Last week, I posted about tackling growth mindset, starting with perseverance. (If you haven't read it, you can read it here.) After spending several days talking about perseverance, we moved on to making mistakes. In my classroom, students often act as if making a mistake is the end of their world, their school career, or make it the worst day ever. They get frustrated when they fail as do many of us, so I made it a point to make plenty of obvious mistakes when introducing this idea. The students thought it was comical to see me making so many mistakes, but with a purposeful attitude, I showed them that I could learn from them.
To make such an abstract concept more concrete, we read the story Beautiful Oops by Barney Salztburg. After reading the story twice per their request, they were asked to come to the smart board where I sabotaged their nice, white, blank screen, by scribbling and making marks on it; they needed to change the screen into a beautiful piece of art. I was amazed at their creativity! Next we read The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett and Gary Rubinstein and had a group discussion about the book.
The following day, I presented the students with different scenario cards about others who made mistakes. I wanted them to think beyond the mistake itself and how it could impact others.
Finally we moved on to one more activity, which focused on popular food mistakes. The students were given a list of popular foods and made guesses which ones were the results of mistakes. When they were finished, I revealed the answers with the story behind the mistakes. They really, really liked this activity because they could all relate to the foods. Unfortunately, we did this activity at the very end of the day, and our stomachs were rumbling!
Next week, I'll share about our third piece of growth mindset: challenges. This part was by far the students' favorite!
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