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Lesson 2: How to Promote a Growth Mindset

From KNILT
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Recap from Lesson 1

The quiz in Lesson 1 was meant for you to reflect on how often you use math in your world. The first two questions purpose was to get you thinking about when you use math and if the daily activities you participate in involve math, chances are most of them do. For example, if you selected grocery shopping as one of your activities then you use math each time you go to the grocery store. You are doing math in your head when you are buying certain items for a meal you want to prepare and when you go to pay. There was also a question asking about your interests. This question is something you can give to your own students at the beginning of the year to get to know their interests and hobbies. Then, throughout the year you could incorporate their interests into math questions that you give them. The students will be able to make a connection to the problems and they will be more likely to want to solve them.


Lesson 2

Instead of saying the phrases in the previous lesson, we could encourage students to think in a more growth mindset by saying the following...


"I wonder if I am ever going to use this."

"I might need to know this for my career in the future."

"How will I use this in the future?"

"In what ways am I using math in the job I have now?"


By encouraging these phrases or even asking students these questions it will promote the growth mindset students need in order to have a successful and enjoyable experience with mathematics.


Read the following article, https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/09/teachers-nurture-growth-mindsets-in-math.html


After reading the article, contribute an initial post to the discussion board and respond to at least three of your classmates posts. The discussion prompt is as follows:

The article talked about many different strategies teachers can use in order to promote growth mindsets in their classroom. Pick one of the strategies which were suggested in the article and talk about how you could incorporate it into your classroom. If you have any other ideas for promoting a growth mindset include them in your initial discussion post.

Click the following link to get to the discussion board Talk:Lesson 2: How to Promote a Growth Mindset


Move on to Lesson 3: Being Truthful with Your Students

Return to Relating Math to the Real World (Home Page)