Activities & Strategies for
Developing Habits & Mindsets
Beginning-of-Year Culture Days
The first three days of school eschew content instruction in favor of building a common language around community values, expectations, and habits and mindsets. This year, as one of the two co-leaders for the middle grades team, I was responsible for creating the schedule for these "Culture Days." Students rotated with their homerooms so that they got to see every teacher every day. Some sessions focused on mundane topics like the new bell schedule and skills for staying organized and taking good notes. Others involved discussing hopes, dreams, and short- and long-term goals. Still others were designed to teach scholars about the value of having a growth mindset, the rewards of persisting, and the importance of approaching problems with flexibility and creativity.
Schedules for "Culture Days." Each teacher was responsible for facilitating one session per day, and I attempted to incorporate sessions related to productive habits and mindsets into each day's plan.
Community Meetings
Each week, I am responsible for planning a 40-minute community meeting for all 70 middle school students. These meetings always begin with important announcements and awards for scholars who have shown exceptional habits and mindsets over the course of the previous week. The rest of the meeting time is spent on an activity that relates directly to one or more habits and mindsets. Scholars often separate into small groups for these activities to facilitate discussion and interdependent thinking.
Community Meetings. To the left, students work collaboratively to sort out which habits of mind correspond with which images, scenarios, quotes, etc. To the right, students split into small groups to work through an exercise about empathetic listening. Below, students react to some of the community meeting activities we have done.
Students say...
"[It was really helpful] when we were talking about the growth and fixed mindsets. Most of the time when I'm facing challenges, and that's rare, I give up. But now I know what to do [instead of giving up]."
"Striving for accuracy is important because you should make sure that all your work is right. And creating, imagining, and innovating [is important] because separating yourself from the crowd and being different is a good thing. When we did the activity with the Y-Charts where we had to talk about how things look and sound and feel, everyone had a different answer."
"I like the one when it was like putting yourself in other people's shoes. When people read off their problems, it was interesting to see what they thought in their heads and not just from my perspective."
Reinforcement
My school utilizes a positive behavior incentive system and tracks student choices, habits, and mindsets through the Bloomz app. Students can earn points for demonstrating positive habits of mind, and these points allow them to participate in reward activities like scholar-staff dodgeball games, off-campus lunches, and dress-down days. However, some scholars need additional reinforcement beyond these points. In these instances, I like to design personalized trackers that students can carry from class to class. This lets them see the impacts of their choices and make adjustments much more quickly.
Example of a Student Tracker. The student for whom it was made loves NBA basketball. Scroll down to see how different numbers of daily points correspond to different famous players. Personalizing behavioral trackers in this way makes them seem less punitive and builds scholars' investment as they work on demonstrating the sorts of habits and mindsets, like persisting and managing impulsivity, that earn them extra points.