During the first week of school, I took a page from Sara VanDerWerf’s playbook and showed my students the escalator and beagle videos mentioned in this blog post. I highly recommend you read about how Sara uses these in class. I basically copied everything she said! The escalator video is especially moving. Whenever I watch …
Growth Mindset
A continual focus in my classroom is helping my students build a growth mindset. One quote I’ve seen time and time again when it comes to growth mindset is “Mistakes are expected, respected, inspected, and corrected.” I’ve seen this quote attributed to Jo Boaler and her “How to Learn Math” course. This summer, I decided …
I saw this GRIT poster on pinterest, and I decided I had to recreate it for my classroom this year. G – Give it your allR – Redo if necessaryI – Ignore giving upT – Take time to do it right Here’s my typed version of the GRIT Poster. I have formatted this GRIT Poster …
I want to share a growth mindset quiz foldable I created to use with my students at the beginning of the year. This past school year, we focused on growth mindset for Day 2. We talked through SBG and how we learn math. I introduced my controversial A/B/Not Yet grading scale. Any assignment or test …
I’m excited to share a new What Zone Are You In poster with you today. So, it’s Saturday morning. I told myself that I was going to spend all day Saturday working on getting all of my activities planned, quizzes written, and copies made for the upcoming week. Let’s see. I’ve finished a novel this …
I created these Intelligence Is… Tweet Strips to get a feel on the first day of school for whether my students have a fixed mindset or growth mindset. I asked my students to write a tweet about what they thought intelligence was. I created the hash tag #IntelligenceIs for this. This confused my students SO …
I love using IQ Circle Puzzles in my classroom on the first day of school to teach my students about the importance of having a growth mindset. IQ Circle Puzzles are meant to be used as a party favor. My mom happened upon this entire box of these puzzles at a garage sale for a …
In addition to my Change Your Words Change Your Mindset Bulletin Board, I’m also really excited about this How to Learn Math Bulletin Board. This bulletin board stems from the theory of growth mindset. If I truly believe that mistakes are good and that is how we learn, my classroom grading policy needs to reflect …
Today I want to share my newest Change Your Words Change Your Mindset Bulletin Board. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy with my bulletin boards before. They make me smile. They represent what I think is important. They are useful to students. They spark conversations. This year, I’m working to help my kids …
I created a YET poster to hang in my classroom. This poster was inspired by Ilana Horn’s Strength in Numbers: Collaborative Learning in Secondary Mathematics. In the book, Ilana Horn talks about how the word “yet” is missing from our students’ vocabularies. If a student says, “I can’t do this,” we need to correct them. …