1. “Motivating every Student to Learn by fostering a Growth Mindset”.
Welcome to RPS. You are entering a district with some of the best teachers in the nation! I hope you take advantage of all those around you that are here to make sure your first year in Rochester is a huge success.
I’m excited to be able to present this to you today. I have attempted to condense over a day’s worth of training into less than an hour. There may be items that I don’t go in depth enough about, but this is just the start of a paradigm shift in your thinking, which will lead to your students’ thinking changing next. So take the time to let this sit with you and really see how it plays out in your life.
After 17 years of teaching children, I searched and searched for the “magic bullet’. I discovered years ago that it doesn’t exist, because if it did, I’d be a billionaire by now.
However, I did find 2 major things that have increased the learning for my students in big ways. Interestingly, both are free! The first is what you’re here to learn about in this session. It will require very little in resources, but it will require a focus and some time on it. The second, I might share at the end if you remember to ask me!
Presenter: Dana DeWitz

2. Define a Growth Mindset Understand how the brain works
Objectives:
The participant will:
Define a Growth Mindset
Understand how the brain works
Identify how students are motivated
Develop a plan for motivating every student
With that said, Let’s get started.
I have posted the lesson objectives to model for you a best practice in teaching.
After this session, you will be able to:
READ SLIDE

3. Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset Brain Function
Agenda
Introductions
Opening Activity
Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset
Brain Function
Learning/Motivation/Plan
Closure
Our hour will be jam packed with the following agenda:
PAUSE

4. Introductions Whole Group: At Your Tables:
Share your Name & Position this year
At Your Tables:
Share - 1 thing you hope to learn at this session
or 1 thing that makes you nervous about this year
Effort
Focus
To begin,
Let’s do a “whip around”. This is a teaching technique that requires all participants to pay attention for their turn.. We will whip around the room and share our name and position this year.
I’ll start.
Now, with the people at your table share 1 of the following.
Growth
Neurons
Motivate
Praise
Believe
Success

5. Let’s Get Started!
On a sheet of paper, write comments you might give to a student
They could be ones you’ve heard
They could be your own or make some up
Get as many as you can in 2 minutes
To get us thinking about students, learning and motivation, I’d like you to write down as many comments as you can think of. Comments that you’d tell your students.
I’ll give you 2 minutes. (Go to ON-LINE STOPWATCH)
Now, put those aside. We will revisit these later in our session.

6. Motivating students to learn requires knowing and teaching the right kind of mindset.
A mindset defined is simply:
a set of beliefs
the way we think that determines
our behavior
the way we look at things
and our attitude
Carol Dweck’s research on differences in motivation and achievement discovered that there are 2 basic mindsets. A fixed minset and a growth mindset.

7. How does this sit with you?
Mindset…It’s a choice!
Fixed Mindset
Growth Mindset
Intelligence is static or innate
Leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to:
Avoid challenges
Give up easily due to obstacles
See effort as fruitless
Ignore useful feedback
Be threatened by others’ success
Intelligence can be developed
Leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to:
Embrace challenges
Persist despite obstacles
See effort as the path to mastery
Learn from criticism
Be inspired by others’ success
How does this sit with you?
What resonates?
What doesn’t?
The mindset you view the world by is your choice.
Let’s take a deeper look at both a fixed and growth mindset:
A FIXED MINDSET is the belief that…READ
However, a Growth mindset is much different. It’s the belief that intelligence can be developed. It’s malleable, changeable. Not innate.
READ: Leads to…
*Embrace challenges – seen kids excited by a super challenging question
*Persist despite obstacles – Do poorly on a test, but re-take it and get 100%
*See effort as the path…When they aren’t getting it yet, they buckle down and try harder, work longer
*Learn from criticism – When a teacher tells a student to learn multiplication facts for division – they do it
*They’re inspired by success of others because they know they can do it too!
Sticking with a growth mindset 100% of the time isn’t easy. And choosing the growth mindset isn’t saying the belief that we’re all born with the SAME amount of intelligence either.
I want you to think about this example: of a linguistic student that loves to read and write in LA class, but when she gets to math class, she shuts down, tries reading instead of doing math. Which mindset has she chosen in each of the classes. Why do you think she does this?
CLICK – Talk with your table about these questions.

