Self-Awareness
Family Resources on
Growth Mindset
Project and Purpose
By explicitly teaching social-emotional learning skills while honoring diverse identities, creating a sense of belonging, and promoting student agency toward personal growth and social impact, the teacher better creates a classroom environment that fosters well-being for self and others.
If the lesson is used in the classroom: The goal of this lesson was to help students learn about having a growth mindset and practicing persisting in a difficult task.
In class the teacher asked students to complete a maze several times in groups. This allowed students to practice trying over and over to find solutions and learn not to give up if they can’t figure it out the first time.
Getting Ready for the Conversation
A person who has a growth mindset is highly willing to persist and not give up easily in solving problems. People with a growth mindset will continue to try several times when faced with an obstacle and learn from mistakes. This leads to persistence in problem solving. This is opposed to a “fixed mindset”; when someone has a fixed mindset, they will often give up after one or two failures.
Conversation Starters and Practice at Home Activities
Find an activity or problem that is difficult for your child to do, but with several tries should be able to complete. Simple mazes or puzzles can be especially useful. For a puzzle, try timing how long it takes to complete the first time and then ask the child to do it again and see if the child can finish the puzzle faster the second or third time. It is important not to make it a competition, but focus on the child being able to figure out how to improve their skills at finishing first. This is an activity that can be done many times in many different ways.
School to Home Resources on Growth Mindset
In this lesson students will define and explore the concept of growth mindset. Students will understand how the brain learns with repeated effort and use growth mindset statements as a strategy to keep trying, even when something is difficult to learn.
Format
This 25–35 minute lesson is designed for flexibility. It can be taught in one day or over the course of a week.
- Warm Welcome
- Feelings Check-in
- SEL Skill Spotlight
- Active Engagement
- Closing Connection
