The Term 3 focus of our Early Childhood Values Meetings has been Growth.

The Department recognises this as “Aspiring to Learn and Improving even when its tough”.

We have been exploring Growth through the use of a Growth Mindset. A Growth Mindset is the belief that you can improve your intelligence through hard work and persistence. It relies heavily on the power of the word “yet” to support the pathway to success.  Positive self-talk, and the belief that our intelligence is not fixed can assist the learner in staying motivated during challenging tasks.

 A Growth Mindset can be applied in all areas of a person’s life- home, school, sport etc.

Students have discovered that your brain is like a muscle and that attempting challenging tasks often allows your brain to “work out”.  These challenging tasks can often put the learner into an uncomfortable space as they work out the best path to move forward. However, a Growth Mindset means that the learner will be frequently looking for feedback and asking questions, to identify changes that might progress their learning.

We have used the Mojo resource to help us explore this in a child friendly way. Mojo is a character that experiences challenges at school and needs to apply a Growth Mindset to find his way forward and complete tasks. With the help of his friends, Mojo learns that making mistakes is a positive experience and he manages to harness the power of “yet” to aid his efforts.

 

Students in Year 3/4D and 5/6D shared their understanding of displaying the Value of Growth. We heard from the 3/4s that having a Growth Mindset is:

“Don’t think of the negativity, think of the Positivity”

“Having a Growth Mindset means to not say you can’t do something if you haven’t tried”

“If you get something wrong keep going until you get it right”

“A growth mindset is something when you don’t get it right the first time and keep trying”

5/6D then gave an interactive performance where they acted out some examples of things from everyday life and the audience had to work out if that person was using a Growth or Fixed Mindset. This really allowed students to see the difference between the mindsets and to identify when they may be using a ‘Fixed Mindset’ in order to change their ‘self-talk’ to a Growth Mindset.