Motivating learners

As an introductory task, please fill in the questionnaire on your table – don’t think about it too much – go with your initial gut reaction

(You will not have to share your answers!)

Aims

• To introduce mindset theory and its implications for children as learners – share some of the exciting work we have been doing in school relating to this

• To encourage children to be learning orientated – equip them as life long learners

• To explore ways that we can most effectively support our children as learners at home

Nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet. Lanky, flexible, and

energetic, she was just right for gymnastics, and she loved it. Of course, she was a little

nervous about competing, but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well.

She had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would win.

In the first event, the floor exercises, Elizabeth went first. Although she did a nice job, the

scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost. Elizabeth also did well in the other

events, but not well enough to win. By the end of the evening, she had received no ribbons

and was devastated.

Nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet. Lanky, flexible, and

energetic, she was just right for gymnastics, and she loved it. Of course, she was a little

nervous about competing, but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well.

She had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would

win.

In the first event, the floor exercises, Elizabeth went first. Although she did a nice job, the

scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost. Elizabeth also did well in the other

events, but not well enough to win. By the end of the evening, she had received no ribbons

and was devastated.

• Tell Elizabeth you thought she was the best. • Tell her she was robbed of a ribbon that was rightfully hers. • Reassure her that gymnastics is not that important • Tell her she has the ability and will surely win next time. • Tell her she didn’t deserve to win.

What do we mean by mindset?

Carol Dweck - Stanford University, America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTXrV0_3UjY

How does your brain work?

Scoring the mindset questionnaire

With questions 1, 3, 4 and 7 Please take the answer you got away from 7 to give you a new score for these questions.

Total your answers for questions 1-8 using the new scores

As a very rough guide, scores between 0 and 24 indicate a tendency towards a growth mindset and scores between 25 and 48 indicate a tendency towards a more fixed mindset but this is a rough guide!

Which one are you?

Fixed Mindset

Or a

Mindset

?

Myths About Ability, Success, Praise and Confidence (Carol Dweck: Self theories)

• Students with high ability are more likely to love learning

• Success in schools makes children love learning

• Praise, especially intelligence based praise, leads to a love of learning

• Confidence in one’s intelligence is the key to a love of learning

What does this mean in terms of us working with our children to support them as learners?

Any ideas? – discuss on your tables

Possible points to consider:

• The language we use to praise children – effort, skills and strategies not ability

• Encourage children to take risks with learning – step outside their comfort zone

• Seeing failure as something to learn from – ‘ a learning opportunity’

• Know when to help and when to leave children to work it out themselves

• Value the importance of practising (Matthew Syed – Bounce 10 000 hours)

Links to REACH to learn

I am Rolo the resilient Rhino

I am Eddie the eager Eagle

I am Anton the

adaptable anteater

I am Coco the creative

Chameleon

I am Holly the helpful husky

Films and games that help develop a Growth mindset (learning from failure)

• Guess Who

• Battleships

• Twenty questions (yes/no game)

• Chicken Run

Task: Think about life in school and when you are supporting children with work at home – how do we give messages about growth and fixed mind-set through any actions/systems we have?

Sharing some of our learning enquiries:

‘Struggle needs to be seen as a learning opportunity.’

1. Concept 2. Conflict

3. Construct

‘Constructing concept through conflict.’

The importance of practising and using skills and strategies.

‘’It has become a common practice to praise students for their performance on easy tasks, to tell them they are smart when they do something quickly and perfectly. When we do this we are not teaching them to welcome challenge and learn from their errors. We are teaching them that easy success means they are intelligent and, by implication, that errors and effort mean they are not. What should we do if students have an easy success and come to us expecting praise? We can apologise for wasting their time and direct them to something more challenging. In this way, we may begin to teach them that meaningful success requires effort.’ (Dweck, self theories, p43) Wise Praise 1. Praise the effort not the ability 2. Praise in specifics, not generalities 3. Praise privately 4. Praise authentically and not too much 5. Praise “now that, ‘’ not ‘’if then’’ 6. Praise behaviour, not the child

When to intervene? Small group exercise 1. Form a group of three and give the role of parent (helping with

homework), student and observer 2. The parent sets the child the task provided and provide clues to

how to do this commenting on areas such as persistence, intellectual risk taking, enjoyment of being ‘stuck’

3. Student to do the task to the best of your ability and verbalise your inner speech

4. Observer, observe what you see from parent and student – what do you notice?

Task

Using 3, 5 and +, -, divide, =, (), try to make all the numbers between 0 and 15.

Key message: Never take away the struggle, instead support

them in the struggle (Paul Ginnis 2014)

Nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet. Lanky, flexible, and

energetic, she was just right for gymnastics, and she loved it. Of course, she was a little

nervous about competing, but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well.

She had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would

win.

In the first event, the floor exercises, Elizabeth went first. Although she did a nice job, the

scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost. Elizabeth also did well in the other

events, but not well enough to win. By the end of the evening, she had received no ribbons

and was devastated.

• Tell Elizabeth you thought she was the best. • Tell her she was robbed of a ribbon that was rightfully hers. • Reassure her that gymnastics is not that important • Tell her she has the ability and will surely win next time. • Tell her she didn’t deserve to win.

So what?

What are the implications for us as parents?

What are the implications for children as learners?

Thank you!

Thank you for coming

If you could fill in the short evaluation it would be very helpful to us providing future learning opportunities together.