Starting 100% virtually this year has made for some interesting lessons.  The tried and true lesson that I am so used to doing just don't work the same in this digital environment.  We have had to face new challenges and new hurdles that we didn't have to in the past.  And my third graders as feeling it.   So we started this week with a lesson on the power of YET.  The idea that we don't know everything now, that we aren't great at it now, but if we keep trying we will get it soon.  We just aren't there YET. I began by reading the story The Magical Yet to the students.  It is a gorgeous book that lays out the idea of the YET.  The kids immediately got the point.  They understood that we might not be great at everything we are being asked to do right now, but we will get there.    I then asked them to think of things that they personally weren't so great at.  They were to tell me things they can't do right now but hope to get b......

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 ......

As more and more research comes out about the power of Growth Mindset and more and more people are leaning towards this line of thinking (heck, even my District is getting on board...they talked about it at a training I went to over the summer!), I figured that this would be as good a time as any to teach my students about their own brains and mindset.  So I began my first week of school with a few lessons that really set a great tone for my students. To begin, I wanted something tangible and hands-on for my students to experience.  So I searched online and found this lesson here .  In a nutshell, I folded some paper in a crazy figure (that didn't actually look all crazy...until I tried to make it...go to the blog for exact instructions) and told the students they needed to recreate it.  I had them get into groups of 7-8 students, put the figure in the middle and gave them each the exact same piece of paper I used.  There were only two rules:  They could......