Episode Summary
In this episode of the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast, we discuss teaching persistence to students by embracing challenges and reframing mistakes as opportunities for growth. I emphasize the importance of finding a balance between tasks that are too easy and too difficult, and I provide some recommended books and resources to promote a growth mindset and provide strategies for supporting students when they struggle. Overall, we encourage listeners to embrace persistence and share the podcast with others.
In this episode, I share:
- Overcoming the fear of making mistakes
- Teaching persistence: embracing challenges and learning from mistakes
- Books and resources to promote growth mindset and persistence
- Cultivating a classroom culture of persistence and growth mindset
Resources Mentioned:
- Persistence: Social Emotional Learning
- Social Emotional Learning BIG BUNDLE!!
- Suggested Read Alouds
- ClassDojo Videos
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Persistence
Read the Transcript
[00:01:30]:
Hey, teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten cafe. We all have these students, I’m sure of it, in our classrooms right now, or at least in the past, who are afraid to make mistakes. They’re afraid to try because they don’t want to get something wrong, or they get really upset when they get something wrong, or when something’s hard. They. They shut down. They get. They may cry.
[00:01:58]:
Maybe they just give up. We’ve all had those students. We all have those students. So it’s our job as teachers to help them learn persistence. And that’s what I’m going to talk about today in this episode of Kindergarten Cafe podcast. What is persistence and how do we teach it to our students? Let’s get started.
[00:02:22]:
You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone, ready to start saving time and reducing your stress, all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love. Let’s get started.
[00:03:13]:
Teaching our students persistence is so important because they need to learn that they can’t just give up when something gets hard. They don’t learn if they just give up when things get hard. When something is hard, it’s actually our brain’s way of saying, oh, I’m learning now. This is good. It’s like your brain is a muscle and it needs to work out, and it’s not fun. When we work out. You feel it if you feel sore, but that’s how your brain learns. That’s how you’re.
[00:03:46]:
When you’re working out, that’s how your body gets healthier. So we need to teach our students how to persist and why it’s important to persist when given something hard. So I talk about persistence with my students as the idea of we keep trying. Even when something is hard, we keep trying. And I absolutely talk to them about the idea that challenges that hard. Learning is how our brain learns that if something is too easy, if we can do it with no problem, then we’re not learning that’s too easy. Then there’s such a thing as something that’s too hard where it makes us really frustrated and upset, and we can’t move ahead. That is different than something that’s a good challenge for our brain.
[00:04:35]:
So it’s important for kids to know sort of the spectrum, because there’s so many things that. That ties back to math problems, books that we give them. If the book we give them is too easy, they’re not learning how to read. If the book we give them is way too hard, like a third grade level book, they will shut down and not be able to learn to read at all. You want something in the middle. We kind of call it the Goldilocks idea because she’s finding the one that’s just right. The kids want to work on problems that are just right for them, meaning slightly challenging, because when something is slightly challenging, that is when our brain grows like a muscle. And so I do sort of these talks all year round, but I specifically tend to have a whole unit of social emotional learning, specifically on persistence, to really target this important idea of not giving up when things get harder.
00:05:29]:
And I like to do it around mid year because I like my students. This is when I notice that things start to get harder for them academic wise. And you notice the kids that really shut down when things get hard, and we don’t want that. The idea of persistence with young children is a really great connection and an important part of growth mindset. And so I do a lot of work with my students on growth mindset, the idea that mistakes are what help us to learn. So when students make mistakes, I model for them, saying, yay, you made a mistake. Because oftentimes they’ll be like, I made a mistake. And they’ll be crying, no, yay, that’s a great thing. You made a mistake. This is how you learn. That’s awesome. This is how you learn. And when students say they don’t know something, especially in context of an assessment, a check in, if they say, I don’t know, I don’t know how to do that, I can’t do that. I always frame that as, that’s why I’m here. I get to teach you that, yay. I get to teach you that.
[00:06:35]:
That’s why we’re doing this. So I know what to teach you. So the assessment is not a you know it or you don’t know it kind of thing. I always talk about it as, I want to know what you know and what you don’t know so I can teach you those things that you don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I have a job to teach you. And so framing it like that helps encourage the growth mindset and persistence with your students. And I also make a show of, oh, I made a mistake. This is what I did wrong, but I’m going to do better this time. I’m going to fix it. I model for my students all the time when I make those mistakes, because it’s not just students making mistakes
[00:07:13]:
Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s how we handle them that makes all the difference. And so having this culture in the classroom of celebrating mistakes is one piece of teaching them to have a growth mindset. But we also do want to target specific instruction on the fact that our brain needs that growth mindset. Our brain needs mistakes to learn, and then kids aren’t as afraid of making those mistakes anymore. Another great growth mindset tool that I’ve used is the power of yet with my students, and it really helps. They say I can’t read. I rephrase it. You can’t read yet.
