Habits and Mindsets
Students reference their teacher’s guidance in organization, study habits, character traits and values (like persistence, striving for accuracy, etc.). They have internalized these traits beyond just talking about them which has led to personal growth on the part of the student.
At the start of the year, each semester, and each quarter, my class, like many other classes, sets goals. Students come into sixth grade with an understanding of what goals are, and with some guidance from me learn to make SMART goals, and then learn how to track those goals. But at the end of the day, why make a goal if you’re just trying to achieve it, then make a new goal? My philosophy this year with my students regarding goal setting is that it ultimately needs to lead to the formation of habits. It’s all well and good to establish a series of goals, but if those goals aren’t leading to developed habits, then in my opinion, they aren’t serving the higher purpose that they could be serving. To this effect, my students have an understanding that my expectations of them as students are that they try their absolute hardest to consistently accomplish what they are capable of, and to come in for help, or seek it out, when necessary. In addition to these expectations, there are aspects of my, and hopefully every middle school classroom, that are present to help these students reach their full potential. In this interpretation, I am highlighting my work with my students in the habits of striving for accuracy and precision, questioning and posing problems, and thinking interdependently.
As an English teacher, it’s easy to get caught up in discussions and comprehension questions to ensure that my students are staying on task and keeping up to date, but it is in our opportunities to dive deeper into these thoughts that I find the most rewarding habits of my students. The first habit that I want to highlight in my class is the habit of striving for accuracy and precision. In both my English and social studies classes, my grade level team has put a lot of emphasis on rubric creation, development, and teaching students how to read and create work according to a rubric. The presence, and understanding of a rubric, has helped my students to produce higher quality work sooner in the writing process, and to help them develop a deeper appreciation and confidence in their writing skills. For my first piece of evidence I am highlighting a writing process that I did with my students where they wrote rough and final drafts of a piece of writing, modeling it after a sample essay, and self grading according to the rubric. I found that the students who were proactive in self assessing, identifying areas of need, or identifying their strengths in their written product, were the students who showed the most growth during the writing process. In my first piece of evidence, I have examples from two of my students, one who took into account the feedback from a peer, but still identified in his final draft that he still needed guidance on how to take it from a 3 to a 4, and was proactive in reaching out to me. This student has shown immense growth in his writing abilities throughout the written assignments that we have been working on, and has gotten a better understanding of how to self assess, get help when needed, and is constantly striving for accuracy and precision in his work. The second essay in this piece of evidence is from another student who picked up on rubrics and demonstrated her abilities to read and create accurate and precise work consistently throughout the year. For her, the main areas of growth that we have been working on, is to take her work beyond the rubric, and applying it to real-life situations. She was proactive in indicating that she wants to take these rubric and essay writing skills that we have been working on, to start writing persuasive essays to people that she wants to give her opinion to. For example, she and I are currently working on her writing a letter to our principal insisting that she reinstate achieve 3000 at our school because she feels strongly that it should be at wheeler middle school. This process of helping students understand what the bar is, what the expectations are, and what they need to do to be successful, has shown to help students develop the habit of giving their all the first time they do an assignment so that they don’t have to spend more time on revisions. This is one habit that I feel strongly about my students developing so that they will ultimately go into the real world giving their all the first time around, and learn how to find out what is expected, and how to achieve it.
One major aspect of my classroom that I work to foster is the idea of thinking interdependently. In my classroom, I have one special education inclusion class and one general education class. I have found that to meet the needs of my students with special needs, they often need many opportunities to interact with their peers and to bounce their ideas off of them. To meet the needs of these students I make sure to incorporate many opportunities for my students to think interdependently. My second piece of evidence is a lesson plan in which I demonstrate how I incorporate thinking interdependently on a partner, group, and class-level basis. This is modeled to be similar to the 1-2-4-8-16-Class model, where students take their thinking from their own ideas, to a group idea, to bigger groups, and ultimately to the whole class. By encouraging students to build off of their partners’ thoughts while working on a think pair share, rather than just thinking, pairing, and sharing, the students are forced to think independently because they are using their discussion partner’s thoughts to guide their own, and to build upon. This lesson plan and corresponding slideshow demonstrates how my students are thinking interdependently. On slides 11 and 12, and the rationales of the lesson plan, I have highlighted exactly how the students are thinking interdependently, and how this is helping them grasp a stronger understanding of the daily learning target. In this lesson, students are thinking interdependently because they are given the opportunity to work with their partner to discuss options, but also to work with their classmates in a way that they don’t have to verbally share ideas, but they can add or adjust based off of their classmates’ previous responses. Group activities like these are commonplace in my classroom to meet the developmental and academic needs of all of my students. In addition to whole class thinking interdependently activities, there is value on group assignments where students are all working together to accomplish the same goal. Thinking interdependently and group work is also a skill that these students are going to have to develop for the rest of their life; by working with them in their formative years they can successfully build these skills and set themselves up for future success.
