There's Great Power in the Word "YET"

This week in Library Media, I gave my students a challenge: recreate this structure using only one piece of paper and a pair of scissors. 

As students were working together, I walked around the room and wrote down what I heard. The first comments I wrote down were, "This is impossible." "I don't get how she did that." "I give up." "It looks so hard, but yet so easy!" "That's not possible." 

I allowed students to work and didn't step in to give any hints. In grades 3-5 we had read the story Rosie Revere: Engineer and had conversations about perseverance, how one idea might lead to another, the benefits of failure being another word for growth, and pursuing dreams. We also watched the video "You Can Learn Anything." 

After a few minutes of trying and a second challenge to try this at home, we took a look together at some of the comments I had written down. We talked about how language can be our greatest friend or our worst enemy. By adding one word, YET, we can change our fixed mindset to a growth mindset attitude. We go from "I can't do this," to "I can do this. I just haven't figured it out yet." or "I give up," to "It's okay that I can't do this right now, but I can keep trying."

The library door now features two Growth Mindset quotes to remind us that, "Mistakes are still progress," and "There's great power in the word YET."

Are you ready to take this mindset challenge?