I want my students to learn about and apply growth mindset strategies during our STEAM challenges. These strategies may serve as a bridge between the lack of exposure and the time needed to feel comfortable in the process. Since this is a highly abstract idea for second graders, I plan to teach the children these strategies using concrete learning opportunities in a structured format. Throughout the learning, I will tie the strategies to specific examples within the weekly STEAM challenges and will ask students to reflect upon their mindset changes. Phase one of the action plan will took place overa four-week period. During this phase of the action plan, Itaught the students about the foundational concepts of growth mindset;
the brain is a muscle that can grow and change
there are different areas of learning, and you can practice any area to make it better
yet is a powerful word and setting small goals can make a big difference
mistakes make learning happen
During each week of the intervention plan, I focused on one of the topics. I integratedvideo, books, interactive learning opportunities, and reflection. This direct instruction will took place during a 30-minute block each week. Following the direct instruction, the outlined area wasthe focus for our school week, with special attention paid to our STEAM challenge (which had additional time allocated to it). This additional timeallowed students to reflect specifically on examples of the growth mindset focus for the week, and how this learning affected their attitude toward the STEAM challenge. Additionally, I will taught the students how to use the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) during a STEAM challenge. This strategy gave students a structure that both teaches an encourages the creation of meaningful questions around a topic. This teaching strategy wasintroduced during the first week of the action plan, and then retaught during the second week of the action plan. In these first two weeks, the QFT was onlyused during the ask phase of the EDP. During the two final weeks of the action plan, studentsused the QFT during the plan and improve phases of the STEAM challenge. During these two weeks, studentswere asked to stop during both the plan and improve phase to create their own question prompt, and then follow the QFT steps. The QFT consists of the following key components:
Provide students with a question focus based on the STEAM challenge
Review the rules of producing questions
Produce questions
Categorize and improve the questions
Prioritize the questions
Assessment Plan
During the needs assessment portion of this project, I was able to garner valuable information about my students’ attitudes towards STEAM challenges. Repeating the survey and interviewsallowed me to compare the data and look for shifts in students’ attitudes (see appendix A). Additionally, Iused pre and post check-ins during each week of the growth mindset lessons (see appendix B). This helped me gauge how well my students understood the growth mindset ideas I taught. As well, Iused the students’ QFT forms (see appendix C) to gauge how successful they were with implementing the strategy into the STEAM challenge. Finally, the students completedreflections after each STEAM challenge about how they did or did not incorporate growth mindset learning in their challenge, and how they feel the use of the QFT impacted their overall attitude toward the STEAM challenge (see appendix D). This data allowed me to further understand my student’s application of both the QFT and growth mindset concepts during STEAM challenges.