In addition to thinking interdependently, another habit that I value in my class is the habit of applying past knowledge to new situations. In our sixth grade curricula, we stress brainstorming, the importance of do nows, and reviewing and previewing in class. The concept of a “do now” is one that seems to be the most universally known and practiced. Do nows serve the purpose of engaging and orienting students into the right mindset to be prepared for, and to understand the upcoming lesson. For my third piece of evidence, I am presenting a lesson that we did about Muslim achievements and the value of achievements. In order to orient our students, we encouraged them to remember as many achievements as they could from any of the civilizations that we had studied. As you can see in the evidence, on the first slide “This do now prompts the students to apply past knowledge to new situations because by re engaging the students with the ideas of achievements, something we were about to cover for this unit. The students were able to produce their knowledge of achievements in the past and to orient themselves back into the mindset of what achievements are so that they could successfully learn the material of the day”. Student responses to the do now, as you can see on page 17 of the pdf, or the first page of the student work, students remembered achievements from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine empire. By taking this opportunity to re orient the students, they were able to better participate in the upcoming assignments. After learning about the Muslim achievements, the students were allowed to explain the value of achievements and how they improve the world. By encouraging them to pick any achievement, but reflect on the current achievements that they were studying, they were able to apply their past knowledge to the new achievements they were studying by making connections to the overarching idea of why people make new inventions, and how do these achievements influence the world. Do now assignments like these are common practice to engage students in the material that we are working on moving forward, and to refresh their memory about what they already know about the subject. We have do now assignments at the start of every period and strive to keep them as questions or prompts that can activate their prior knowledge to make more meaningful interactions with the new material they are working on.
My fourth, and final, piece of evidence, shows my work with my students on thinking about their thinking, or metacognition. In this evidence I have highlighted a self reflection done by my students after working on their essays. At Wheeler Middle School, we encourage our students to follow our 6 general learner outcomes (GLOs), and often encourage them to reflect upon them. This has lead to students being able to identify and embody these GLOs in their daily practice. In this evidence, I have highlighted examples of my students reflecting on their GLO practices, and what specifically they did as students to help them or hinder them. Responses to the question “What can Ms. Singlehurst do to help you recognize when you aren't staying focused and need help?” Such as “I don't really know actually. But honestly, just do what you do regularly to help or get me on task. Don't put me by myself all the way in the back. I can't focus back there” show that this student in particular is aware of what is working, and what doesn't work, and is able to articulate that. This student in particular is a particularly chatty student and as such I usually isolate him to get his work done. After I read this, I gave him a chance to work with his partners and he self-identified that he actually did need to be isolated, and was able to take the initiative to work alone. Ever since then he has been good about recognizing when he can work with others, and when he should be working alone. As you can see in the other highlighted responses, many of my students were able to think about what were they doing that helped or hindered, and what they needed help in. This is a skill that I emphasize with all of my students to encourage them taking ownership of their learning experience, but also to recognize their strengths and areas of improvement. I strive to encourage students to think about their thinking often, and self reflections are one of the strongest ways that I can accomplish that.
As I have said before, and will undoubtedly repeat on numerous occasions: goal setting is all well and good but unless those goals are developing a habit, they aren’t being used correctly. Helping students to develop life skills like working with others, using resources to strive for precision, or activating their prior knowledge to better prepare for new information, are all skills that people need to develop to be successful in life. Middle school is a time of transition, a period where students are finding themselves, learning their place in the world, and shaping into the people that they will become. By guiding my students in strong traits of good citizenship, and helping them grow as people, I am setting them up for success in the future, and to continue to develop these skills, ultimately individually and proactively.
