As a new educator, I’ve come to quickly realize how important it is that my kindergartners embrace the idea that skills can be developed and learned. Although this may sound simple, teaching students a growth mindset in kindergarten does require intention and planning.
The foundation for teaching this skill is based on helping students learn that it’s OK to make mistakes, and that effort and persistence have a big impact on learning. Embracing a growth mindset is especially important for students who struggle with negative self-talk, expressing things like the idea that they will never be able to learn a certain concept. This kind of limiting belief is an example of a fixed mindset: that a person is born with a set of abilities that cannot be changed. A fixed mindset gets in the way of fostering a love for learning and is harder to reverse as students get older. That’s why it is so important to teach young minds the importance of sticking with challenges and regularly remind them that practice makes progress.
Kindergarten is prime time for Building resilience
A growth mindset in the classroom helps build resilience, social and emotional development, and confidence. These skills are essential for both children and adults. Kindergarten is a critical time to build these skills, as 5- and 6-year-olds are beginning to develop language, memory, and imagination, but they still struggle with perspective-taking and logical reasoning. Encouraging a growth mindset during this period helps children develop greater flexibility in thinking, resilience in problem-solving, and confidence in their abilities, laying the foundation for future academic and social success. Furthermore, it’s important that children in this preoperational stage have a supportive environment to experiment with symbolic thinking and role-playing to practice overcoming challenges, making it ideal time to reinforce the tools that build adaptability.
As a new teacher, I regularly experience missteps. When this happens, I am transparent with my students—I let them know that I am also still learning. I remind them that mistakes are something we face all throughout life, and being able to learn from them and bounce back is crucial. Encouraging students to let go of the fear of failing and see themselves as resilient early on helps them grow their confidence throughout school and even into adulthood as they become lifelong learners.
4 strategies for teaching kindergartners that practice makes progress
1. Model reframing mistakes as opportunities. When teachers model a growth mindset by demonstrating that we also see our mistakes as opportunities for progress, our students are more likely to bounce back from setbacks too.
I frequently reframe my own everyday mistakes in the classroom as teaching and learning opportunities. When I misspell a word on a slide, forget that we have a schedule change, or lose track of time, I acknowledge my mistakes to my students to show them that making mistakes and having to find solutions is normal.
For example, I like to bring music into my classroom. My students and I sing a good morning song every day, and I play my guitar along to a call-and-response song. Once, I forgot the lyrics of the song, and I stopped immediately and said, “I forgot the words! Can someone help me?” My students thought it was so silly that I had forgotten how to sing the song, and we all laughed together. After they helped me remember the lyrics, we sang our song, and then I asked the class, “Is it OK that I make mistakes?” They loved getting to shout back, “Yes!” It was a sweet reminder of how important it is to show children that we all need help sometimes.
2. Praise effort. Be sure to praise students when they are working diligently, and point out how much they have improved. I love telling my students that I can see the progress they’ve made and that their hard work is paying off. When children consistently hear effort-focused positive reinforcement at school, the learning environment becomes a safe place where students feel supported in stepping out of their comfort zone and trying new things.
I recently shared a quote from psychologist Carol Dweck with my students that said, “No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.” One child in particular seemed shocked that giving her best effort was an accomplishment in and of itself. Reframing the quote in her own words, she said, “Trying my best is the best thing I can do!” By embracing the importance of effort early on, kindergartners begin to see challenges as opportunities to grow rather than obstacles to avoid, laying the foundation for a lifelong growth mindset.
3. Create open-ended opportunities. For students to embrace a growth mindset, they need to have the opportunity to tackle challenges and work through them. Open-ended learning opportunities are especially impactful in a kindergarten classroom because they invite students to lead their learning. Open-ended learning can look like a poetry project, a STEAM challenge, or even loose parts play.
When using open-ended engagement in the classroom, ask questions like “What do you think we could do to build a tower that doesn’t fall over?” If a student answers with an idea such as adding more blocks to the top of the tower, embrace that idea and support the students by getting on their level to see what happens instead of suggesting something different.
Even if the tower topples over, these kinds of opportunities give children a chance to learn that the learning process is part of the fun of challenging tasks. Students might have to try multiple approaches before they succeed, but that perseverance will eventually not just lead to success in their current task, but also support the development of resilience that will serve them well throughout life.
4. Lead with inquiry. Instead of offering solutions immediately, I invite students to identify problems and then work alongside them to discover possible solutions together. For example, often during writing, students rush and write their words messily without being thoughtful about what they are writing. This leads to students’ not being able to read what they wrote in their journals later. In this situation, I ask the student, “How can we fix this?” Then we work through solutions together, like writing more slowly or tapping out the sounds in a word before writing it.
Small shifts, Big Impact
Embracing a growth mindset in the kindergarten classroom has been a valuable learning journey for my students and me. As a new educator, I have a lot on my plate, and trying to implement something like this takes a lot of conscious effort for me to model this shift and create a learning environment where the focus is on effort and inquiry.
At first, it was frustrating to slow down during the day to think through problem-solving approaches with my students, but I’ve seen how much impact the tiny shift of praising effort over correctness, modeling resilience through embracing struggle, and celebrating mistakes as learning opportunities has transformed my classroom community and turned my students into enthusiastic learners.
Now, my students remind each other that they are all still learning—without my guidance. Recently, when my students were working in their table groups learning a new concept in math, I overheard one of them say to another, “You tried your best, and that is the most important thing.”
Although it is not always easy, and sometimes I have to remind myself to model the growth mindset as well, the results I’ve seen are absolutely worth it. I love not only seeing my students grow, but also growing alongside them. Just like them, I am learning, growing, and improving every day.