8. How the Brain Works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqGz7uqoPZ4
Find a partner
Wearing the same color as you
At a different table
Stand and discuss
Discuss the video with this partner:
What is an important message?
What do you question?
What did you learn?
Now, that we’ve covered the first objective for the session. I’m going to quickly move us into how brain function supports the idea that a growth mindset is the right choice.
Watch video.
Read slide.
Discuss: What implications does this have for us and our students?

9. Now What?
How do we teach children the truth about their brains and mindset?
How can we use this knowledge to motivate every student?
Okay, so we know that choosing a growth mindset is the right choice, and we also know the way our brain works.
What now?
This gets me to the title of this session…
FOSTERING a growth mindset to motivate kids.
How can we do that?
Let’s look further into this question.

10. First Steps:
How to ‘Build’ Motivated Students: 1. Teach students the truth about where getting smarter comes from. Their brains are like muscles. The more they work them (practice), the smarter they become. 2. To get smarter, students must BELIEVE they can do it. Spend time creating learning activities that prove to them they can learn anything. (Correct rigor and relevance for each student). Show your belief in them to build confidence. 3. Teach students what effective effort really is. It’s not just getting sweaty or getting it done. 4. Give Feedback. It motivates when given about things students can change: effort, belief in self, strategies.
I’ve tried to simplify this complex process as much as possible for today’s presentation.
READ #1 – Carol Dweck’s research just focused on this one step alone. Two 7th gr. Math classes. 1 was told their brains are like muscles. The other wasn’t. What do you think happened at the end of the semester?
READ #2 – this comes from Jeff Howard’s work at the Efficacy Institute.
READ #3 – this too is from Jeff’s work
I’ll describe the 3 important pieces of effective effort on the next slide, so just sit with this for a moment
Finally, READ #4 – another piece of Jeff’s work. I’ll will elaborate more on this in a bit.
So, if you can find ways to repeat these 4 steps over and over throughout the year, students will become motivated learning machines.
Thankfully, our hour isn’t up yet, so I can offer you some more specifics!

11. Efficacy Model of Development
Effective Effort
Confidence
Learning
Belief in Self
Belief that “I can!” or “I can learn it!”
Borrow confidence
Don’t know it YET!
Tenacious Engagement –Stick with it – Never give up
Focus on Feedback – Getting it right? Keep Going! If not, change it up!
Strategy Formulation - Change strategies until you get it!
Effort – Students need to understand that effort isn’t just finishing their homework.
Effort involves 3 things. If all 3 aren’t involved, effective effort is not happening.
READ EFFORT.
What leads us to put in effective effort?
Confidence.
READ Confidence.
This can be an upward spiral where learning is accelerated. Because when we learn, our confidence builds, which makes us want to work even harder, and when we do that we learn more….faster.
After, you teach students that their brains are like muscles, then you’ll teach them how important believing in themselves is, then you can teach them the 3 essential parts of effective effort.

12. Motivation Comes From Feedback
Feedback motivates when:
It is specific
It is given about things students can change: effort, belief in self, strategies.
It is positive
It is timely
It doesn’t label (“smart”, “a natural”, “genius”)
While you get all of those belief and effort pieces going, you need to really start thinking about the feedback you give to students.
How will you know if the kids are getting each of the pieces?
Learning accelerates
Intense focus
Driven classroom
Now, I am going to be honest with you. Some kids start believing all of this really quickly. They start living it and it’s like they’re new kids and on fire to learn.
Others, you’re going to have to continue to prove to them they can do it. They will come around, but you must be diligent about the messages you send each day.
Why is commenting on changeable things like effort and strategies motivational?
That’s why the feedback you choose is SOOOO important.

13. Don’t Say Do Say How we say it CAN Motivate Students!
Get your lists out. Put a star by comments that will motivate students.
Discuss at your table.
How we say it CAN Motivate Students!
Don’t Say
Do Say
“You are smart!”
“Your brain is like a muscle. When you work hard, you will get smarter every day.”
“Nice job!”
“You worked really hard to collect good facts and lay out that Power Point in an organized way!”
“You can’t do this; it’s too hard for you.”
“You don’t know how to do this YET. Let’s find a strategy that will make it feel easier!”
“Re-do this. It’s all wrong.”
“Take this opportunity to try a new strategy so that you can learn how to do this correctly.”
“You didn’t even try on this.”
“Was your effort in the right place? Were you getting the answers correct? No. Then, your strategy didn’t work. Let’s find one that does!”
“Some people are just geniuses.”
“Our brains are built for brilliance. We become smarter at anything we try really hard at. So never quit trying!”
Let’s look at some now.
Please take 2 minutes to silently read each column. Then, write one reflection about this slide down.
With the table behind you /in front of you, you will share your reflection. The person who teaches the youngest grade shares theirs first. The other members of the group must not speak or comment about one another’s reflections. After all have shared, then you can all discuss and comment together.
CLICK –
Now, pull that sheet out from the beginning. Put a star by the comments that will motivate your students.
This is kind of a baseline test. Now, you know where you are in relation to the target of giving the right kind of feedback.
What next?