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 1
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 2
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 3
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 4
At the start of the year, each semester, and each quarter, my class, like many other classes, sets goals. Students come into sixth grade with an understanding of what goals are, and with some guidance from me learn to make SMART goals, and then learn how to track those goals. But at the end of the day, why make a goal if you’re just trying to achieve it, then make a new goal? My philosophy this year with my students regarding goal setting is that it ultimately needs to lead to the formation of habits. It’s all well and good to establish a series of goals, but if those goals aren’t leading to developed habits, then in my opinion, they aren’t serving the higher purpose that they could be serving. To this effect, my students have an understanding that my expectations of them as students are that they try their absolute hardest to consistently accomplish what they are capable of, and to come in for help, or seek it out, when necessary. In addition to these expectations, there are aspects of my, and hopefully every middle school classroom, that are present to help these students reach their full potential. In this interpretation, I am highlighting my work with my students in the habits of striving for accuracy and precision, questioning and posing problems, and thinking interdependently.
As an English teacher, it’s easy to get caught up in discussions and comprehension questions to ensure that my students are staying on task and keeping up to date, but it is in our opportunities to dive deeper into these thoughts that I find the most rewarding habits of my students. The first habit that I want to highlight in my class is the habit of striving for accuracy and precision. In both my English and social studies classes, my grade level team has put a lot of emphasis on rubric creation, development, and teaching students how to read and create work according to a rubric. The presence, and understanding of a rubric, has helped my students to produce higher quality work sooner in the writing process, and to help them develop a deeper appreciation and confidence in their writing skills. For my first piece of evidence I am highlighting a writing process that I did with my students where they wrote rough and final drafts of a piece of writing, modeling it after a sample essay, and self grading according to the rubric. I found that the students who were proactive in self assessing, identifying areas of need, or identifying their strengths in their written product, were the students who showed the most growth during the writing process. In my first piece of evidence, I have examples from two of my students, one who took into account the feedback from a peer, but still identified in his final draft that he still needed guidance on how to take it from a 3 to a 4, and was proactive in reaching out to me. This student has shown immense growth in his writing abilities throughout the written assignments that we have been working on, and has gotten a better understanding of how to self assess, get help when needed, and is constantly striving for accuracy and precision in his work. The second essay in this piece of evidence is from another student who picked up on rubrics and demonstrated her abilities to read and create accurate and precise work consistently throughout the year. For her, the main areas of growth that we have been working on, is to take her work beyond the rubric, and applying it to real-life situations. She was proactive in indicating that she wants to take these rubric and essay writing skills that we have been working on, to start writing persuasive essays to people that she wants to give her opinion to. For example, she and I are currently working on her writing a letter to our principal insisting that she reinstate achieve 3000 at our school because she feels strongly that it should be at wheeler middle school. This process of helping students understand what the bar is, what the expectations are, and what they need to do to be successful, has shown to help students develop the habit of giving their all the first time they do an assignment so that they don’t have to spend more time on revisions. This is one habit that I feel strongly about my students developing so that they will ultimately go into the real world giving their all the first time around, and learn how to find out what is expected, and how to achieve it.
One major aspect of my classroom that I work to foster is the idea of thinking interdependently. In my classroom, I have one special education inclusion class and one general education class. I have found that to meet the needs of my students with special needs, they often need many opportunities to interact with their peers and to bounce their ideas off of them. To meet the needs of these students I make sure to incorporate many opportunities for my students to think interdependently. My second piece of evidence is a lesson plan in which I demonstrate how I incorporate thinking interdependently on a partner, group, and class-level basis. This is modeled to be similar to the 1-2-4-8-16-Class model, where students take their thinking from their own ideas, to a group idea, to bigger groups, and ultimately to the whole class. By encouraging students to build off of their partners’ thoughts while working on a think pair share, rather than just thinking, pairing, and sharing, the students are forced to think independently because they are using their discussion partner’s thoughts to guide their own, and to build upon. This lesson plan and corresponding slideshow demonstrates how my students are thinking interdependently. On slides 11 and 12, and the rationales of the lesson plan, I have highlighted exactly how the students are thinking interdependently, and how this is helping them grasp a stronger understanding of the daily learning target. In this lesson, students are thinking interdependently because they are given the opportunity to work with their partner to discuss options, but also to work with their classmates in a way that they don’t have to verbally share ideas, but they can add or adjust based off of their classmates’ previous responses. Group activities like these are commonplace in my classroom to meet the developmental and academic needs of all of my students. In addition to whole class thinking interdependently activities, there is value on group assignments where students are all working together to accomplish the same goal. Thinking interdependently and group work is also a skill that these students are going to have to develop for the rest of their life; by working with them in their formative years they can successfully build these skills and set themselves up for future success.
