What’s new at Mindsets this Summer?
It’s Summer! Here’s a round up of what’s happening at Mindsets June/July 2020:
- Open Challenges — Free for all teachers and families over summer!
- Spotlight — Equity, Language Learners
- Research and Innovation — Executive Function in Math
Mindsets Officially Launches FREE Open STEAM Challenges for Summer!
School may be out, but learning shouldn’t stop. In a typical summer, students can lose 2–2.5 months of math skills. And since learning loss is cumulative, many learners entering this particular June are already at a disadvantage.
That’s why teachers are telling families: “Do Mindsets over the summer. It’s free!” And they’re right. This summer, we’re offering you one Challenge for each month to share with your families at no cost to you. Start here: https://www.mindsets.com/summer-open-challenges
June — 🐶 Doggy Day Care: You are inspired by how much other people can earn from dog walking and decide to start your own company! Grades 6–8 /10 yrs + Math skills: Ratios & Proportions
July — 🍦 Design Your Own Ice Cream Sundae Store: You are launching a “design-your-own” ice cream store! Set the best prices for the sundaes so that customers come back and you also make a profit. Grades 6–8/10 yrs + Math skills: The Number System
August — 🎢 Theme Park App: You’re helping a popular theme park to create a new visitor app, so that visitors can plan their visit ahead of the big day. Grades 6–8/10 yrs + Math skills: Expressions & Equations.
Learners will love trying these practical, creative math and science projects. Free only during summer!
We’re also providing resources: We’re kicking off this month with a 2 min introductory online class & a step by step flyer for the Doggy Day Care Challenge — a great way to get started. One school district in Tennessee reached out and asked us to translate the flyers into Spanish. If those Spanish-language flyers would be helpful to you, reach out to us at hello@mindsets.com and we’ll gladly share them.
So join us and invite your community of teachers, families and their learners in the Mindsets summer classroom!
Mindsets OPEN READER Makes STEAM Accessible to English Language Learners During COVID
Experts project the U.S. workforce will grow 5.8% by 2028, and STEAM careers will grow by 8.8%. The current COVID-19 pandemic and the parallel supply chain fragmentation are underscoring the need for a strong domestic STEAM sector.
The bulk of these new jobs will fall on Gen-Z, today’s students. To meet that demand, Gen-Z will need to rapidly increase the number and percentage of women and Hispanics working in STEAM.
Consequently, we need inclusive and equitable education for students who are at a high-risk of falling behind in learning, especially English Language Learners.
“Language proficiency is paramount,” says Tom Davis, Director of Business Development Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (ALAS). “We have to make sure that kids are proficient in reading, writing, listening, and speaking.”
To support that proficiency requires a strong, research-based curriculum that can promote continuity in learning. That’s what Mindsets brings to the table with its digital OPEN READER. Vetted for online and on-campus use and both school and home friendly, OPEN READER, like other Mindsets tools, works as well at the kitchen table as it does in the classroom. Students focus their reading, grammar & listening in Mindsets in English and also in any one of more than 70+ other languages.
“The other piece,” Tom says, “is equity.” Research shows that Hispanic students are less likely than their White or Asian peers to aspire to STEM careers, take 7-plus STEM courses in high school, or name a STEM subject as their favorite.
To address the problem of equity and thereby improve access to STEAM education and careers for Hispanic students, Mindsets has developed an inclusive curriculum for all types of learners. This approach allows the teacher to identify and personalize instruction for each student in the class, and the kids control that instruction using the OPEN READER.
In any of the Mindsets Math or Science Challenges students:
- Open the reader in another language
- Hover over a word to get a visual from the picture dictionary
- See text in two languages simultaneously
- Learners can even have the text read aloud to them in any language they choose
- These features support GLAD strategies because they help kids acquire language proficiency
Basically, Mindsets supports all areas of English language learning — writing, reading, listening, and speaking — and we’re doing it through STEAM!
EF: Not Just for Elementary Students or Students with Special Needs
Executive functioning is the multi-faceted array of life skills that allow a person to be successful in their culture. It’s like a switchboard in the brain and includes such skills as flexible thinking, working memory, and self control.
Why do I need to know about EF, and why is it important to my child’s success?
If you live in Japan, then an executive function would be a bow at greeting. If you lived in the U.S. pre-COVID, it would be a handshake. That example seems obvious, but for many kids, EF skills are things we have to teach. Historically, we’ve done that in elementary and special education classrooms. It’s time to level up.
EF is also an important tool for empowering middle school and high school students. These learners are starting to think about their participation in the workforce where they will need EF skills in order to participate to their fullest capacity.
For instance, cognitive flexibility — a key component of EF — allows workers to problem solve. When in the workforce, today’s students will need to be able to solve problems by observing, recalculating, and pivoting when faced with difficulty.
How Mindsets leads Math & STEAM education with EF skills practice
We’re excited to have some of the world’s most experienced educational researchers lead our talent at Mindsets. Our Principal Researcher is Dr Mike Timms, who holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and has decades of experience in leading educational research in the US and in Australia. Mike is leading the team examining how EF skills develop and how they can be used as measures of success as students analyze, predict, reason and express themselves through the Mindsets Challenges.
Our plan is to develop and test how EF measures can provide powerful tools to help learners to understand how to practice and develop their problem solving skills. We’ll be examining learning growth in three core skill areas:
- Cognitive Flexibility — How does a learner improve the way they think flexibly?
- Working Memory — How does a learner practice holding multiple thoughts as they prepare a recommendation or explain their reasoning in a Mindsets Challenge?
- Inhibitory Control — How can a learner develop their skills in focusing deeply on a problem, and how can they avoid getting distracted?
Mike and the team are collaborating with WestEd, an internationally acclaimed research group in California, US on this intensive R&D Plan. We are also in discussions with an equity based educational team to support this work. We look forward to updating you on this important — and landmark — expansion to the Mindsets platform in future newsletters. If you have a specific question or you’re keen to learn more, please contact Mike at mike@mindsets.com or Marissa our CEO at marissa@mindsets.com
