Habits and Mindsets
Students reference their teacher's guidance in organization, study habits, character traits and values (like persistence, striving for accuracy, etc.) They have internalized traits beyond just talking about them which has led to personal growth on the part of the student.
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Being a transformational educator means that I consistently need to be aware of how my student’s habits and mindsets influence their learning and personal growth. In order for my students to understand that they can overcome problems and grow as learners and individuals, habits, such as persistence, thinking interdependently, and thinking flexibly need to be present in their thinking. I believe it is my role to help students develop and refine these specific habits. Students also need a safe place to develop the habits that will help them become critical thinkers and problem solvers. For that reason, I strive to create a classroom culture that is grounded in persistence, flexible thinking, and teamwork.
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To help students internalize these habits, I integrate teaching and reinforcing them into students’ learning activities. I see a strong relationship between demonstrating the habits for my students, and creating structured activities that help my students see how to specifically use these habits. Frequently referencing and helping students refine the habits allows them to see that this type of thinking is deliberate and develops over time. Throughout the course of the school year, it is my goal to help students track their mastery of understanding and using the Habits of Mind both inside and outside the classroom.
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Click the following images below to get more detailed examples and explanations about how persistence, thinking interdependently, and thinking flexibly were modeled and reinforced within my classroom. Each habit plays a role in helping students develop a range of problem solving skills that they will use when faced with difficulties.
Explicit Teaching
I selected persistence, thinking flexibly, and thinking interdependently as focus habits because they complement one another when used. For example, being persistent requires students to think flexibly to determine different ways to look at situations or another person's ideas. However, before students could begin to use the focus habits concurrently, they needed to explicitly understand what each habit is and why it is important to use. When students understood what makes up each habit, for example what it looks like, sounds, like and feels like to think flexibly, their awareness of when to use that type of thinking greatly increased.
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To help students begin to internalize and implement the specific focus habits, it was important to start talking about them early in the school year. Proactively building awareness about persistence, thinking flexibly, and thinking interdependently allowed the classroom culture and overall environment to be centered on shared mindsets.
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Below you will find an example of how I explicitly taught the focus habits of persistence, thinking flexibly, and thinking interdependently to my students. Throughout the lesson students were able to discover the meaning and their personal usage of each focus habit. Once students developed an understanding of the habits, we created a shared vision of how they would lead the class to success.
Explicit Teaching Lesson Plan
While planning this lesson, it was important to me that I was giving my students an ample amount of time to understand the focus habits, reflect on their meaning, and explore how they are going to implement them in their life.
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The Do Now and introduction to the key points of the day allowed students the opportunity to build their awareness about what the Habits of Mind are. I started by giving students time to reflect on how habits influence their lives. Having students think about how habits influence their lives led to a conversation about why it is important to have strong habits that support your personal and academic success.
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During the guided practice activity, I told students that we were going to specifically focus on developing and practicing persistence, thinking flexibly, and thinking interdependently. Throughout this portion of the lesson, I wanted to highlight the importance of understanding what a habit looks like, sounds like, and feels like. Watching a short video clip of athletes helped start a conversation about the habit of being persistent. The conversation helped activate students' background knowledge about the idea of persistence. This made it easier to think about what this habit looks like, sounds like, and feels like. In addition, watching videos and then reflecting on the habit was a powerful activity because it gave students the chance to start thinking about what it looks like when you successfully master a habit.
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Finally, the closing of the lesson allowed students to reflect on their current implementation of each focus habit. This served as a way for students to understand what direction they need to go in order to master using the habit. In addition to students completing a self-assessment, creating a classroom vision that was centered on the focus habits was worthwhile because students were able to put the habits into the context of their learning and learning environment.
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Overall, this lesson set my students up to master using the focus habits. It started to build their awareness of what they personally needed to do in order to successfully implement this type of thinking.
Student Work Samples
While compiling student work samples, I wanted to highlight each portion of the activity that students participated in. Each student’s description of what a habit looks like, sounds like, and feels like illustrates their initial understanding of the habit.