In addition to thinking interdependently, another habit that I value in my class is the habit of applying past knowledge to new situations. In our sixth grade curricula, we stress brainstorming, the importance of do nows, and reviewing and previewing in class. The concept of a “do now” is one that seems to be the most universally known and practiced. Do nows serve the purpose of engaging and orienting students into the right mindset to be prepared for, and to understand the upcoming lesson. For my third piece of evidence, I am presenting a lesson that we did about Muslim achievements and the value of achievements. In order to orient our students, we encouraged them to remember as many achievements as they could from any of the civilizations that we had studied. As you can see in the evidence, on the first slide “This do now prompts the students to apply past knowledge to new situations because by re engaging the students with the ideas of achievements, something we were about to cover for this unit. The students were able to produce their knowledge of achievements in the past and to orient themselves back into the mindset of what achievements are so that they could successfully learn the material of the day”. Student responses to the do now, as you can see on page 17 of the pdf, or the first page of the student work, students remembered achievements from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine empire. By taking this opportunity to re orient the students, they were able to better participate in the upcoming assignments. After learning about the Muslim achievements, the students were allowed to explain the value of achievements and how they improve the world. By encouraging them to pick any achievement, but reflect on the current achievements that they were studying, they were able to apply their past knowledge to the new achievements they were studying by making connections to the overarching idea of why people make new inventions, and how do these achievements influence the world. Do now assignments like these are common practice to engage students in the material that we are working on moving forward, and to refresh their memory about what they already know about the subject. We have do now assignments at the start of every period and strive to keep them as questions or prompts that can activate their prior knowledge to make more meaningful interactions with the new material they are working on.
My fourth, and final, piece of evidence, shows my work with my students on thinking about their thinking, or metacognition. In this evidence I have highlighted a self reflection done by my students after working on their essays. At Wheeler Middle School, we encourage our students to follow our 6 general learner outcomes (GLOs), and often encourage them to reflect upon them. This has lead to students being able to identify and embody these GLOs in their daily practice. In this evidence, I have highlighted examples of my students reflecting on their GLO practices, and what specifically they did as students to help them or hinder them. Responses to the question “What can Ms. Singlehurst do to help you recognize when you aren't staying focused and need help?” Such as “I don't really know actually. But honestly, just do what you do regularly to help or get me on task. Don't put me by myself all the way in the back. I can't focus back there” show that this student in particular is aware of what is working, and what doesn't work, and is able to articulate that. This student in particular is a particularly chatty student and as such I usually isolate him to get his work done. After I read this, I gave him a chance to work with his partners and he self-identified that he actually did need to be isolated, and was able to take the initiative to work alone. Ever since then he has been good about recognizing when he can work with others, and when he should be working alone. As you can see in the other highlighted responses, many of my students were able to think about what were they doing that helped or hindered, and what they needed help in. This is a skill that I emphasize with all of my students to encourage them taking ownership of their learning experience, but also to recognize their strengths and areas of improvement. I strive to encourage students to think about their thinking often, and self reflections are one of the strongest ways that I can accomplish that.
As I have said before, and will undoubtedly repeat on numerous occasions: goal setting is all well and good but unless those goals are developing a habit, they aren’t being used correctly. Helping students to develop life skills like working with others, using resources to strive for precision, or activating their prior knowledge to better prepare for new information, are all skills that people need to develop to be successful in life. Middle school is a time of transition, a period where students are finding themselves, learning their place in the world, and shaping into the people that they will become. By guiding my students in strong traits of good citizenship, and helping them grow as people, I am setting them up for success in the future, and to continue to develop these skills, ultimately individually and proactively.
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 1
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 2
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 3
Habits and Mindsets Evidence 4