Back to School Growth Mindset Activities

Your students will absolutely love learning about growth mindset with this 9-page student growth mindset journal, featuring five sets of growth mindset paired passages and four pages of growth mindset introduction.

I designed this growth mindset journal to be a comprehensive introduction to and teaching tool for encouraging a growth mindset in students. This journal introduces students to the concept of growth mindset, including brain research, how to cultivate a growth mindset, and what the differences are between a fixed and a growth mindset.

After students have been introduced to the concept of growth mindset, they read 10 inspiring stories in the form of five paired passages (one fiction and one nonfiction on each of the five pages) about people who faced challenges and overcame obstacles with a growth mindset.

Each set of paired passages includes four opportunities for annotating the text with growth mindset questions plus two written responses for students to reflect on the characters in the stories.

This growth mindset resource includes:

• Journal Cover Page
• Four Pages of Growth Mindset Introduction
• Five Pages of Growth Mindset Paired Passages & Reflection Questions (10 stories total)
• Digital Version of each page in Google Slides

Teaching Notes: I recommend taking 1-2 weeks to complete the journal together, reading and discussing one page/paired passages per day for 15-20 minutes. If you can't devote that amount of time, simply eliminate one or two of the paired passage sets.

A Note on Grade Levels: This resource is best for grades 3+. 3rd graders will need more guidance and discussion on some of the more complex ideas and vocabulary terms, but it is totally doable as a whole class/small group lesson.

A Note on Answer Keys: Due to the open-ended, reflective nature of the content, this resource does not include answer keys.