Gawsworth Primary School Growth Mindset Policy

Transcription

1 TITLE: GROWTH MINDSET POLICY DATE WRITTEN: OCTOBER 2018 MAIN AUDIENCE: STAFF, GOVERNORS, PARENTS LAST UPDATED: NEW POLICY SUGGESTED NEXT UPDATE: OCTOBER 2023 Gawsworth Primary School Growth Mindset Policy

2 Contents Rationale... 2 Aims... 2 Learning Environment... 2 What is the difference between a Fixed and Growth Mindset?... 3 Language, marking and feedback... 3 Organisation... 6 Teaching approaches... 6 Parental Support

3 Rationale The research of Carol Dweck, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has shown that people who believe that their intelligence can be developed (thus demonstrating a growth mindset) outperform those who believe their intelligence is fixed (fixed mindset). When children learn that they can grow their brains and increase their intellectual abilities, they do better. This is reinforced in Gawsworth s I can and I can t do it YET philosophy. It has been found that by focusing on the process which leads to learning (such as concentrating, persevering and learning from mistakes), we can foster a growth mindset in our children. Approaches to learning which involve meta-cognition, consistently have shown high levels of impact. The evidence also indicates that teaching these strategies can be particularly effective for low achieving pupils. Aims This protocol aims to ensure a consistency of approach across the school, in order to promote a growth mindset culture by our use of language, by modelling and managing behaviour and by organising teaching and learning. This includes the teaching, learning and assessment of learning attitudes, which aim to help us all to think about our learning more explicitly. This meta-cognitive approach teaches pupils specific strategies to set goals, and monitor and evaluate their own development. Learning Environment Each class creates an environment in which growth mindset messages are promoted and where the differences between a fixed and growth mindset are evident and can be easily referred to. 2

4 What is the difference between a Fixed and Growth Mindset? Carol Dweck states: "In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset, students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it." Language, marking and feedback The word work outside education is something we do for somebody else and contains no explicit connection to education and learning. At Gawsworth Primary School, we refer to work as learning, discovery, exploration and play at to work completed at home as homelearning. We give praise for persistence, effort and resilience, rather than for being clever. Wherever possible, praise highlights the effort, skill, process or attitude, rather than the person. We also aware that most of us have a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, and that we are all on a journey towards a having growth mindset. Our marking and feedback policy sets out our expectations for Growth Mindset marking and feedback: At Gawsworth Primary School, we use marking and feedback as a way of inculcating a Growth Mindset in our children. Feedback and marking in the form of praise about a child s work will focus upon the process rather than the person as person praise implies that a child succeeded due to an inherent, inborn quality which they possess rather than the effort that they put into their work. On the other hand however, process praise acknowledges the effort, strategies or actions that contributed to the success. Feedback to children can be individually (oral or written), to a group or given to the whole class. 3

5 PERSON PRAISE You re a natural at maths. You re so smart You re such a good boy What a brilliant artist! You re a born writer. PROCESS PRAISE These problems didn t give you much of a challenge. Let s move onto something that will really stretch your brain like a red hot chilli challenge! I like how you used different strategies to figure out these problems. I appreciate that you cleaned up the art area without being asked to. You re effort in developing your painting skills is apparent in your work. Your writing shows that you understand the value of word use. The principles of praising the effort are also applied to giving a constructive critique about the children s work. At Gawsworth Primary School, we focus on Process critique (the effort put into the task) rather than Person critique which blames a failure or lack of qualities in the child as the reason for not having achieved. Person critique can make a child feel insecure about tackling challenges or making mistakes in the future whereas process critique does not evaluate the child globally but gives them feedback on the one, current piece of work, linking effort and achievement. PERSON CRITIQUE You really messed this up. You did your best but it s just not good enough. Maybe piano just isn t your thing. You re such a naughty boy. PROCESS CRITIQUE This didn t seem to work out for you. How could you approach this problem differently? You didn t meet your goal, but what did you learn? Keep practising. Every day you get closer to mastering this. You made a bad choice. What will you do differently in the future? We also ensure that out feedback to children about their work avoids giving non-specific praise. We avoid short, laudatory phrases such as You re awesome, Great! and Well done as these are vague and do not provide children with information they need about what they have done well. Effective feedback in the form of a short note or verbal comment which describes exactly what was good about a piece of work provides much more specific information to pupils. VAGUE PRAISE You re awesome Good work! SPECIFIC PRAISE You re putting awesome effort into the fractions work. Good work writing a detailed description. 4

6 Well done! Great! Well done on your gymnastics sequence. I can see that you practiced a lot. Great strategy; you ve worked really creatively in your problem solving. Feedback and praise in our school is not solely provided by adults. We also encourage the children to give each other praise and feedback and ask them to evaluate their own performance. If we hear the children using feedback which focuses on Person praise, we intervene to reframe the feedback as Process praise/feedback. CHILD S PERSON PRAISE/ PERSON PRAISE/FEEDBACK REFRAMED FEEDBACK I don t understand long division. Tina is the smartest person in the class. This is too hard for me. You don t understand long division yet! Tina did well on this test. You should ask her how she prepared. Hard is good! It means you are learning. We encourage the use of teacher and peer feedback on work through the use of feedback stems. We display examples of these in the classrooms for use verbally and orally. I noticed how Teacher Feedback Stem Look at how much progress you made on I see a difference in this work compared with I admire how hard you ve worked on I can see you really enjoyed learning Could it make a difference if you Have you considered trying a different strategy to Pupil Feedback Stem One awesome thing about your work is I really like the way you One thing that helps me is This could improve if My favourite part of this was I noticed that Next time I would You re on the right track here, and might consider 5

