How will incorporating a growth mindset culture impact my 4th grade students belief in their math abilities, perceptions, and attitudes?

Seminar Title

How will incorporating a growth mindset culture impact my 4th grade students belief in their math abilities, perceptions, and attitudes?

Growth Mindset

4th Grade

Elementary

Mathematics

Reading

Ever wonder how you could increase productivity? How about initiating work amongst your most struggling learner? What if you could give permission to students to make mistakes and instill an idea that it’s ok? This may sound far fetched but join me in my seminar and learn what the growth mindset can do for your classroom. Research has shown that when an energetic kindergartner starts school, they have a 100% open or growth mindset and are ready to learn and are excited about pretty much everything. As time goes on however, that enthusiasm wares and the growth mindset starts to quickly shift and become more fixed. Join me to rethink how the mind works and pick up useful information that is applicable to all grade levels and curricula.

Mathematical Mindsets Introduction Mindsets in the classroom is an area of great curiosity for me.  After learning and researching the effects of having a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset, I decided to make it the forte of my action research.  Exposure and experience in the classroom has lead me to desire an understanding of student’s beliefs in their math ability and how those beliefs affect their performance and attitude. My thoughts were focused on finding the answer to this question:  How will incorporating a growth mindset culture impact my 4th grade students belief in their math abilities, perceptions, and attitudes? Method and Data My research was focused on several concepts: Motivation, self esteem, environment, engagement, and assessment.  These concepts were laid out as a road map throughout the data collection and implementation process.  Evidence was gathered, observations made, and ideas tested to see how creating a growth mindset culture would accelerate or help achieve better attitudes for math.  With a better attitude, it is hopeful that students will trust the learning process, give 100%, and persevere through hardships as math isn’t an easy subject. Conclusion Incorporation of the growth mindset in the classroom as shown me many positive results in students.  I have seen the best results with my struggling learners as they realized it is ok to make mistakes and that those mistakes are all part of learning.  With the culture that was created originally around math, we’ve expanded and have been using it across curricula and even how it can apply to sports are personal areas of life.