Ahh, the New Year. A time for making hopeful promises in order to better ourselves…

This year, I have a few students who struggle with self-confidence so I began looking into growth-mindset. Basically, a whole lot of research shows that having a growth mindset improves your motivation and achievement.

But what IS Growth Mindset?

“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” ( Dweck, 2015)

If you want to know more, grab these free resources from MindSetWorks.

I decided that helping my students to have a more positive mindset (vs. the dreaded “fixed mindset”) was incredibly important to me as a teacher.

Each year, we analyze our lives and decide what will be the best way to make ourselves happier and healthier.

Work more.

Work less.

Save money.

Lose weight.

Eat healthier.

These are all common new year’s resolutions for adults.

I myself, am thinking, drink more water, have better posture, travel more often…

Kids, on the other hand, don’t typically worry about health and finances. Usually, their goals are centered around new skills they would like to learn: get better at baseball, score a touchdown, learn to ride a bike without training wheels, get better at reading or writing, and so on.

Each year, I scour the internet looking for the “next cute project” for our resolutions. We’ve done socks (“Knock your socks off in 20–“), guitars (“Let’s rock 20–“), and this year, and I really wanted something different.

Donuts. Growth mindset donuts!

Yep. Even though most people may be thinking they want to STOP eating donuts…I thought they would make a super cute craftivity for our bulletin board!

I want my students to learn to push themselves.

I want them to know that setbacks will happen, but we can learn from them and keep trying.

I want them to know that it is absolutely ok to make mistakes.

I want them to know it’s good to challenge yourself, and it is good to be challenged.

I thought of some phrases that I hear often, and I then thought of phrases that I would rather hear my students say when they are having a tricky time.

Then, I added a couple of writing activities, a donut craftivity, which makes for a SUPER cute (and crave-inducing) bulletin board!

Here is our first year of completed growth mindset donuts on our kindergarten bulletin board:

And a couple of close-up examples!

This was one of my favorite goal-setting activities so far! You can check it out on TeachersPayTeachers here.

Happy Teaching,