The Power of Yet

Growth Mindset: The Power of Yet

Growth mindset – a phrase that can easily be coined the education fad of 2015-2016. Although I do like to avoid most fads (bleached hair, suntanning oil, and silly bands were all lost on me), why not take the best from the proverbial education pendulum and allow it to positively impact our classrooms? Recently my 1st grade classroom has morphed into a K/1 combination classroom resulting in HUGE gaps (academically, socially, & emotionally) between my students. Today I’m sharing one of our most powerful community-building lessons we’ve shared since becoming a combined classroom!

 

Intentional Read Alouds

Intentionally chosen read alouds and texts in a classroom have tremendous power. From writing mentor texts, to texts that lend themselves to particular reading strategies, our students need models.

Giraffes Can’t Dance (affiliate link) is one of my favorite read-alouds. It’s a smooth read, include rhymes, and is a perfect platform for launching a conversation about differences in the classroom. The book centers around a Giraffe who can’t dance like all the other jungle animals and is made fun of because of his lack of dancing skills. Gerald is the perfect character for teaching students about growth mindset!

The rest of this lesson can be found here:

http://brownbagteacher.com/growth-mindset/

Other resources:

https://ideas.classdojo.com/i/growth-mindset-3

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