Students who believe that they can learn, will learn and students who believe that they can not learn, will not. Within the past few years the growth mindset model has gained a lot of momentum. The main underlying belief of growth mindset is that students who believe that they can learn will be able to apply themselves to the best of their ability within the classroom and real-world situations and will grow. Students with a sort of fixed mindset, believe that their growth is fixed. That people know as much as they know, and they cannot know or learn anymore than that. Now, as an educator, a growth mindset seams more appealing to foster within the classroom. Being as there are a lot of cool things that we can teach to students, as long as they are willing and believe that they are capable of learning. If students have a fixed mindset, our job would be very boring because if students do not believe in themselves then it is hard to teach them. Not saying that it is impossible, because it is not. However, students with a fixed mindset tend to have worse attitudes towards learning and coming to school.

There are a lot of qualities about students with fixed mindsets that actually dwindle their abilities to be effective problem solvers within the classroom. A quote from Dr. Rachel Turney states, “Students with a fixed mindset like to be told that they are smart, instead of being praised for hard work.” Thus, the importance of changing the language in your classroom during group work or independent work. Students need to be praised for their hard work, not their intelligence level. Because when a growth mindset is fostered, the students already understand that they can learn and grow their abilities and skills with the correct pedagogy.

Most educators have become stagnant in their teaching practices and thus they are praising the students for being smart, instead of the students working hard to work towards the learning goals. Another quote from Dr. Rachel Turney states, “Praising students for their intelligence level actually lead students to be less persistent.” A study proved that praising students for intelligence levels actually makes them less persistence, therefore when they reach something that is challenging, they do not want to try and make it through the task at hand.

Growth mindset is one thing that has to be fostered from the very beginning of the school year because the language used within the classroom has to be very specific. However, students with a growth mindset take more action within their education and their learning and they own the process of getting them to mastery level of their learning targets.

Just a little over a month ago, in one of my many clinical experience, I had a 1^st grader look me dead in the eyes and say, “that’s okay Ms. Trone, I can do hard things so I know that I will be able to get it if I do this…” This, coming from a first grader killed me. But it showed me the power of a student taking charge of their own learning, and this is what every educator needs to aim for.

A friend of mine presented a classroom management strategy that spoke on using silliness within the classroom as a way to get students to stop and refocus. Hannah stated in her presentation, “Children need help learning to regulate their emotions. Model what it looks and sounds like to laugh about something funny for a few seconds and then to stop and refocus. For instance, after everyone laughs at something, you might say, “Oh, that was funny. Now, I’m going to take a few deep breathes to get myself focused back onto out discussion.”

 It would not come to a shock to my friends and family that I am an outgoing, happy-go lucky, silly type of person. Thus, upon hearing this, I was ecstatic and overjoyed that people do see the importance of brining that silliness into the classroom. That is just how I am and have always been and I don’t intend to change that as I move out of my undergraduate experience into the real world teaching a classroom full of children experience. Now that being said, I do not wish to conceal my silliness deep down in my soul while I am at school. Instead I plan to move forward using my silliness in the classroom. 

Throughout my time in school, I always found that the classes I enjoyed the most were the ones that the teacher was silly and liked to have a good time. Now, not saying that I enjoyed the teachers who were so focused on being silly that the class was lacking in content. Because I was also one of those kids who enjoyed learning. But when the teacher was more apt to laugh and make a joke every once in a while, I was more likely to enjoy going to their class. As a classroom teacher you must be able to find this boundary of enough silliness to where the students will still respect you as a teacher and learn from you but they will not take advantage of the silliness and be off task a good majority of each day.

I believe that Hannah was on to something because in her examples she was using silliness in a sense as to teach social skills. Being as no one is perfect, it is okay to laugh off a mistake here and there, however it is not okay to belly laugh on the floor in all situations. This is something that elementary students need to learn because not every situation they encounter is going to be a silly situation and they need to be able to laugh and refocus their attention back to the lesson or speaker or whatever they encounter.

Mission and vision statements are point blank hard. It’s very difficult to gather the goals and dreams of a program into a short three sentences that sum up the program as a whole. Now, I think that it is important for schools and classroom teachers to develop such mission statement so that they know and understand what their main purpose is every day that they come to school. However, it is nothing to get hung up on. People are not going to choose a program based on a mission statement, heck many proabably won’t even bother to look at it or read through it. But it is important for us to sit down and reflect on the values that we want our program to reflect through our mission statement.

Just a little while ago I was in a class that made me reflect on what values and ideals I wanted to uphold and foster within my classroom enviornment. A lot came to mind of course, honesty, compassion, respect, and kindness just to name a few. But then I started to reflect on how exactly I was going to accomplish this within my classroom. You see, I have always loves collaborative learning and I am a geek for hands on learning. This is when I realized that in my classroom these were two items that I would spend hours implementing in my class and through these items, I could reflect my values that I wanted foster.

Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for… my mission statement!

“In this classroom the mission is to build a collaborative learning community where young children can become better prepared for what is ahead. Through the use of collaborative learning, hands-on learning and play, children are challenged mentally and physically each and every day. Each day students will be provided with developmentally appropriate activities that will push them to be better learners, meaning children will only be asked to engage in learning and activities that are within the ability of the whole child, depending on their age and experiences.”

