Today’s Contributor: Kyla Morgan, Campus Innovation Coach at Lucy Read Pre-K
As an early childhood educator I am committed to supporting my students and their families as they develop the skills for success. I have come to the conclusion that how one approaches learning is critically important. I found that the platform Seesaw greatly improved my parent communication and so I utilized this program to educator both my students and their parents about the importance of cultivating a GROWTH MINDSET.
At the beginning of each week I would present a whole-group lesson to my class specifically to introduce the concept and develop the practices of a growth mindset. This whole-group lesson would typically begin with a growth mindset themed song to engage students, a read aloud illustrating the tenets of a growth mindset and then ending with a video illustrating the mindset that students would then explore in their self-selected, center-based work. After the whole-group lesson, students would get to choose what activity they would like to engage in. These hands-on centers changed over time but always involved an art, technology and dramatic play choice. Students selected center-based, hands-on learning experiences that supported the development of citizenship in our classroom and built the foundation of a growth mindset in each individual.
In addition to the classroom implementation, at the beginning of each week during this unit of study I would send a video to my students’ parents introducing the concept of a growth mindset to them and eliciting their comments and thoughts about the topic. By designing this unit of study to impact both students and their parents, I believe I was able to transform my classroom community beyond the confines of our school. Developing a growth mindset takes effort, persistence, and support over time. By actively engaging my students families in this process, I hopefully insured that this growth and development will continue into the future.
I was proud that all of my parents watched the growth mindset videos and a few commented on them digitally. I had a number of parents who wanted to discuss what they saw verbally with me, which was also very positive! However, my intention was for parents to engage not just with me but with each other. I wanted to cultivate a digital community where parents would be excited to comment and engage with each other about the topics presented. I wanted for parents to be held accountable for responding to posts; however, I was not able to completely meet this objective.
This unit of study promoted and developed a growth mindset. This is significantly impactful for students, as it will help support them throughout their lives. Digital citizenship for our youngest learners looks like developing relationships and a positive classroom climate. I believe this unit helped support the development of my classroom community and school family by allowing students to feel comfortable making and learning from mistakes. Students engaged in this unit of study were given many opportunities to personalize their learning by choosing their own activities in the classroom through the implementation of a center-based classroom model. By engaging parents in this endeavor, learning was shared and supported outside of the classroom and hopefully will have a lasting impact on how parents support their children’s growth and development. By requiring young children to engage in metacognition and really think about their thinking, I hope that this unit has had a long-lasting impact on both my students and their families.