Why is Growth Important?

Growing our Minds  

Throughout the school year, we will learn about our brains and brain malleability, discussing how to strengthen our brains and become smarter.  We will learn how to embrace challenges and mistakes and to praise process, effort, and perseverance rather than specific abilities or talents.  In doing this we as a community, will support the development of a growth mindset.     

Growth mindset is the belief that intelligence and ability can be developed through the use of effective effort and effective strategies.  Value is placed on the process rather than the outcome. People with a growth mindset will embrace challenges, persist, and see effort as a way to improve.  They learn from other people’s success, embrace learning new things, become resilient, see mistakes as an opportunity to try again, learn from the mistakes, connect with others, strive and flourish. 

If we have a fixed mindset, we believe that our intelligence and talent are something we are born with and can’t change. This leads us to the false assumption that talent alone, without hard work, will lead to success. Extensive research has shown that children with this mindset give up easily and often avoid challenges.   

Why is having a growth mindset important? 

In a growth mindset, we see ourselves as growing and developing. We believe we can build any skill with effort, persistence and an understanding of the HOW. This can help us create a love of learning and an excitement around new challenges. We see the brain like a muscle, the more effort we put in, the bigger it grows. 

When people learn they have the power to grow their brain and develop their intelligence, they are motivated to try harder, persist when challenged, and embrace opportunities to learn.  These actions lead to higher achievement. 

How can I begin to promote the development of a growth mindset at home? 

Yet is a powerful word and a gift of time. When we let our child know they are not there Yet – it means that they are not bad or good at things. Learning something new takes time and if they do not know how to do something or understand something at first, that is not the end of the story.  They just do not know how to do it or understand it Yet! 

GROWTH MINDSET TIPS  

#1 Praise Your Child for Effort Instead of Talent 

The most important thing we can work towards as parents is to praise our children for effort, not talent. As a Mum of 3 big kids, I am forever telling them – great effort, keep going.. especially when they have a 3000 word assignment due by midnight! 

Research shows that children praised for outcome will choose easier tasks to prove they are smart and gain our approval. Praising children for effort on the other hand, is what leads them to choose harder tasks because they know we value effort. This is why children with a growth mindset ultimately reach higher levels of success.  

To support the growth mindset of our SCA community, please give praise freely for these growth mindset builders:  

• Things accomplished through practice: studying, use of effective strategies, perseverance, connection with others and concentration.  
• Choosing challenging projects, the harder path or at a basic level a different genre to read.  
• Trying different strategies, this could be when reading or finishing that Maths problem  
• Making improvements in every aspect of school life 

#2 Help Your Child Recognise Their Fixed Mindset Voice 

This one is a ‘biggy!!’ The story we tell ourselves is a choice. By understanding and acknowledging when we are using self-defeating and fixed self-talk, we can start to choose a growth mindset voice instead. Recognising that we have a choice of which voice to hear is a big step towards using a growth mindset voice. Over my career, I have lost count of the children that say CAN’T in the first instance – changing that to CAN is so important.  

Here are some growth mindset questions to chat around the dinner table: 

• What were your successes today? 
• Tell me 4 things that made you happy today?  
• You worked really hard on that.   What will you add next? 
• Name one person you are grateful for today and why? 
• What 3 things can you do for someone else this week? 
• What would you like to become better at? 
• Was there anything that made you feel stuck today? How did you overcome it. 

I look forward to hearing about your child’s successes in the coming weeks. 

Jo Reed 

Assistant Principal (Acting)