Because of the activities at the beginning of the lesson, this student was successfully able to demonstrate their initial understanding that the type of thinking associated with the Habits of Mind help you attain success in life.
The chart on this student’s handout demonstrates their understanding of persistence. I appreciate how this student articulates that when they are persistent they are “focusing and thinking really hard”. In addition, the student articulates an understanding that not giving up leads to a positive emotion of “feeling like nothing can stop you”.
This student’s work shows their understanding of what thinking flexibly sounds like and feels like. By reading box number two and three it is evident that the student is associating creativity and “thinking outside the box” with a greater outcome.
From reviewing this student’s work about thinking interdependently, you can see the video helped them understand what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like. This student was able to highlight how working and communicating with other people will lead to a positive outcome because “someone can help you”.
Here is an example of the self-assessment rubrics that students completed at the end of the lesson. The self-assessments gave students a clear idea of what they needed to work on in order to successfully master a focus habit. The darker marks on the rubric indicate a reflection that was done at a later date in the school year.
These posters represent the class discussion about the focus habits. Ultimately, this conversation led to the creation of our classroom vision. Each poster includes a key idea from the habit it focuses on. For example, the thinking interdependently poster highlights the importance of team work leading to new ideas, while the thinking flexibly poster highlights the idea of being open-minded and creative. The circled ideas that you see on each poster demonstrate how that idea was carried over to the classroom vision. Debriefing about the habits and creating a classroom vision was a beneficial activity because it gave students the chance to begin internalizing the vocabulary that is associated with each habit. It also allowed our class to be grounded in a common understanding of how we are going to embody the habits during our time together.
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**The vision statement to the left reads, "We will be determined and focused towards reaching our big goal. We will reflect with an open-mind to so we are able to try new things. We will work to understand other's opinions. We will step outside of our comfort zone to try to reach our full potential!
Student Reflections
An integral part of internalizing the Habits of Mind is reflecting on your learning and implementation of the habits. In order to get students used to engaging in reflection activities, I designed questions that focused on what they learned about the focus habits and what they learned by completing the self-assessments.
I appreciate this student's reflection because it demonstrates their understanding of why it is important to leave their comfort zone. This student clearly states why developing certain ways of thinking is important by saying, “I learned that some Habits of Mind may cause me to leave my comfort zone but are worth it in the end.”
This student associates the Habits of Mind with helping them both inside and outside of the classroom. This is something that I highlighted throughout the lesson because I wanted students to see the relevancy of using the habits in all areas of their life. This reflection also demonstrates the significance of the self-assessments. The self-assessment completed by this student helped them understand what they need to do in order to successfully master thinking interdependently. By looking at box two, you can see the student listed different components of the habit that were listed on the self-assessment rubric.
Teacher Reflection
Overall, this lesson successfully introduced my students to the specific Habits of Mind they were going to work on developing and refining throughout the year. By having conversations with their peers, participating in whole class discussions, and reflecting on their current usage of the focus habits, students' awareness about the habits was stimulated. From the knowledge students gained during this lesson, I was able to help them develop the skills needed to master each habit by planning reinforcement activities, incorporating the habits into curricular planning, and helping students track their progress towards mastery.
Reinforcement: Setting Goals and Tracking Mastery
In addition to explicitly teaching, reinforcing, and modeling the habits, it is also important that students are creating goals around the habits that will allow for personal growth. In addition to creating goals, students need a structured way of tracking their progress towards reaching mastery. Goal setting and having systems in place to track their progress supports their investment towards using the habits in their daily lives. Below you will find a lesson that demonstrates how students were able to create goals that support academic and personal growth.
Reinforcement: Goal Setting Lesson Plan
While planning this lesson, I wanted students to think about how they used the habits last semester. Therefore, the activities in this lesson provided students with multiple opportunities to discuss and reflect on the Habits of Mind. During the warm-up, students were asked about what they personally did that demonstrated a habit and also what activities we did that helped them practice the habits. The Gallery Walk that took place during the warm-up allowed students an additional chance to share their ideas and hear the ideas of their peers.
