Ana Miranda
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Growth Mindset in your bi-literate home

7/3/2018

6 Comments

 
If you’re like me and you love reading articles about how to best educate your children, you might have come across the concept of growth mindset.
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No idea what I’m talking about?
Growth Mindset in the bi-literate home

​Growth mindset is the belief that you can learn and improve your abilities through practice. People who have a growth mindset don’t see mistakes as failure but as an attempt at learning. They are resilient and they will try again, try harder or try a different way until they achieve a goal.

People with a fixed mindset on the other hand, believe that you’re either good or bad at something, that intelligence is something innate and can’t be changed. When they make mistakes they get discouraged and tend to give up.

Encouraging a growth mindset is especially important for school children, so that they understand that learning is a process and that everyone has their own rhythm.

If you’re trying to raise a bi-literate child you might have heard - or said it yourself:
“I’m bad at reading.”
“I’ll never be able to read as well in English as I do in…”
“Maybe reading is just not her thing.”
“I’ve never been a reader either.”
“Reading in a second language will just confuse him.”
“We’ll just stick with one language instead.”
“I’m not a teacher, I can’t do anything to help.”
“She struggles, so now she hates reading.”
“Teaching them to read in a second language is too much of a chore and they resist it.”

If you want to cultivate growth mindset in your home, start by adopting the mantra “Not yet”. Whenever your child says “I’m not good at this”, reply “Well, not yet, but you’re learning.”

When you think “This is not going well, I have no clue what I’m doing”, try thinking “How can I figure this out? Who can I ask for help?”

The way you praise them has tremendous impact on how they behave. “Oh, you’re so clever” or “You’re a natural, like daddy” tells them that they were just born like that, no effort involved. When they struggle and make mistakes they’ll feel like they’ve failed and that they’re not as clever as you thought.

Instead, praise their hard work, their improvement, creative thinking or willingness to try. Make sure they understand that their brains are growing and need time to make new connections. Talk about times when you learned to do something new and difficult. Talk about their favorite athlete or actor and how they had to overcome barriers.
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Success comes with resilience and hard work. Reading and writing well (especially in more than one language) takes time and consistent practice.

Check out:
Mindset, by Carol Dweck and her TED talk on The Power of Believing That You Can Improve


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6 Comments
Trisha Traughber link
11/3/2018 09:30:02 am

Wow, I love this. My daughter seems to have learned that when she has to stop and sound out a word it's a 'mistake.' Did she learn this at school? She also comes home telling me about a competition to read the most pages--that she can't win. Fluency tests. At home we've made a small coloring page in her special Journal where she gets to color one dot for every 10 minutes of concentrated practice on a difficult task--reading! I've told her that if she learns to work hard on something that's not easy, that she'll have learned the most important lesson--and that the reading will fall into place by itself.

Reply
Ana Miranda
11/3/2018 10:59:33 am

Hi Trisha! Thanks for stopping by. It's wonderful that you're supporting your daughter's learning this way - lessons for life :)

It's so sad how schools can cultivate a fixed mindset, when they should be helping children to grow resilient and confident.

Reply
Christiana
15/3/2018 06:57:22 pm

Yes, I know exactly what you say when you talk about schools cultivating a fixed mindset.

My background is Romanian, living now in Canada, and my son speaks only English. He has appraxia of speech which fortunately didn't translate into dyslexia. He is now in grade one and he is quite a good reader. I am amazed how well he reads and identifies words.

However, what I find most frustrating is the way the teachers impose reading harder and harder books. Kids are like in a competition to complete tasks in who is reading more and how fast they read harder books.

In my opinion, this discourages kids to wanting to read books on their own and, on the long run, they will even hate reading. I think this is mostly true for boys. Girls are more resilient, in my opinion.

I wish schools change their way of thinking and teaching and make learning more fun and less competitive.

Reply
Ana Miranda
17/3/2018 02:38:50 pm

Hi Christiana, thanks for passing by.

Motivating children to read shouldn't be based on competition. It pains me to see that schools do that and might be creating the opposite effect :/ Instead we should show them how fun reading is and how much we can learn from it. Kids should also be allowed to read at their pace and what they enjoy.

Happy Reading!

Reply
Andrea link
14/1/2019 06:43:50 pm

Great post. We always try to tell the girls "Not yet.. " and try to draw their attention to the fact that when they keep trying, with practice they can get there. Our eldest was frustrated that she couldn't whistle and recently, after trying for a long time she worked it out and is so pleased. It applies to everything but this is such a clear example for her :)

Reply
Ana Miranda
9/3/2019 01:16:46 pm

It does apply to everything in life and kids will learn it in the smallest ways :)

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