This week has been mostly focused around our inquiry projects – which are in essence the “unit test” of our work with the Vikings and Franks. We’ve spent two-and-a-half months on this learning, with an entire week just on preparing our projects to share with an authentic audience.
On Wednesday, many students were unprepared. On Thursday, almost everyone had finished and presented their project. Some of them were amazing, most of them met the learning targets. So why am I having you redo them?
One of the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning states that “Learning takes patience and time.” Too often, students do a project, a piece of writing or an assignment, hand it in, and then think that their learning is done. This is not the way learning works – we can always become better. It doesn’t matter if you struggle with the concept and the work or if you find it easy to achieve: you can do better. Compare yourself with yourself, not with the others in the class, and make the effort to improve.
Carol Dweck, in the video above, talks about the power of the word “yet.” “Yet” is the word of a growth mindset, of the idea that you can do what you want – become smarter, become a better athlete, improve your drawing or musical ability – if you put in the effort. We are not born with a certain amount of intelligence, athletic or artistic ability, musical aptitude, etc. We learn. And by putting work in, by trying and asking questions and making the effort to improve … surprise surprise! … we get better.
Am I done learning, as an adult and a teacher?
Not yet.
I agree, you always can learn more. You are the only teacher that has us redo our assignments and I feel like I have learned more because of it. It also helps when we get marked and we know what we need to fix so we can have a second chance at making our work better.
Knowing that you’ve learned more by reviewing assignments, do you redo assignments in other classes? Why or why not?
This blog taught me a lot about the word “yet” and I will take your advice and improve myself.
What did it teach you about the word yet? In what ways do you think differently now?
I think that your having us redo this project so we can improve upon our work and make them even better, because there is always room for improvement
Do you always use the feedback you’re given to improve? Do you redo assignments if you’re not required to? Why or why not?
I really enjoyed this video and learned a lot about equality. I can relat to this video and I agree on all of the points she made, this is very inspirational and makes lots of sense.
What points did you find the most interesting? Which ones made you consider a new perspective, and how did they do that?
I think that second chances in most cases are a good thing. In school I think it’s important to be able to re do an assignment because your showing your teacher and peers that you want to improve. It means your taking what you did and learning more, doing more. Before this video I wasn’t actually aware but now I realize that in school I’m focused on getting good grades. Of course I like learning new things. When I finally understand a math concept or science explanation I feel really good but in school I’m focused on getting an A and moving on. I hope I can somehow change my mindset to learn rather than just answer.
I think in a lot of ways school – at least as it has been in the past; we’re working on changing this – has been very much teaching you how to play the game of school rather than how to learn. (Which, incidentally, is why I think a lot of students have issues with talking in class or venturing answers when they aren’t sure – if we are invested in the idea of ourselves as “the smart student” or “the one with the right answers,” the idea of making a mistake can jeopardize our entire sense of self. (If you go and read last week’s post on http://lordtweedsmuir.edublogs.org – the writing class blog – you can see my reaction not all that long ago).
We need to stop being afraid to make mistakes, and we need to stop thinking that our performance at one point on one day in one class defines who we are. It’s not going to be an easy thing to do – but it’s crucially important.
I think you make us redo assignments because you want us to realize that in all the learning that we do, there’s no end to it. This is because there’s always something out there that can be improved; even in excellent work.
I found this very effective for me because it helped me identify areas that I need improvement so I could focus on those areas even more. Therefore, I sometimes redo assignments that aren’t required to be redone. Through the redoing of assignments, I’ve got a much better grasp and understanding of our learning targets.
My question for you, then, is this: do you redo your work in other classes? Why or why not?
No, I do not redo assignments in other classes because the teachers don’t allow it.
That was Emilia’s comment and I really agree with her, usually I just want to get the projects done and over with and just do it to get a good grade I never really go into and want to learn more
Why are you only focused on getting a good grade?
(I deleted the duplicate of Emilia’s comment – you can just refer to another person’s comment, or you can quote it using quotation marks in yours – just the key part to which you’re referring – but you don’t copy and paste the whole quote as a separate one from your response.)
I think in some things you can have a chance to get feed back but some things should just be you only have one chance. You only have one chance at life so don’t waste it way.
You make a good point. What things do you think you shouldn’t get a second chance on in school, and why? What are the things on which you feel we don’t get a second chance in life?
I think that getting constructive feedback is important or else your stuck not knowing what you could do to improve. If you didn’t get that feedback you wouldn’t know how to do it better in the future. When we make mistakes we learn from them, but if we don’t realize what we did wrong we’ll keep doing it over an over and over again.
For not yet its like we have not yet made a inquiry presentation with our full potential. We can always improve in our work. I am happy that I got feed back for my presentation . I have fully learned more on how to make a good Inquiry presentation and other following presentations I will make. It’s great that we can redo this assignment we are learning more and getting a good mark at the same time.
It’s true that people who want to get better rather then seeing it as a failure will improve because they have a better mindset, they are more positive and curious. They will want to learn more if they have support like a positive mindset and rewards like money if they get good grades, feel pride in them self, or their parents happiness. Just like idols they get awards for the great work they do and they always want to work harder by that too.
I want to draw your attention to the rewards you identified: most of them are extrinsic (rewards from something or someone outside yourself) and only one is intrinsic (located within yourself. Research shows that extrinsic motivation (money for grades – and even grades themselves – for example) can actually take away people’s motivation, and in fact can actually reduce their creativity. Researchers did a study that showed when people got paid for creative tasks or problem-solving activities, they actually did worse on similar tasks in the future AND, when given the choice, wouldn’t do more challenging tasks. People who didn’t get paid, who just did the challenges for the fun or difficulty of it actually did better over time.
What are your thoughts on this?
We’ll always keep learning. We learn something new every day. We learn to aim to be better at whatever we’re learning. That’s why we’re to redo our inquiry presentation. To use the comments we got back to learn from our mistakes. In order to make our presentation better.
Do you think that most students are trying to “be better at whatever [they’re] learning,” or do you think they’re trying to get better grades? (Tell me why you believe whichever on is true too.)
I have learned alot about the power of yet. I will try to add this into my sports and everything else I can add it to . I will try to develop that growth mind set and change the fixed mind set.
How are you going to do that?
I think that this is the future of education, and will really help students improve on learning. I thought that math game was a cool idea and she made some great points that really convinced me that more schools should use the “Not yet” strategy.
I think that you would be willing to learn more and keep on doing it if you have interest in what you are doing, like your passion. Or what if you had a job that u did not enjoy doing but had to do it for money and you had deadlines. Then you would still do it but not to the best effort.
I really agree with the video, i hate to say this but I’m the type of person to quit whenever I have to exceed the amount of effort I’d like to put into something. I usually think it’s too difficult or challenging and I never really give it a try. Which is why I appreciate having teachers allowing second chances to submit an assignment for better feedback.
Why do you think you feel that way? Do you think there’s a way to change it?