Watch Your Language: promoting Growth Mindset

For a long time, the language of education has revolved around the message of ‘could do better.’ Whether this is the school as a whole through Ofsted outcomes, school staff through performance management policies, or pupils through marking of work, test results and the language we use, they all seem to have brought a message of, ‘but what if you tried harder? It’s not good enough yet.’

For school communities, staff and pupils this has had, and continues to have, a massive impact on self-esteem and mental health, leading us to think that we should always be heading for something bigger and better than before, never being content with what we have in that moment. It has also had an impact on our ability to be part of a team and support one another since this model focuses on doing better than everyone else and placing each of us in direct competition with our peers.

A lot of the behaviours we encounter in the classroom can be viewed as a direct result of this message. The child who refuses to start a task is actually really anxious that they won’t be able to complete it to a high enough standard. The child who refuses to write in their book is actually fed up with opening their book to see list of suggested improvements all over their work. The child screws up their work in the middle of a task is actually frustrated because their handwriting doesn’t look like the perfect cursive text printed on the board. The child who forgets their PE kit for the third week running because although they love being outside, they hate catching balls because they always drop it and are told to try harder.

We often don’t realise that we’ve said or written something that has this impact. In fact, sometimes we’re encouraged to give these messages through the expectations of marking or observation policies.

Sometimes we even say these things to ourselves, we talk negatively about a lesson observation or an incident in school. While it’s important to be reflective and learn from our experiences, it’s also important to celebrate the successes and achievements of each day.

Notice the language you use in the classroom and in your moments of reflection. Could it be tweaked to promote an attitude of growth mindset which focuses on our ability to learn and grow from all of our experiences? Could it help the both the children and ourselves to see that they can seek support to make improvements? Could it reflect the effort and investment made in a task rather than just looking at the final outcome?

Be kind. Always.

Developing Emotional Literacy: emotion of the week

As a Year 6 teacher talking about the emotions of a character in our shared text I used to be exasperated by the stock answers of ‘happy’ or ‘sad’. It seemed that the children knew no other words to describe an emotion or the depths of that emotion.

The longer I spend in education, the more I realise it’s because we need to get better about talking about emotions, naming them, understanding the effect on our bodies and learning how to react to them in a safe way. Here’s some ideas that may help you to do this in school:

Have an emotion word of the week, look for opportunities to spot that emotion during the week and what events had preempted it.

Talk about emotions in context, whether that’s associated with a character in a book or as the result of an event in the classroom or on the playground. Empathise with the emotion and talk about the physical effect on the body.

Create a shades of emotion chart where different words are used to create an understanding of the different depths of that emotion.

Modeling by adults is key, children learn from watching us. Make sure your facial expressions, vocal tone and body language match the intensity and type of emotion in a safe and socially acceptable manner.

Be clear that all emotions are acceptable, it’s how you deal with them that counts.

Be kind. Always.