Monday Musings - November 10, 2014

As I read through your reflections of student surveys, a common theme I saw was students marking "I am able to do the work given to me" as a common student concern.  Many of you recognized that this survey was given in the first month of school and this concern may likely be due to being in a new grade level with more challenging work for the students than the previous grade level.  Most of you have plans to address this student concern with differentiation, individualized feedback, additional reteaching, etc.

As I continued to read these reflections, I made the personal connection to the concept of Mindset...that we all either have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.  I know that I've previously shared with you what I learned from Growth Mindset in this post: Mindset.  If you haven't taken the opportunity to read Mindset by Carol Dweck, I would highly recommend it as an educator, a parent and just for personal reading.

Whether you just read my blog post or the full book on Mindset, think about ways that you can connect this with your students, especially those that feel they can't do the work.  How can you help them to realize that their mindset can limit them or empower them?  How can your feedback help them to develop a growth mindset?

All images in this post are from Venspired.