they learned from their mistake.

Students are given rich tasks for Math. As each rich task is differentiated, this provides students the opportunity access a problem at any level: comfort zone-enabling task, stretch zone-learning task or extension task.

Using growth mindset language with students at the right time.

Eg. You haven't mastered this skill/attitude/concept YET', 'you've made a mistake here, so let's try to learn from this and improve next time'.

Show and share growth mindset video clip from Jo Boaler’s Stanford website.

Crumpled Paper Activity at the beginning of the year to show growth lines.

1. Ask students to write down how they feel about making mistakes, then get them to crumple the paper into a ball and throw it into the centre of the room shouting out their feelings.

2. Students to retrieve their paper and then colour in all the growth lines that have been made - visual reminder of the growth and learning they will make during the year.

At the start of the year to develop the idea of having a growth mindset towards ‘maths’ and the science behind brain growth when students make mistakes or struggle with maths (see Jo Boaler, Stanford website link). Variety of posters to help with mindset available from YouCubed website.

Move on from fixed, growth to benefit. Students to think about situations when they do something for others where it benefits them but also makes the person doing it feel ‘good’. This can include the environment as well. Ask students to come up with a 7-day challenge where they have to use benefit mindset and to reflect on their progress (e.g. could be as simple as smiling at others each day or raising awareness about plastic being used at school by reminding students not to take plastic cutlery or containers at recess and lunch).

Students to think about the ‘positives’ in their lives. Can be done through ‘question cards’ like gratitude cards or picture cards.