At Friars we want our children to be motivated and successful learners. One of our ongoing priorities is to Increase pupils’ stamina and resilience when they are challenged in their learning by a more rigorous and demanding curriculum.
We use Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset to encourage children to have a positive learning attitude. To have a growth mindset is to understand that qualities like intelligence, talent and abilities are not fixed but are developed through hard work, effort, taking risks and learning from others.
We develop Growth Mindset in many different ways including using the seven C’s:
- Challenge
- Criteria
- Creativity
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Competition
- Choice
and
- Whole staff training from a recognised expert
- Parent workshops
- Regular assemblies on growth mindset themes and also children sharing their experiences in developing their growth mindsets
- Specific lessons that teach particular aspects of how to develop a growth mindset
- Displays across the school that celebrate and promote Growth Mindset
- Newsletter “thought for the week” to focus on Growth Mindset
- Homework activities that encourage a growth mindset
- Feedback.
As teachers, the feedback we give to our children aims to:
- focus on the learning objectives , success criteria, skills and habits for learning ;
- stimulate the correction of errors or improvement of a piece of work; scaffold or support pupils’ next steps;
- comment on progress over a number of attempts;
- Focus on EFFORT, PROGRESS and PROCESS
- provide opportunities for pupils to think things through for themselves and respond
Growth Mindset Displays at Friars: