Brainology: Teaching Students The Power of Positive Self Talk

These last few weeks have been a blur.  I don’t know where they’ve gone… honestly.  A quick recap:

1) Thanksgiving

2) Smart Conference.  What a treat this was, and I will blog about it sometime, but it was a week of planning and a week of conference-ing. (That’s a word, right?)

3) Meetings.  IEP, Book Studies, Harassment Seminar, Staff Meeting.  Just lots of meetings.

4) Sickness.  Why do I always get a cold at this time of year?

5) Report Cards.  Currently procrastinating on those by writing this blog post.  You’re welcome.  🙂

In the midst of this craziness, Crystal and I decided to whip out another bulletin board.  ‘Cause, you know? Why not?

First stop, Dollar Store plastic table cloth section.  You can never have too many plastic table cloths on hand. 

Our inspiration for this board was our Growth Mindset lessons we’ve been doing.  The lessons are inspired by these two books:

We created the brain on this board with above mentioned plastic table cloths.  They are twisted together and bunched up.  Some are full length and some are trimmed down.  Just twist, fluff and staple every few inches.  The white side has black tissue paper inside, just to give it a bit of dimension in the colour.

I am not sure why we took this photo.  I think someone texted “What are you doing” and I sent this back.  It’s hilarious anyhow.

Here’s the final product.  The “STOP” piece up top is just layered paper plates.  I had to sort a lot of letters to spell all those words.  Some how I had all the pieces.  I still can’t really believe it, actually.

Our kids provided the self talk pieces for growth and fixed.  It was really interesting to see this process.  The task was to write one thought, whether growth or fixed.  For fixed, they had so many thoughts on their cards!  I read somewhere that the average human thinks 5 times more negative things than positive ones.  I believe it after seeing this task.

And some positive self talk…. my favourite growth mindset piece: “It’s not over until the fat lady sings”.  Too funny.

If you’re after more ideas for teaching growth mindset, follow my Pinterest board.

Are you interested in even more bulletin board ideas? Do you want to save time by finding them all in one place? Follow the image or button below to grab your copy of my free bulletin board inspiration guide. 

Pin this post.