Ah, summer time. Most teachers feel like this:
But many families may have mixed feelings about the long summer days.
They're grateful for the break from school, but they may have some wonderings: what do the kids do with so much unstructured time? Will my child maintain what he learned over the past school year or will he regress?
Growth mindset is one of my favorite things that has come out in recent years, along with the science of reading. I have a firm belief that if we use best teaching practices and support our students' development of grit and fortitude, they will become very resilient readers.
As teachers, we traditionally talk about it in the beginning of the school year or in January for New Year's Resolutions. We create goals, we post them, and maybe at the end of the year, we'll evaluate our progression towards achieving them. That's a good start . . . but our students need more.
In order to really develop a growth mindset, it needs to be ingrained in all our directions, instruction, conversations, and activities. And it can be done without heaping more work our over-burdened selves.
Character feelings lessons begin in kindergarten and end in . . . well, we still talk about our feelings as adults, right? Teachers are pros at experiencing a wide range of feelings, LOL. 😬
As students are developing their vocabulary banks, it's easy for them to just use words within their comfort zone: happy, mad, sad, and scared. Our jobs are to help them grow their vocabulary and use precise language. What better way to scaffold the process than with some organized lists!
