Growth Mindset
Have you found that your students give up easily? That they will not try again after failing? This is something I struggled with immensely throughout my first year of teaching. Students lacked confidence in working towards their goals once they began struggling. This is something that I had many conversations with amongst my colleagues. One thing my school does that I greatly encourage for schools to do is the panorama survey. This is something that asks students questions that have to do with growth mindset so that we can see where they are at in that aspect of school. After looking at results of the survey, teachers can get together with heir social workers or counselors to come up with plans to address these grown mindset barriers. It is also beneficial to have the social worker or counselor do these lessons with your students. I had a student that said “the power of yet!” almost every single day when she did not know something. Growth mindset is something we can tackle hands on and using the panorama survey gives us honest results about students mindset.
The following information was sent to us by our school social worker:
“This school year the Shawnee Mission School District is once again utilizing the Panorama Social-Emotional Learning survey to assess student’s perseverance, grit, determination, school culture and student-teacher relationships. The Panorama Social-Emotional survey is facilitated for grades 3-12. It takes approximately 30 minutes to complete and will be administered once each semester. Parents/Guardians would have opted their student(s) in or out of the survey during the 22-23 registration process. Survey data will be reviewed at the district and classroom level to determine areas of strength, as well as areas where more instruction and/or support is needed. Once survey results are returned, parents/guardians are welcome to see and discuss the results with their students’ teachers, social workers, and counselors. Sample survey questions can be found here and here.
We encourage you to visit the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) website to learn more about how Social Emotional Learning benefits your child and their environment. All data is maintained by SMSD and will remain confidential. Please visit this site for more information about the Panorama SEL survey.”
When Done Activities
Ever have fast finishers and don’t know what to do with them? I struggled everyday with students that took 10 minutes to complete something versus the other students that needed 30 minutes. It was difficult to come up with things for early finishers to do so I got some “When done” cards and hung them around the room.
The cards included ideas of things for students to do when they finished their work. This was beneficial so that students weren’t constantly asking me what to do while I’m trying to help the students still working. These cards included the following:
- Read a book
- Help a friend if they are still working
- Write a story
- IXL on iPads
- Find a current event and write about it on iPads
- Complete other unfinished work
- Extension project if available
All of these things are beneficial to the academic and social success of students. It is always interesting to see what students choose to do with heir extra time. One thing that I want to note is about extra time on iPads.
This can become very dangerous if not done the right way. Typically I am able to monitor usage on the iPads when all students are working. However, when they are using it for when don activities, it can become dangerous if they are not using it properly. My number one rule with iPads in my class is that you must be doing the right thing at all times. I also don’t really let my students search the web freely unless they are being supervised. Event though the school blocks a lot of things, I do not want them to stumble across something inappropriate. I always give them specific websites to look at when searching for a current event or doing extension projects.
Morning Meetings
Ever wonder how to implement a successful morning meeting? Where every student feels welcomed? Where every student participates? There are four important components to any morning meeting that is going to be impactful for our students.
What I like to do in order to start the meeting is have my students meet in a circle on the floor. At this point, I already have every aspect of the morning meeting planned. Once students are on the floor, I will typically tell them how happy I am to see them and how it is going to be a great day, anything that sets a positive tone for everyone.
1. Greeting - This sets the tone for the morning meeting and often times the whole day. There are many different greetings that can take place but what matters most is that every single student is greeted by name. This is the most crucial part of greetings. One greet we do is ball toss greet where the ball gets tossed to the person you are greeting by name until everyone has been greeted. We also do fist bump greeting which just goes in a circle to greet everyone by name. Another greeting we do is someone stands up and greets someone then takes their place and they go greet someone else. This one is interactive and fun and also gets people separated for the rest of the meeting. There are many other ways students can be greeted, I have just found these three to be the most effective in my room. Again, as long as every person is greeted by name, then you are good to go!
2. Share - This aspect of the morning meeting is crucial so that everyone gets a chance to share and be heard by their peers. I always come to morning meeting with a fun prompt that is not academically related for students to share in order to give them a chance to talk with no wrong answer. This is so important in order for everyone to want to share. There might be times where students want to pass and that is okay but 90% of the time you will get 100% participation with sharing. The questions are typically surrounded by a theme or what is happening during that time of year. Here are some examples of a few questions that I have asked:
- What is your favorite summer activity?
- If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
- What is your favorite thing about September? (I ask this at the beginning of each month)
- What did you do over the weekend or upcoming weekend plans? )These are weekly questions.
Whatever the question may be, make sure it is relatable to your students and something that everyone can give an answer to. It is also important to set expectations for this time so that students are not talking over others while they are sharing.
3. Activity - This is where students get to have some fun and start their day on a positive and exciting note. I like to play around with different activities to see what my students like and to ensure everyone will participate. I also let students pick the activity we do later in the year when they know them all. Here are some examples of activities that have been very successful in my classroom:
- Silent Ball
- Who's missing
- Alibi
- 4 Corners
- Inspector Bullfrog
- Would you rather
No matter what activity you do, make sure everyone is able to be involved. We did telephone one time and I noticed that two people did not participate because they did not feel comfortable, so we did not play it again. Every class is different and it is important to find what works best for your group!
4. Morning Message - This is the final piece of morning meeting as it also sets the tone for the day. This portion of the morning meeting describes what the day is going to look like for students. After our activity, I will have them return to their seats and I will display the message on the board. I take a volunteer to read the morning message for the class. The message consists of what we will be doing that day across all subjects. This gives them a glimpses of what they should expect that day. Extra things like assemblies and book fairs will also go in the morning message as well as specials. I typically end the morning message with some inspiration and positive phrases such as: "Let's have a great day of learning!" "I am so proud of all of you!" "I know it is going to be a great day in 4th grade!"
I am hopeful that all teachers find the most successful way to implement morning meetings with what works for them and their students. Let's have a great 2023-2024 school year!