Wednesday, October 17th

After your homeroom CREW today, please remember to take the following survey
https://goo.gl/forms/dSYAhxPxU4ajjhxp2

Read this short passage and be prepared to discuss in our ERD opening circle;

In a 2013 white paper for the Hewlett Foundation, University of Chicago researcher Camille Farrington describes four key academic mindsets, each of which is independently associated with increased perseverance, better academic behaviors, and higher grades. Expressed in the first person, from the point of view of the learner, they are: 

• I belong in this community

• I can succeed at this

• My ability and my competence grow with my effort

• This work has value for me 

These four mindsets, Farrington argues, are critical levers for increasing the student engagement and the persistence necessary for students to achieve mastery. And research across a range of studies suggests that educators play a key role in building positive mindsets. Students’ academic identities and attitudes and beliefs about schooling are strongly influenced by the school and classroom environment in which learning is situated; the structure of academic work, goals, support, and feedback in that environment; and the implicit and explicit messages conveyed to students about themselves in relation to that academic work. 

Increasing student motivation to learn is ultimately contingent upon “creat[ing] a set of circumstances in which students take pleasure in learning and come to believe that the information and skills they are being asked to learn are important and meaningful for them and worth their effort, and that they can reasonably expect to be able to learn the material.”