Now for a little debriefing. Collaborative learning and play were the two main pieces that I wanted to ensure were in my vision because they are the two things I feel very strong about. Through the use of collaborative learning we are giving students the tools that they need to work with one another and they are also discovering the learning on their own, at their own pace. Through the use of developmentally appropriate activites, I am showing the children that I respect where they are at and I am using this to guide the instruction.

I think it is important to note that not everyone has to agree with your mission statement. A mission statement is simply there to show what the program stands for and what they believe in. Mission statements are also a testament to a person and what they value. When creating a mission or vision statement it is first important to take a step back and reflect on the values and goals of the program, and then the mission statement can be constructed.

Social skills are quickly dwindling within the younger generations. The cause? Cellphones, tablets, tv, video games and the internet. All things are good in moderation, and the up and coming generation has not had a lot of moderation when it comes to interacting with these items. The children that will be coming into our classrooms could possibly be lacking in these social skills. We as educators have opportunities to teach social skills within our classroom. Wether we teach them in groups or individually we can help students understanding of socially acceptable behaviors.

We have to realize however, that children come to us from all walks of life. They will all have had different expereinces that shape them into who they are and how they act. Some will also come to us from different cultures, different cultures bring to us different social cues and norms. As an educator it is our job to realize that some kids will have different social skills and that is okay.

For those students who maybe have not been socialized or who simply lack the social skills we have to model for them and allow them to practice the skill for them to learn it. When we take the time to teach social skills that are lacking within teh students, we can better help our classroom management. When we teach students that it is not okay to speak while the teacher is speaking, we are teaching them social skills. When we model for them how to be kind and open doors for other students or teachers we are teaching them social skills.

For the students that come to us that are really struggling there are avenues that we can pursue. For example, the Social Skills Intervention Framework that I did my last blog post on provides students with explicit, indivdualized instruction of social skills that they are missing. Through the intervention we are able to help them gain the social skill and then through practice and modeling we help them integrate the skill into their every day lives. With social skills interventions however, it is important to integrate and tell the parents what you are doing with their parents. When they are educated and informed they are more likely to help integrate and instill the skills they are learning at home.

Students in the classroom lack social skills for many reasons. Just to name a few it can be a result of a simple lack of knowledge, lack of practice, lack of cues, and also lack of reinforcement. A lot of social skills are learned from the relationships that the child had with adults and their parents before they start school. It could even be seen that these children might be taught some social skills that could be inappropriate for school but very appropriate for the family and the culture they embrace.

The Social Skills Intervention is a tier 2 group-based intervention in which the aim is to teach and reinforce the correct social skills that students need moving forward with their education. Each of these interventions have the same type of setup and there are certain items that need to be in place before they can be implemented. For the interventions to be successful we need to have a good ratio of teachers to students. This is so the teachers can help to identify when a student presents a correct social skill. In these interventions it is also important to have peer models. Students learn social skills better when they have taught them from their peers. It is also crucial that there is home to school communication with the intervention that is happening. When parents are aware of what is going on, they can be a crucial part in the success of reinforcing the wanted social skills.

All social skills interventions need to have the following instructional steps:

Tell = Coaching

Show = Modeling

Do = Role Play

Practice = Rehearsal

Monitor Progress

Generalize & Maintain

In the world of early childhood education, social skills interventions are very important. They are also very applicable to young children because they need to have social skills in order to move forward in their schooling and in life. Modeling is also a great way for young children to learn because they can see an adult or peer performing the skills and then they can practice it on their own.

Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, fathered the Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development. In other words, Vygotsky believes that social learning comes before cognitive development and that cognitive development is in turn advanced by social learning. The theory comes about with three levels of cognitive development. The first level being total understanding. In this level students can perform specific tasks without any help from adults because they feel comfortable enough with their knowledge to carry out the task. The next level is the zone of proximal development. This is level where students can carry out a task with minimal help from the adult. This is where students best learn because they feel as though they are close enough to mastery and with just a little help, they can get there. The last level is where students cannot carry out a task, even with help.

When we are looking and thinking about classroom management, we could potentially see problems within the first and third level of Vygotsky’s model. Why? Because students are not actively engaged with the task or content at hand. If a child has already mastered a specific task, they no longer have to learn, thus they will be disengaged, and some behavioral issues could start to take place. Now, this isn’t saying that behavioral problems will come out of the children who master concepts quicker, because a lot of times this is not the case. Children who master the concepts the quickest a lot of times will continue to be on task. The real problems come out of the children in that third level of Vygotsky’s theory. The children that cannot get to mastery, even with help. When a concept or task is over the head of a child, they are going to be disengaged and causing problems. Thus, where classroom management comes in.

I think it is also important to note that the children that are in the zone of proximal development are going to receive the most scaffolding naturally by the teacher. Simply because with a little help they will reach mastery and they are much closer to understanding than the students who do not understand at all. With classroom management it is important that we are creating lessons and activities that keep students within this zone of proximal development because if the material is too easy or too hard to where they are in limbo within the other two zones, then we will lose the students and they will start to present these unwanted behaviors.