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After the class reviewed the habits and how they were incorporated throughout the previous semester, students had the opportunity to personally reflect on their implementation of the habits. The “Activating your Habits of Mind” handout asked students to think about specific situations they embodied each habit. Throughout the activity, students were able to think about what each habit looked like and felt like in situations they experienced.
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At the end of the activity, students were asked to review the self-assessments they took at the beginning of the school year. This allowed students to see where they were at the beginning of the year compared to the middle of the year. After using the rubrics to reflect on any growth that occurred, students selected a particular habit they wanted to set a goal around. They were asked to think about how this goal was going to help them both personally and academically.
Student Work Samples
While reviewing student’s work, I noticed that they were able to name specific situations and activities that they implemented the Habits of Mind. Allowing time for students to reflect showed me that the students’ internalization of the habits was leading them to success. The reflections below demonstrate that students were able to name key ideas associated with the habits. The reflections also exhibit students’ ability to create attainable goals that will guide them to academic and personal success. Directly below the student work samples, you will see how each student whose work is show cased reflected on and progressed towards their goal.
Student A: In order to think flexibly, learners must be able to “approach a problem from a new angle using a novel approach” (Costa and Kallick, 2000). While reading this student’s reflection about thinking flexibly located on page two, I was proud of them for associating thinking flexibly with the “pitchforking” revision strategy we used in class. This particular student was struggling to clearly communicate her ideas without using sentence fragments. However, as seen in the reflection, they applied a new strategy and were able to “change the entire sentence”.
Reference: Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2000). Describing 16 Habits of Mind. Retrieved from http://www.habitsofmind.org/sites/default/files/16HOM2.pdf
Student B: This student’s reflection on persistence located on page one demonstrates their understanding of the idea that in order to work through your challenges you will need to apply new strategies. In addition this student also highlighted that even though something is challenging, you should not rush through the activity just to finish. Instead, this student implemented the habit of persistence by “pacing” themselves and “taking their time”.
Student C: By looking at this student’s response to the thinking flexible statements located on page two, you can see that they identify some of their habits as negatively impacting their academic success. However, it is also apparent that they have worked around this by applying their flexible thinking skills by “simply…look[ing] at things from ______’s perspective”.
Goal Accountability System
​As students were making their goals, one challenge I noticed some students were having was relating their Habit of Mind goal to their personal life. Therefore, to guide their thinking and reflection, I specifically asked students how they used the habit both inside and outside of the classroom. In addition to reflecting on their progress towards their goal, students were asked to make an additional commitment that will help them attain success. Below you will find samples of student’s reflections about their progress towards their goal.
Student A: This student’s goal was to think more flexibly so that they could experience increased academic success on future projects and “think differently in different situations”. From their reflections, it is clear that this student feels like they are able to seek feedback and opinions from peers when working on class activities. It is also evident that this student associates flexible thinking with applying new strategies in situations outside of the classroom. Looking forward to how she will continue to refine thinking flexibly, this student made the commitment to see another person’s point of view and perspectives. This demonstrates the student understands the next step that needs to be taken to attain success.
Student B: This student’s goal was to be patient with themself when completing school work. From reading this reflection, you can see they are making progress both inside and outside of the classroom. The student is aware that they need to personally seek help, speak positively, and be patient in order to work through a challenge. Their commitment also demonstrates their understanding of the idea that you need to continuously work to refine a habit.
Student C: This student’s goal was to think more flexibly to improve their “daily life choices” and “school studies”. From their reflection, you can see that this student has been able to practice flexible thinking both inside and outside of the classroom. In addition, the student anticipated needing to use flexible thinking skills in various situations.
Student Reflections
​At the end of the goal setting lesson, I wanted to give students the opportunity to tell me what I either can start doing or continuing doing to help them develop the habits.
I selected to show case this student reflection because it demonstrates how students are making the connection between the activities we do in class and the Habits of Mind.
The feedback from this student was beneficial because I was not aware that some students felt like they were not getting enough options in class. Because I want to give students multiple opportunities to practice learning and applying new strategies, I need to be more cognizant of how I am incorporating writing choices in curricular planning.