7 Organisation At Gawsworth, we keep groupings flexible for our class-based work. Children often work collaboratively in mixed attainment, Kagan groups, pairings and small groups. In this way, we have found that children learn from each other and challenge themselves more and we have embraced the Chilli Challenge concepts of self-differentiation so that children have opportunities to set their own level of difficulty from the teacher s menu of choices. They understand that being able to explain learning to a peer will, in fact, enhance their own learning. They place fewer limits on their learning and have higher expectations of what they can achieve. This, consequently, has improved the attainment of all our pupils. Teaching approaches At Gawsworth, contributions from all children are valued and we often share work through our touch-screen boards and tablets. We endeavour to foster a culture whereby children feel proud of their learning and understand that making mistakes is a crucial part of learning, as is the improvement of work. Errors are regularly planned to be used as learning points within lessons. Children are encouraged to be active learners and take responsibility for their own progress. In order to learn, we need to be challenged and embrace struggle. We often use the analogy of the learning pit to help children talk about where they are in their learning journey. 6

8 Teachers, and the children themselves, are able to identify when further input is needed and hold mini teaching sessions within lessons to support learning and help children out of the pit. At Gawsworth, we encourage a culture where mistakes are celebrated because mistakes are necessary for learning and improving intelligence. If children have fixed mindsets they find it hard to cope with failure; we teach our children to see mistakes as positive. People with a growth mindset see failure not as a negative, undermining judgement on them as people, but as something they can learn from so that they can succeed in the future. Our growth mindset culture is reinforced through the use of International Dot Day, lessons and assemblies, when we teach children about recent brain science and neuroplasticity. This has shown that when mistakes occur, brain synapses fire, connections are made and brains grow. Children learn that their brain can be developed like a muscle which can change and grow stronger the more it is used. Children know that with time, effort, practice and input they can reach a certain level of proficiency. Teachers know that with time, effort, practice and the right support, ALL children can achieve. Appropriate, targeted adult support can have a significant impact on learning. However, if not managed reflectively, it can also have a significant impact on attitudes towards oneself as a learner, and on independent learning, Children can become TA dependent. At Gawsworth, support staff work with all children. Both teachers and support staff promote independence and resilience. Rewards are used at Gawsworth for a wide range of reasons, such as promoting good behaviour and to recognise achievement and effort. Friday celebration assemblies provide an opportunity for children to be rewarded for showing behaviours which represent growth mindset through teacher and peer certificates. These behaviours are then reinforced through Head Teacher tea-parties the following week. 7

9 Parental Support Parents and carers need to be clear about what we mean by a growth mindset, how we promote it at school and how they can support it at home. All parents/carers are invited to Growth Mindset workshops and the concept is reinforced as part of our EYFS/Reception parents induction. Here are nine ways in which parents/carers can develop their child s growth mindset at home: 1. Stop Your Own Self-Defeating Talk: Work on yourself first so you can be a good example for your children. No more self-defeating talk, it s time to practice positive self-statements and affirmations. The brain works like a muscle and over time, will grow through hard work, determination and practice. It s time to practice what you preach for your children but also because you need to believe it, too. Don t say to your children I m no good at this or that! When your child is struggling with maths homework, don t say Don t worry, I m no good at maths but remind them that they will get there if they keep putting in the effort. 2. Walk the Walk and then Talk the Talk: Show your children how to have this type of mindset and let your actions speak for you. What you say out loud, should be reinforced by how you act, and of course with your personal ambition. For example, say you set a goal of walking 10,000 steps every day. How do you do this? Create a calendar and hang it in the kitchen for everyone to see you log your steps and then get your kids involved. Have them help you be accountable and celebrate with you when you hit 30 days of 10,000 steps! 3. Don t Tell Kids They re Smart, Gifted or Talented: You re probably scratching your head at this, but listen to why this is important. Telling your child they are smart, gifted or talented implies to them that they re born with these abilities, and can discourage them from giving additional effort and building growth if this is how they are or what they re born with. 4. Praise Growth Mindset: When your children demonstrate growth mindset, praise them for this! Don t simply praise by saying good job but praise effort, hard work, practice, kindness, bravery and characteristics of growth mindset that will help children see their true potential like not giving up and committing to their goal. 5. Don t Praise the Result: Yes, results are important and scoring the winning goal at their football match matters, but only to an extent because this isn t who your child is. Who they are is not a score or measurement of their knowledge or skills. Instead, praise the time and hard work they put into studying and effort and collaboration it took to score that awesome goal. Point out the characteristics it took to achieve their goals, succeed and time they committed to it. 6. Pursue Passions: Children learn best when they re passionately immersed in a topic or activity they re interested in. Encourage them to aggressively explore their passions and then fully support their interests (within financial reason, of course.) Show children you trust them to follow their instincts and pursue their curiosity. 7. Let Kids Fail & Encourage Them to Persevere: It s hard as a parent to see your child fail, let alone allow them fail and make mistakes, but children learn the most when we give them space for these moments to happen. Mistakes are a part of the learning 8

10 process for children. Yes, it may be a struggle for your child to learn a new subject in school or tackle a new type of mathematics problem, but the breakthrough process will only occur when he/she doesn t give up and works hard to figure it out. This is where the magic happens and it shows children what positive results happen when they keep plugging away. 8. Give Children Tasks: Children feel pride and it builds their confidence when they can accomplish tasks no matter how big or small on their own. The more children feel capable, the more they feel confident embracing their curiosity, exploring new challenges even if they might fail. Think of Michael Jordan and Adam Peaty they got to the level of success they had because they weren t afraid to stop trying and committed to working hard for their dreams. 9. Use Growth Mindset Jargon: Encourage growth mindset and resiliency by using positive affirmations and growth mindset jargon in your everyday life. Regularly encourage your child not to give up, be courageous, trust themselves, do the hard things, and try their best. The following websites are useful resources for parents: