Growth Mindset I Am Poems

We have been working with the idea of growth mindset all year long so as a "final" recap project, I wanted the kids to do a little reflective writing.  Using an "I Am" Poem template, the kids wrote their own I Am poems with a growth mindset twist.

Now, there are hundreds of "I Am" Poem templates online to choose from.  I happened to use this one here, but you can use any of them.  I didn't make copies, rather, I did a sort of "guided writing" with the kids.  I wrote the sentence stem on the board and then did my own example.  Since I wanted them to write with a growth mindset twist, I modeled that for them.  

I am a hard worker who strives to learn all I can.

I try to keep in mind that if I don't get it the first time, I will if I try again.

I hope that I will never lose my ability to persevere.  

After I modeled, the kids were then able to write that particular line on their own.  We did this for the first half of the poem.  Then I wrote the rest of the sentence stems and they were off to write independently.  

To display the poems (which really did show a great deal of reflection and focus on a growth mindset), I gave the students an outline of a lightbulb.  Using a concrete poem style, the students wrote their entire "I Am" poem around the outline so that, when it was complete, the lightbulb shown through the words.  

I took a pic of the kids "holding" the lightbulb and then they drew themselves somewhere, anywhere, where they would have to have a growth mindset to succeed.  

All in all, this came out just as I was envisioning. It was reflective, academic, and a tad bit fun.  The kids enjoyed it and loved reading each others' work.