Teacher Reflection
​From student work samples and reflections, it is clear that this activity allowed them to continue to internalize the Habits of Mind. Throughout this lesson, and the accountability activity that ensued because of the goals they made at the end of the lesson, students were able to make connections between the habits both inside and outside of school. In addition, this activity demonstrates that students have been given multiple opportunities to reflect on the habits in order to understand what their next steps need to be in order to reach mastery.
Reinforcement: Thinking Interdependently
My students participate in an ample amount of group work. While participating in group work towards the beginning of the year, I noticed that students were either hesitant to contribute their ideas, did not contribute any ideas, or overpowered the group by dominating the work. It is important to me that I help my students develop the Habits of Mind by guiding them through activities that provide them with opportunities to practice the habits. To help students develop and practice thinking and working as a team, they had to complete a content related activity following a set of expectations that were intended to guide their practice of working cooperatively with people. Throughout the activity, students had to rely on their classmates to attain success.
Thinking Interdependently Lesson Plan
Because students already began to internalize the components of thinking interdependently, I was able to incorporate a thinking interdependently mini-lesson into a learning activity that was focused on plot development. While planning this lesson, my overall goal was to ensure that all students had the opportunity to feel successful participating with a group in a content related activity.
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In order to reinforce the idea of thinking interdependently, I had students do a Quick Write about a quote that exemplified the importance of listening to and learning from others. This lead to a discussion about what it means to be open-minded to ideas and why being open-minded to ideas is beneficial when thinking interdependently.
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After students revisited the components of thinking interdependently, I introduced the learning activity. While introducing the learning activity, I spiraled in the idea of reciprocal communication with other classmates by allowing students to think-turn-talk to the question “Was it hard to decide on a conflict with your partner? Why or why not?”. This question lead to a quick conversation about how in order to understand ideas, you need to both listen respectfully and contribute your personal ideas.
Because I wanted all students to be successful with the activity, I deliberately put structures in place that made it known all students were accountable for participating and contributing their ideas. For example, I had each student assign a color to themselves so I knew what they contributed to the poster. This helps students “monitor their own and each other’s contributions” (Costa and Kallick). In addition, I wanted students to rely on each other to answer questions rather than intrinsically raise their hand and ask me. To accomplish this, I gave each group two question cards. They were told that they could only ask me two questions throughout the class period. Limiting the amount of questions students could ask reinforced the idea of group communication. Finally, I wanted to give in-the-moment feedback to guide students as they were working together. Each group was assigned a paper ruler with an 80 circled. Depending on how students were working together, the number either went up or down. When I was circling numbers, I would give immediate feedback as to why their group’s score was increasing or decreasing.
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After students participated in the cooperative learning activity, I wanted to give them space to reflect on their experience. Students were asked to think about how they demonstrated thinking interdependently by completing the self-assessment. We then had a class discussion about what they found to be easy and challenging about working interdependently.
Reference: Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (Eds.). (2009a). Habits of Mind across the curriculum: Practical and creative strategies for teachers. Alexandria, VA: ASC.
Student Work Samples
Here is an example of a finished learning activity. This sample shows each student contributed at least one idea and that they were working together to come up with the “big idea” of the story. This sample highlights that students worked together on the last statement, circled in black, because there are multiple colors and revisions made. While giving feedback to this group, I raised their score to a 100 and gave them positive feedback about how they were working cooperatively and valuing each group members ideas. An example of the ruler used to give feedback is in the upper right hand corner of the image.
This sample also indicates that each student contributed a portion of the final outcome. However, you can see, with the exception of the “characters” column, that one group member did an entire column. While giving feedback to this group, I moved their score down because they were not working together. The constructive feedback I gave in order to guide this group’s practice with thinking interdependently centered on explaining that in order for them to learn from each other’s ideas, they need to cooperatively work together to complete each column.
This picture show cases students working together to complete the learning activity. In this picture, you can also see evidence of the pink questions cards that students used throughout the activity. The question cards served as a way for students to rely on their peers to learn from their ideas and perspectives.
