Day 1: Poll and survey

 

 

ask students to fill out the surveys:

 

 

You are born with a certain amount of intelligence, and while you can learn things, you can't change your basic intelligence.

 

How naturally intelligent you are mostly determines how well you do in school.

 

*Intelligence is primarily a result of environmental factors.

 

If you are smart you don't need to work hard in school.

 

*No matter how much intelligence you have, you can increase it quite a bit.

 

Intelligence is mostly determined by genetic inheritance.

 

*By taking classes that challenge me and learning from mistakes, I can increase my basic intelligence.

 

*How hard I work rather than my innate ability will determine how well I do in school.

 

Some people are intelligent while others are not, and there is not much you can do about it.

 

 

 

You are born with a certain amount of mathematics ability, and while you can learn new math, you can't change your basic mathematics ability.

 

How naturally talented you are in math mostly determines how successful you will be in math class.

 

*Mathematical ability is primarily a result of environmental factors.

 

If I have to work hard to learn math, that means I am not very smart in math.

 

*No matter how much mathematical ability you have, you can increase it quite a bit.

 

Mathematical ability is mostly determined by genetic inheritance.

 

*By struggling to learn difficult mathematics I can increase my basic mathematics ability.

 

*How hard I work rather than my natural mathematics ability will determine how well I do in calculus.

 

Some people are just naturally good at math while others are just bad at math, and there is not much you can do about it.

 

 

questions about potential? do IQ scores indicate one's potential?

belief in natural talent?: The amount of natural talent for school work/math a student has mostly determines a student's success in school/math class. 

 

 

 

Explain that over the next couple weeks I will be teaching the students about some of the research on intelligence and the effects of having different beliefs about intelligence.

 

Discussion: What did you answer and why.

 

 

 

 

Day 2: Discussion questions

 

Review survey results: responses for intelligence survey very similar to responses to mathematical ability survey. Leaning toward a view of intelligence and mathematical ability as something that can be developed rather than written in stone.

 

What is intelligence? (with your team come up with a definition)

 

Which university is better, Harvard or Temple? What does it mean for one school to be better than another?

 

 

Day 3

 

What makes one person more or less intelligent than another?

 

Two views...

 

Intelligence is Fixed:

 

Intelligence is mostly genetic. How smart you are is determined at birth. Some people are born smart and although they might further develop their abilities through practice, they will be pretty smart even if they do little or nothing to develop their intelligence. 

 

 

Intelligence is Malleable:

 

You can get smarter by learning new things. Intelligent people have had a lot of practice doing the sorts of tasks that are used to define intelligence. They have been exposed to a lot of complex ideas and have had many opportunities to reason in a supportive environment.

 

We will discuss which of these views is correct, but first I want us to talk about the impact of holding one or the other view on intelligence.

 

Felicia:

 

Felicia sees intelligence as an immutable trait, so she is concerned that gets the right label. She is very concerned about whether she appears intelligent. When given a choice of tasks, she picks the easy one to be sure she succeeds. When confronted with a challenging task, she quits after the first setback, usually protesting loudly that she is tired, or offering some other excuse. Setbacks and failures are a threat to her ego. Felicia thinks that smart people don't need to work hard to succeed--they succeed through their superior intelligence. Therefore, she sees working hard as a sign of being dumb.

 

Molly:

 

Molly doesn't seem to be bothered by failure. Given a choice, she picks the tasks that are new to her and seems to enjoy learning from them, even if they are frustrating. When a task is difficult, Molly doesn't withdraw, she persists, trying a new strategy. Molly thinks she gets smarter by learning new things. Thus failure is not so threatening to Molly as it is to Felicia, because she doesn't think it says anything permanent about her abilities. When Molly fails, she figures she didn't work hard enough or hasn't learned this particular topic yet. Molly feels in control of her success or failure. She sees nothing embarrassing in admitting ignorance or in getting a wrong answer. Therefore, she's motivated to pick more challenging tasks, because she might learn from them. She's sees working hard as a sign that one is is trying to get smarter.

 

Are you more like Molly or Felicia?

Do you know any Mollys? Any Felicias?

How can the goals "I want to be perceived as being smart" and "I want to become smarter" get in one another's way?

 

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” 
― Michael Jordan 

 

 

 

Day 4: The Flynn Effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdTb_vws2uE

 

 

Day 5: Growth versus Fixed Mindset

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc

define the mindsets

 

 

 

Day 6: Entity versus Incremental view of intelligence

 

read Why Don't Students Like School? pgs. 169 to 179

 

intelligence is like a precious stone or like a plant that needs the right conditions and active nurturing to flourish?

 

basketball vignette on the influence of genes for selecting environments

 

 

What view of intelligence is implied in the labeling of children as "gifted"?

 

When someone compliments you on one of your achievements by calling you gifted or talented or a natural athlete, is that really a compliment?

implicit message: you didn't earn it

 

 

 

Day 7: expertise and practice

 

Gladwell 10,000

 

Discussion: can you think of any exceptions?

 

 

Day 8: Praising children

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-SaTBg5eIc#t=13

 

Where do children get their views on intelligence?

 

Is it smart to tell children they are smart?

Many of you have been told all of your lives that you are smart. What are the positive and negative impacts of being told you are smart?

 

When a student gets a problem right, the teacher says, good job, you are very smart in math. Or you're a natural!

 

What is the effect of this praise?

talk about the research

 

How not to talk to your kids:

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

 

 

Grit (Duckworth)

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit

Angela Duckworth talked about the importance of grit (the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals) for success in life. What are your long-term goals? How does learning calculus or scoring well on the AP exam fit in with your long-term goals?

 

 

 

Day 9: Redo Poll and Survey

 

 

 

 

 

Write about something you used to be poor at but are now very good at.

 

Letter to a student struggling in math. What advice would you give?

 

 

 

Test students on distinguishing between statements of endorsement of growth/fixed mindsets

Test students on responses they could offer to threats to adaptive mindsets.

compare explicit versus implicit approaches to teaching positive mindsets.

 

 

http://growthmindseteaz.org/Testintelligence.html

 

http://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/measuring-mindset-in-my-classes/