Learn Like A Pirate - Chapter #4 - Improvement Focus Vs. Grade Focus

Welcome back friends!!  Can you believe that I am finally D-O-N-E with school??  I said goodbye to my firsties yesterday and am back in the classroom today packing and sorting and getting ready to say goodbye to my school until DECEMBER - that's a crazy amount of time for me to not be working!!  While I am excited - it's also more than a little scary to be leaving my classroom in someone else's hands - and let's just say my first experience with maternity leave did NOT go well!

Enough about me - today is all about improvement focus vs. grade focus.  I'll be honest teaching first grade is NOT very grade focused.  We work to get kids to benchmark (grade level for reading, writing, and math), but we don't give grades out for anything except spelling - and even then it's 10/10 or 9/10, not "real" scores!  However, many families put so much weight on actual grades I feel like I know exactly what Paul is speaking about in this chapter.  

I also LOVE the  talk about what we call at our school - the growth mindset.  The idea that kids need to work hard to make improvements and these are what should be celebrated.  Too many kiddos find school easy early on and don't have to work hard.  Often their families unknowingly add to this by talking about how inherently intelligent these kids are.  The don't understand until later that hard work is necessary to be successful - things are not always going to be so easy!

Thanks for reading along with me!  Looking forward to reading some more this week (and not teaching while I am reading!!)  Until then read some more from my favorite bloggy friends!

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