Student Reflections
The reflection that I created for this lesson allowed students to think about how working in a cooperative group helped them be successful. I wanted them to think about what they learned from others and what was challenging about being open-minded to new ideas. In addition to having students reflect on the benefits of group work, I also wanted students to reflect on what skills they have mastered that help them think interdependently. Below you will find the reflections from two students. Each reflection indicates that this activity helped them practice skills that are necessary to use while working in a group.
This student specifically pointed out that one component of thinking interdependently they have mastered is seeing other people’s point of view. From this activity, this student said the idea of patience while listening to another person's ideas was reinforced. The idea of patience while listening to others will lead this student to academic and personal growth.
While completing this activity this student was able to see how working with other people enhances your learning. By pointing out what was difficult for them, this student was also able to identify next steps they need to take in order to reach mastery with this specific habit.
Teacher Reflection
This lesson allowed students to refine the skills needed to think interdependently. Once students started working, I wanted to be very hands-off because I wanted students to use their resources and the knowledge of others to complete the activity. Therefore, in order to be successful, students had to be willing to hear their peer’s ideas and contribute their own ideas. This reciprocal communication showed students the benefit of learning from one another. Giving students structured group work with explicit expectations allowed them to practice social skills that they will continuously be using both inside and outside of the classroom.
Reinforcement: Thinking Flexibly
In order to reinforce the habit of thinking flexibly, I created a lesson that served as the introduction to our persuasive unit. Throughout this lesson, I wanted to reinforce the idea of seeing situations and ideas from other perspectives or points of view. In order to do this, students will need to apply other important components of thinking flexibly such as thinking in new ways, and apply what they already know about a topic or situation they encounter. The following lesson asked students to apply flexible thinking skills while reading persuasive texts.
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Thinking Interdependently Lesson Plan
To activate students’ knowledge about thinking flexibly, I had them view an image that can be looked at from multiple perspectives. The conversation that spurred from their reflection of the picture, reminded students that people can look at situations and ideas in many different ways. After reviewing the key points with students, they had the chance to think about someone who they know who is a flexible thinker. Asking students this question helped raise the habit to the conscious level and build additional awareness about how they can embody the habit (Costa and Kallick, 2009).
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During the guided practice, students viewed a video clip from the movie, “Remember the Titans”. In this clip, the football team was experiencing a lack of team work due to discrimination and the team's unwillingness to change their thinking towards a group of people. The questions students answered as they watched the clip served the purpose of helping them understand that there are multiple ways to look at a situation and solve a problem. Some alternatives may lead to a positive outcome, while some alternatives may lead to negative outcomes.
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After students reinforced their understanding of thinking flexibly, they selected a persuasive text to read. They selected between the themes of immigration, student rights, or gender rights. During the activity, students were asked to think about the “big picture” idea of the text and evidence that supported that idea. Then, students were asked to think about the opposing viewpoint and evidence that could potentially be used to support that viewpoint.
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Finally, students completed the thinking flexibly self-assessment and discussed the closing questions with their peers around them.
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Reference: Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (Eds.). (2009). Habits of Mind across the curriculum: Practical and creative strategies for teachers. Alexandria, VA: ASC.
Class Discussion
The conversation surrounding the video helped students see the importance of changing your point of view. In order to reach a solution, the teammates had to be willing to see from other’s perspectives, in this video it was the coach of the team, in order to achieve success. Students pointed out specific lines from the video clip that represented what could have happened if the teammates did not change their thinking. Students made comments such as “racism on the team would have continued” if the team did not begin to respect one another’s experiences and ideas. However, students also pointed out that effective communication and understanding of opinions would lead to a “better team”.
Student Work Samples
The topic that these two students choose to read about was student rights. Both of these examples demonstrate that the students were able to identify the author’s perspective, find evidence that supported it, state their opinion, and state and support an opposing point of view.
