Growing Growth Mindset Brains

Dear Students and Parents,

I want to help all of my students grow growth mindset brains by modeling my own reaction to getting questions wrong or experiencing challenging tasks. I have strong memories from high school and college when I pretended to know what someone was talking about just so I wouldn't have to admit to my ignorance or feel embarrassed by someone I deemed "smarter than me." It wasn't until I had been teaching for a few years that I finally realized that this defensive attitude wasn't serving me well. I wasn't being authentic, and I was missing so many opportunities to learn and challenge myself. These memories allow me to be even more emphatic about our need to adopt growth mindsets.

In my classroom, we will embrace failure, not dodge it.
In my classroom, we will cheer for one another, not silently create hierarchies and competition.
In my classroom, we will be empowered, not ashamed, of our ignorance.
In my classroom, we will grow to be better learners, readers, and writers by embracing criticism.
In my classroom, we will "reach ever-higher levels of achievement."

The Meaning of Failure

Students and Parents,

I hope to bring about in my students an understanding of failure and challenge as transformative experiences. Few people luck into the right answers or A essays. Few people are born knowing how to infer meaning from complex texts. Few people meet Shakespeare's works for the first time and regard them as easy. Challenge and failure help people make meaning and forge new connections in people's brains.

Don't let yourself "plateau early." Don't let yourself "ignore useful negative feedback." Don't "feel threatened by the success of others." Embrace the true educational value of failure.

Using Google Classroom Question Feature (for teachers)

One of the features of Google Classroom I like the most for in-class activities is the question feature. Although I have used the question feature for short answer quizzes, I prefer to use it to display information that students generate, either in groups or on their own.

For example, I wanted my E1H students to practice choosing relevant quotations and explaining these quotations in order to support claims from Romeo and Juliet. I created a game that involved 5 rounds and required students to work in groups to pick a quotation that they would type into the question feature in Google Classroom. Because the computers were merely a tool to gather and display their work, I only allowed one computer per group of 3-4 students.

To create a question, click on the plus sign in the lower right hand corner of one of your Google Classroom pages and navigate up to Question. For this activity, I put the round number and claim on the question line and turned off the ability for students to reply or edit posts.

Because I didn't want to allow students to start a round before the class was ready, I saved each round as a draft and released them as we advanced through the game. I gave students a specific amount of time to locate and type their quotation into Google Classroom.

Once it was posted and student groups had answered, it looked like this:

There are only 6 done because only one student from each group completed the question for his/her group. After the allotted time, I put the answers up on the projector. It looked like this: 

I then had student groups read their quotations and offer their explanation to connect the quotation to the claim. As they were presenting to the class, I took notes so that I could highlight the strengths and weaknesses of their explanations to the class. After I shared some of these notes with the class, I awarded a winner of that round. In the end, the overall winning group received the prize of choosing their debate topic first.

Google Question is a great way to quickly and uniformly get student-generated text up on your projector!

MLA Quotation Citation

To properly cite your quotations in your essays, follow these specific MLA guidelines.

Punctuation

Punctuation marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons should appear after the parenthetical citation.

Question marks and exclamation points should appear within the quotation marks if they are a part of the quoted passage but after the parenthetical citation if they are a part of your text.

Example 1: According to some, dreams express "profound aspects of personality" (Foulkes 184), though others disagree.

Example 2: According to Foulkes's study, dreams may express "profound aspects of personality" (184).

Example 3: Is it possible that dreams may express "profound aspects of personality" (Foulkes 184)?

Ellipses

If you omit a word or words from a quotation, you should indicate the deleted word or words by using ellipsis marks, which are three periods ( . . . ) preceded and followed by a space. For example:

Example 1: In an essay on urban legends, Jan Harold Brunvand notes that "some individuals make a point of learning every recent rumor or tale . . . and in a short time a lively exchange of details occurs" (78).

Square Brackets
If you add a word or words in a quotation, you should put brackets around the words to indicate that they are not part of the original text.

Example 1: Jan Harold Brunvand, in an essay on urban legends, states, "some individuals [who retell urban legends] make a point of learning every rumor or tale" (78).

Summary
“Quotation that ends in a period” (246).
"Quotation that ends in an exclamation mark or question?!” (246)
“‘Quotation that is already in quotations’” (246).
“Quotation that needs to be continued with your text” (246), looks like this.
“Quotation that has had...part of the middle of the quotation taken out” (246).
"Quotation that [you] had to change in some small way" (246).

*You can start and stop a quotation whenever you want. Therefore you will never do this: “…Quotation” or this “Quotation…”

MLA Essay Formatting

You will be submitting MLA style essays in class all year. Please follow the guidelines for formatting.

Heading: Use the following heading for all essays unless otherwise stated. (Do not add a header that appears on every page.)

Name

Scholz

Course Title

Due date in day month year format (no commas)

Page Numbers: Optional

Title: Add a creative title that hints at the subject of your essay. Do not underline, bold, or italicize your title.

Spacing: Essays should be double -spaced and should not have additional spaces between paragraphs. To undo that setting, see the image below.

1.      Punctuating titles. You will never underline a title unless you are hand-writing something. When typing an essay, the general rule is ITALICIZE long works or collections of shorter works, and “PUT QUOTATIONS AROUND” shorter works.

Italicize	Quotation Marks
Book titles	Poem titles
Movie titles	Song titles
Newspaper titles (The Tribune)	Article titles
Magazine title	Essay titles
Album titles	Chapter titles
TV series titles (Lost)	Episode titles