Dimitri Syros
Social Studies Teacher
Explicit Habits & Mindsets Instruction: Persistence and Thinking Flexibly
In order for my students to successfully live out positive habits and mindsets it if first important for them to have an explicit understanding of each habit and mindset. As I observed the existence of habits of mind in my classroom, I considered the current state of my classroom, including what prevailing mindsets persist among my students, how we can move from fixed to growth mindsets and what my role is as the teacher in building my students character strengths and enchaining specific habits of mind. I think it’s safe to say that students tend to enter my class with very closed-off fixed mindsets. In observing my classes over the period of a few days I heard phrases like “I’m just not good at social studies,” or “I don’t understand anything about government, it’s too hard for me.” Costa and Kallick (2000) postulate that students might give up because they only have a “limited repertoire of problem solving strategies” which cripples their ability to think outside of the box. In my classroom I have observed that persistence and thinking flexibly were two areas that my students could improve in. For this lesson I wanted to be more intentional in my instructional design, specifically when it came to lie of questioning and explicit activities to produce desired results. I modeled the primary objective of the lesson from a text on habits of mind in that I wanted students to use persistence to solve a problem or deal with a challenge that did not have an obvious solution.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Explicit Lesson Plan and Resources
2. "Growth Mindset" Video and Responses
3. Classroom Resources
1. Explicit Lesson Plan and Resources
The images below are taken from the "Persistence" cup stacking activity highlighted in the lesson above.
2. "Growth Mindset" Video and Responses
As I started my Habits of Mind journey, I considered the prevailing mindsets of my students and how they impacted their academic investment and performance. My first observation pointed me to the fact that many of my students had very closed off fixed-mindsets. At this juncture I began to implement strategies to combat this condition in my classroom. For example, I would encourage students to add positive, optimistic language choices to their negative declarations, such as “I am not good at Social Studies….yet” or “I am so dumb at this class….I just need to give it more practice.” My adoption of this strategy has been strongly rooted in Carol Dweck’s strategies, and I have seen a lot of success in altering my student’s perspectives. Below is video from Carol Dweck that I showed my class pertaining to growth mind-sets. After watching the video, students completed a short inventory on their own mindsets to see where they currently fall on the spectrum in order to formulate strategies to improve.
The following three surveys were taken by three different students after viewing the video above. As the data shows, the students represented distinct viewpoints in regards to fixed and growth mindsets. The student on the left exemplified a growth mindset based on their responses to the ten survey questions. The student on the bottom left seemed uncertain as to what kind of mind state they possessed. The student on the bottom right currently holds a fixed mindset. As a teacher it is critical or me to know where each of my students stands so I can begin to develop strategies to help move everyone into a growth mindset. Overall the data-set yielded that most of my students fell under the realm of "uncertain." Over the course of the year I will work to re-enforce Carol Dweck's ideas to increase academic and life outcomes for my students through the adoption of growth mindsets.
3. Classroom Resources
Student Work Sample #1:
At the conclusion of the explicit lesson on habits and mindsets, students were challenged with creating print resources to hang in our classroom pertaining to the habits of mind that we learned about to re-enforce values in the classroom. The sample on the left was created pertaining to the value of thinking flexibly. When students are thinking flexibly, they are seeing issues from multiple perspectives and willing to create compromises. In this image the student is calling on lawmakers on both sides o the gun control debate to think flexibly through the issue and come up with meaningful compromise on the issue.
Student Work Sample #2:
In the sample to the left, the student created a comic-style cartoon illustrating what it might look like for a student to think flexibly. In the student's narrative, they are portraying a student who has gotten their entire class schedule changed. Initially the student is apprehensive towards changing his schedule but eventually upon entering the new classroom the student is willing to re-evaluate his perspective. This cartoon provides a realistic scenario in which students can think flexibly which in turn leads to a better outcome for them.
Habits of Mind Integrated Lesson Plan