Teacher Reflection
This lesson successfully helped students see other perspectives and support their understanding of that perspective with evidence. By the end of this lesson, students understood that thinking flexibly, practically relating to seeing other points of view, is not an easy task. Many students felt passionate about the issues they were reading about. Therefore, it was challenging for them to try to understand why someone would think about the situation differently. But in order to fully understand the controversial topics students will encounter in life, they will need the skill of respectfully considering opposing viewpoints that may “contradict their beliefs” (Costa and Kallick, 2000)
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Reference: Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2000). Describing 16 Habits of Mind. Retrieved from http://www.habitsofmind.org/sites/default/files/16HOM2.pdf
Reinforcement: Persistence
Throughout the school year I emphasize to students that being persistent means overcoming your challenges and the adversity that you face in order to be successful. To reinforce the notion of working through hardship to accomplish the task at hand, I had my students analyze world leader’s persistent tendencies and reflect on how their consistent use of this Habit of Mind made them successful. This lesson allowed students to see what persistence looks like in the real-world and how persistent people have changed our society.
Persistence Lesson
During the Do Now, I wanted to give students the chance to think about and reflect on their personal meaning of persistence. Once students activated their own meaning of persistence, I built on their previous knowledge in the guided and independent portion of the lesson.
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The guided practice allowed students to see what persistence looks like. This video that I selected is easy to relate to and brings up conversations that center on a strong mindset and the will to achieve your goal. While planning this lesson, it was my intention that watching this video would lead to a class discussion that would help students see the why behind persistence.
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The independent practice gave students the space to see how persistence has changed the world we live in. During this activity, I wanted students to recognize that even the most successful people had to overcome adversity and consistently rethink and apply new strategies in order to be successful.
Mentimeter Class Poll and Discussion
Here is an example of the Mentimeter poll that students participated in during the Do Now portion of the lesson. By reviewing the responses, it is apparent that students have an understanding of what persistence means to them. However, the responses do not go in depth about a time students were persistent or what motivates them to keep going. In order to spur conversation, I pointed out the response that is boxed in black. This student shared the specific time they were thinking about and the people who were supporting them. From here, students were given more time to think about a time they demonstrated persistence or who motivates them when they feel like giving up.
Student Work Samples
When creating this handout, I wanted students to specifically think about what challenges these world leaders had to overcome and what they did in order to work through those challenges. Following those questions, I wanted students to reflect on what would have happened if they were not persistent. Students focused on this question both in terms of the individual person’s life and in terms of our society. These student work samples demonstrate their understanding of what it means to be persistence and why persistence was important to the individual they were reading about. Each response shows an understanding of the key components of what it means to be determined even when faced with extreme adversity.
Student Reflections
After students explored persistence in the real-world, I wanted them to reflect on what they learned and how that impacted their idea of persistence.
This student highlighted their reinforcement of persistence by stating in their third response that the lesson, "reminded [them] that just because you have disadvantages doesn't mean you should give up"
From this reflection, it is clear that this student understandd there are multiple ways to show your determination. In addition to that understanding, this student highlights that they "need to try different strategies" in order to overcome difficulties they encounter.
In response one, this student related persistence with being "strong minded" and going "after what [you] believe". This is powerful because it demonstrates the mindset that is needed to exemplify persistence.
Teacher Reflection
​It was my intention that this lesson would help students solidify the idea that in order to be persistent, you need to work through the difficulties you experience both inside and outside of the classroom. By the end of this lesson, I wanted students to understand that being persistent allows you to grow as a student and a person. The student work samples and student reflections demonstrate that students’ understanding of persistence and how they use persistence in their daily lives was further supported by critically thinking about persistent individuals who have influenced the world around them.
Conclusion
The above evidence demonstrates my efficacy in guiding my students towards consistently using the Habits of Mind we focused on while together. After students developed an awareness of the focus habits, they were able to internalize them by engaging in activities that allowed them to practice the habit. In addition to practicing and refining the habits, students consistently reflected on how they were applying the habit both inside and outside of the classroom. Because students internalized and continuously reflected on their application on the focus habits, they are able to anticipate when to use them in their daily life.
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The activities that students participated in supported their ability to become lifelong learners who critically think about the world around them. The ways of thinking that students implemented while developing the focus habits will continue to empower them with the ability to take advantage of the opportunities that are available to them. It is my hope that as my students' problem solving and critical thinking skills grow, they will access unforeseen opportunities and potential.