From the desk of the Kindergarten Teachers:

As educators, our hope is to develop joyful, self-directed, engaged learners. Learners who are curious about the world around them, who are excited to take on challenges, who are willing to take risks, and who are resilient and flexible in the face of failure.  Our goal here at Lowrey, is to have learners who have a growth mindset.

The Kindergarten TEAM has found that building a classroom culture of growth mindset changes how students approach their learning, and is transformational in helping them build the habits of mind to be successful within and beyond the classroom. As one of our kindergartners explains, “If you don’t know how to do something, you can try it again and again and fix your mistakes, and if you don’t give up, you really showed growth mindset.”

We start by asking our kindergartners to share how their muscles get stronger.  We give our students the example of working out our muscles through exercise to working out our brains through the effort of purposeful practice (building stamina). By showing brain images of growth, students can discover the way that their brains change as they learn new things.

You can also extend and enrich this understanding of growth mindset by reading aloud literature that celebrates a growth and facilitating discussions about how growth mindset plays out in different contexts. Students may also be inspired to read the biographies of famous athletes or thinkers who overcame huge obstacles and who embody a growth mindset…