14. Let’s Make a Plan: Weekly: Daily: Decide on a focus:
Wk #1: Teach about the brain – it’s like a muscle
Wk #2: Talk about Confidence – belief in self is critical, you can borrow it though
Wk #3: Teach Effective Effort
Wk #4: Teach Strategies to accelerate learning
**Focus on your Feedback – write examples you’ll start using over and over
Reinforce the Weekly Focus
Review past ones
Practice giving feedback
Teach students to give it too!
Let’s make a plan so we can make sure that our kids become those motivated students we all dream of.
Every week you need to decide on a focus. It could be something your kids really need to work on eventually, but I’ve come up with your first month’s topics.
If you focus on one topic each week. This is how it would go.
READ WEEKLY.
This could be a 5-10 minute mini lesson. You could just give the message or get creative and find a video of an athlete on YouTUBE or an article on brain research. In the following slides , I’ve included some reources that you may find helpful in planning these lessons as well.
READ DAILY –
Try to find daily examples of kids using the weekly focus, so all kids can see it’s the truth, it’s what you think is important and worthy of praise, and will catch on lifke wildfire when you focus on it.

15. Objectives: Can you? Define a Growth Mindset
Understand how the brain works
Identify how students are motivated
Develop a plan for motivating every student
I give you some work time to plan together, let’s review the session objectives.
Take turns with the person sitting next to you. to summarize each of the bullets. Explain what it is and any other information you remember about that objective.

16. Closure: Think it, Write it, Share it Sketch out your first week plan
What is your objective?
What materials might you use?
How will you teach it?
How will you reinforce it?
Then share it at your table
With the time that we have left, it’s officially your work time.
You can pull out your plan books, decide when you’ll do the lessons, and make a list of ideas of feedback to start giving your students. .
It’s a whole new bank of comments that you’ll want to start building. I sometimes still catch myself giving bad feedback. So I stop, and start again.
Teaching to, assessing and reassessing the standards is the 2nd thing. Correct rigor matching the standards important.

17. Resources: Video on Growth Mindset: Mindset by: Carol Dweck
Efficacy Institute:
Curriculum Repository: Efficacy

18. Neuroscience
In the past, neuroscience taught that people never add new neurons to their brains; all the brain cells you were ever going to have, you had at birth. In fact, many of these were thought to die off as we age.
Recent discoveries prove the old view was wrong. The brain can in fact create new neurons throughout life, especially in response to new challenges. These newly created neurons (along with the rewiring of existing neurons) are building blocks for mental circuit development.

19. Neuroscience
Once formed, new mental circuits become stronger and more efficient through repeated use, so that the same mental work can be done with far less energy.
This increasing efficiency underlies the experience of complex tasks becoming “easier” over time, and is the basis for development of high-level expertise.

20. Feedback - My “Go-To’s”:
You don’t know it YET!
Your brain isn’t broken, but that strategy is!
Great effort! You did it by working hard!
How did that strategy work?
Look at how smart you are getting with all of that effort!!!
#1 Strategy for learning is LISTENING, if you’re not listening, you’re not learning.
Practice more, you’ll get better
Work harder, you can do it!
What do you need to work on?

21. So, what kinds of things count as strategies?
Listening better? YES!
Asking for help? YES!
Doing it a different way? YES!
Watching someone else do it, then trying it? YES!
Turning work in early to ask for feedback? YES!
Asking for extra practice? YES!
So, here’s a list of strategies:
Read bullets…
So let’s go back 2 slides:
What about when it feels too hard? What strategy would make sense to try? (watch someone else do it, then try, ask for help, or listen better)
What about when I’m just starting to “get it” and we move on? What strategy would make sense to try? (ask for extra practice or turn work in early to get feedback)
What about when the teacher moves too fast? (listen better, watch someone do it then try)
What if I wasn’t listening when I needed to? (listen better!!!, watch someone do it)
Now, that you know what a strategy is for improving, do you have others that you want to add to this list? (Add them if they make sense to!)