Today we ran the first in a 5 workshop series on learning for St. Martin’s secondary school. I’m glad to say it was well received, and I had a lot of fun running it! We had 10 parents and 10 students attending.
I really wanted everyone to feel comfortable asking questions and discussing what we’re covering, so we started by playing a lot of warmup/trust games.
I then asked people to put stickers on 5 scales that represented their capacity to change: intelligence, musicality, creativity, memory and 100 metre race time. We can do this again in a few weeks and see if people’s beliefs have changed.
We then had an open QA on what is learning, how do we learn, what good teachers are like.
I presented some information on Kolb’s learning cycle. I wanted to present some information on the structure of the brain, and how our brain’s structure actually changes as we learn - but we were running tight on time and I wanted to move onto the mindset discussion.
I presented some information on mindset, how this relates to the feedback stickers, and an experiment that Carol Dweck ran on communication in the classroom. We had a brief discussion about what fixed and growth mindset was, and some examples.
We split into groups, with each person coming up with 2 things they see as fixed (trait), and 2 things they see as growth (capable of change). We came together as a large group and people shared some of their fixed and growth beliefs.
We ended with brief feedback and comments for next time. I asked people to think about their fixed beliefs, and what they could do if they wanted to change them.