[00:07:57]:
They say I can’t draw that. I can’t draw that yet. And so we do a lot of like reframing with students, not just in the moment, but also as a lesson. A whole lesson on what? When we reframe things to say, I can’t do something yet, it helps our brain realize that we can get better at it. We can learn how to do it, and that is not a done deal. We’ll never learn how to do it. And there’s lots of great books that highlight these different activities that growth mindset power of. Yet I do love your fantastic elastic brain that helps the kids understand sort of how brains learn.
[00:08:36]:
It can get a little long, so either choose parts to read for kindergarten students or break it up into a couple of days. Another great book for growth mindset is beautiful. Oops. Turning mistakes into beautiful things ish. The most magnificent thing giraffes can’t dance, and my all time favorite, the girl who never made mistakes. Because kids start to realize you actually do need mistakes because. Because if you’re so paralyzed that you can’t make a mistake, then you’re never gonna do fun, exciting things. If you want a list of these books, I will link my Amazon list for persistence.
[00:09:18]:
There’s a ton of books there that I recommend using with your students. I also love using biographies to show students how in real life, people persisted. People didn’t just give up when something hard came their way, and that’s how they became to be the amazing person that they are. Another resource I want to highlight is Classdojo has some free videos, a whole series on growth mindset. There are only, I don’t know, maybe five minutes each. And there’s, I want to say five ish videos, but they do a great job of showing students how our brain learns from making mistakes and how our brain learns from not giving up. So I would definitely check those out when you’re teaching about persistence. So while all of these activities and teaching points are great to do in the moment with our students, and a lot of teaching our students persistence is around how we respond to them in a moment where they’re struggling and the culture we create in our classroom.
[00:10:21]:
On it’s okay to make mistakes, I do think kids benefit from having time, not just in the moment lessons on persistence, but also a designated time to explicitly teach them why persistence is important, how we can persist when things get hard, and strategies to help when we do struggle or when we get upset because we made a mistake. Things that we can reframe our thinking with. All of those things are really important for students to take time to learn and then we want to give them time to practice. And that’s where those in the moment sort of coaching comes in with saying, oh, I made a mistake. Yay, you made a mistake. That’s awesome. Or I can’t do that. That’s really hard.
[00:11:05]:
You can’t do it yet. But maybe you need a strategy. Maybe you need a tool. Would a number line help you? Maybe you want to work with a partner, offering them suggestions and strategies for how to get through the challenging activity and simply taking the time to remind them, hey, remember, we learned that actually we need the challenges for our brain to grow. And I talk about that a lot with my students of that it’s too easy. Our brain is not learning. If we’re having something that’s a challenge, that means our brain can learn. Yay, our brain is learning.
[00:11:37]:
Or reflecting with them after they’re done learning or in the middle of a practice. You know, let’s say they’re practicing reading. If I notice kids are getting up and walking around, going to the bathroom, I’ll say to them, hey, if you’re spending time getting up and walking around, is your brain learning right now? No, it’s not. Or if you’re spending time talking to your friend about something other than the book, is your brain learning? No, it’s not. And that’s why we’re here. We’re here to learn. Or if that book is too easy, that you can read it because you’ve memorized it, you can read it with your eyes closed, that book is too easy. Your brain is not learning.
[00:12:17]:
And so framing it like that really helps students continue their understanding of persistence as well as enhance the class culture on persistence and growth mindset. The activities and resources that I mentioned are available in my persistence social emotional unit that you can get and I will put the link below. And like I said, I’ll also link the books that I love to use to teach persistence and the growth mindset. Videos from classdogen okay, well, I think it’s time for our quote of the day. Barbie never gives up. That’s why I like her, said a six year old girl. So if Barbie never gives up, our students should never give up, right? And we should never give up. Be like Barbie.
[00:13:01]:
So tune in next week for even more kindergarten magic. And please consider leaving me a review. It means a lot for the podcast to help share it with others. When you take literally 1 minute out of your day to leave a review. It would mean a lot. I’d really appreciate it. Thanks so much.
[00:13:19]:
Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources. Or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.