We had lessons on Growth Mindset every two weeks on a Friday morning. We had a session where children wrote their before views about What do we Use Our Brain for? on Post-It notes and displayed in the classroom. After that we watched a video Video: How the Brain Works and we revisited our before views on the brain and added new information to the display.
In the following lesson I read the book 'Giraffes Can't Dance' to the children and explained to them about how we make use of self talk all day every day especially during important events. Using 'Think, Pair, Share' children talked about their thoughts during the race 'Run, Swim, Run'. Show children a set of sentences expressing Fixed and Growth Mindset thought and ask them to classify them accordingly.
I showed children the different Class Dojo videos on Growth Mindset where perseverance is mentioned Dojo Class Video and other videos about experiencing failure / making mistakes and learning from them Famous Failures which lead to the following activity.
I set up three tables where children had to write in Post-It notes activities they did. In Table 1 they had to mention an activity they did yearly and we displayed them hanging from a cotton thread. In Table 2, they had to mention an activity they did only on summer and we displayed them hanging from a piece of yarn. In Table 3 they had to mention an activity they did daily or weekly and we displayed them hanging from a piece of cord. We discussed the frequency of activities and the strength of the skills related to the activities and then I asked them why I chose different thickness of thread to display their activities and a couple of children hit the nail on the head by comparing the different threads to the different kind of connections in the brain and their relationship with the frequency we practice something.
To prepare for these lessons I read the following books:
