Mindset Self Talk T-Chart

I tried the mindset self-talk lesson with my 2^ndgraders.  I asked them to tell me what they say to themselves, or to a friend, if they are trying to do something that is difficult.  I gave them some examples of challenges, and wrote down their responses on sentence strips.  The next step was to make the T-chart with fixed and growth mindset headings, and review what we had been talking about that those mean, and as a group we sorted each of their sentences into the two categories.  (We had already been learning about growth mindset) We glued their sentence strips onto the chart and kept it up in the room so we could all refer to it whenever we needed reminders about using growth mindset self-talk (or peer talk).  I found that students frequently referred to it whenever someone expressed frustration, to remind themselves and each otherto keep trying, never give up, say “I can’t do it YET”, etc.  This really cut down on students complaining or acting out when we were doing difficult assignments, increased effort and achievement overall. 

-lesson by Isabelle