Activities not in the book

Do you have a great growth mindset activity to share?

Debbie and Dedra would love to hear from you and will continually add new activities and resources shared by teachers just like you!

Trash That Thought or Up in Smoke
To introduce the concept of growth mindset, the teacher asks each student to write down something the student feels that she or he can’t do or isn’t very good at. These ideas can be directly related anything, classroom or otherwise.

Students write down the “can’t” idea on a slip of paper.
The teacher then leads a discussion about the power of adding yet to the end of a statement and how it can make an idea seem more possible. To help students understand the concept more thoroughly, teachers can show students one of the many online videos available on the power of yet.
Here are just three that we like:
Carol Dweck’s TEDs Talk, “The Power of Yet”
Janelle Monae guest stars on Sesame Street singing about “The Power of Yet”
Alison Ledgerwood’s TEDx Talk, “Getting Stuck in the Negatives (and How to Get Unstuck)”
Teachers then invite students to crumble up the written “can’t” statement, throw it into the trashcan, go back to their desks, and rewrite the statement adding the word yet.

For a more dramatic finish, the teacher can take the class outside, have students place the statements in an empty clay garden pot, and then light the statements on fire. The statements will go up in smoke! (Literally, the ashes will float up as the fire burns itself out.) Be sure to get this activity approved by your administrators and always take safety precautions.

Retweet It
As students read stories, study history, or even follow human interest stories in the news, teachers encourage them to evaluate statements from characters, famous Americans, or anyone else to see if the statement is coming from a fixed or growth mindset. If the person or character is using a fixed mindset, students rewrite the statement with a growth mindset. These “retweets” can be displayed on classroom walls. This can be a yearlong activity.

A Story of Fixed and Growth Mindsets
Ask students to write and illustrate a story about two characters, one with a fixed mindset and the other with a growth mindset. Each character deals with the same obstacles (or very similar ones) but in completely different ways. Get creative, the stories can be on paper, eBooks, PowerPoint presentations, and so on. Possible components might include:

Students can brainstorm, storyboard, edit, and redraft as a part of the writing process.
Students can partner up to create a collaborative story.
Younger students can work as a class to create one class story with each child illustrating a different event in the story.
Students can use sites like StoryJumper.com to create real printed and bound books.
Students can read their stories to a younger class, at parent night, or at a nursing home.

Pursuit of Happyness Activity
Show the video clip where the Chris Gardner character from the movie Pursuit of Happyness interviews for a competitive internship. End the clip as soon as the interview is over (before the elevator scene begins due to language). Before playing the clip, ask students to watch for verbal and nonverbal evidence of fixed and growth mindset on both sides of the table. Require students to record their thoughts on a T-chart and compare their T-charts in pairs. Ask groups to share their T-chart notes in a class discussion about fixed and growth mindsets.

Learning Journey
To help students own their learning, give students time to reflect every Friday about the week’s accomplishments and the things that they still need to learn or work on. This meta cognition activity helps with executive function as well as developing growth mindset. Use your own questions in as journal prompts, exit tickets, or personal evaluation rubrics or use the learning journey reflection we created.