What Anime Has Taught Me about Growth Mindset

I watch a lot of sports anime (Japanese cartoons about basketball teams, volleyball teams, swimmers, figure skaters, you get the idea). In watching these cartoons, I have noticed that there is a distinct difference between the Japanese approach to exams, competitions and events, compared with the British or American approach.

The idea for this blog post hit me in the face when I was watching Free! Iwatobi Swim Club in Japanese with English subtitles, and I noticed what I thought was an odd translation. If you are familiar with anime you might have heard the Japanese expression "Ganbatte!" which literally means "try your best" and is used often before exams, competitions, and fighting evil pirates (OK that one wasn't a sports anime). However, in the anime I was watching, ganbatte was translated as "Good luck" in the subtitles which struck me as weird, because I knew the correct translation. That's when it hit me: before exams and competitions, British people say "good luck", whereas Japanese people say "try your best". Could this very simple habit be the reason Japanese students outperform British students in education?

Think about what "good luck" really means. It implies that the recipient can only do well in the exam by some fluke. It implies that their own knowledge and skills are not good enough, and that the only way for them to succeed is if they luckily manage to get easy questions, or they luckily guess how to answer the questions. They are implying that you don't really have any influence on your success in the exam, and it is all in the hands of fate. This is a very fixed mindset way of thinking.

Consider the Japanese mindset instead: by saying "ganbatte" you are simply encouraging that person to try their best, implying that the harder you try, the better your result will be and the greater your success. This is very growth mindset.

People of Britain: please stop saying "good luck" to students before exams, to performers before performances, and to teams before competitions. Let's start saying "try your best" instead. Maybe this subtle shift in focus is enough to encourage more of a growth mindset in this country.

And for more motivational tips, you really should check out some Japanese anime or manga. Assassination Classroom, in particular, is a good one for teachers wanting to inspire their students.

Emma x x x

Why UCAS Grades Are Anti-Growth Mindset

I hate doing UCAS predicted grades.

In September, us year 13 teachers are asked to predict what grade we think the students will realistically achieve at the end of the year, and these are put on their university application form (the UCAS form). These have to be realistic and not inflated, because that's the only way that the system would be fair. As these predictions are made so early on in the year, we generally base them on their AS grade and maybe the first couple of assessments of year 13.

But here's the problem: many students are disappointed with their AS grade and aim to improve on it in year 13. They work twice as hard, now that they realise how difficult it is, and as a result many of them often do improve on their grade. But as a teacher, you can't necessarily predict this, and even if you think this might be the case, you can't really justify putting the UCAS grade higher if you have no evidence that they will improve.

I have a student who got a grade C in her AS Maths. I made her UCAS grade a C, because that seemed reasonable. But I think she underperformed last year and with a bit of extra dedication and a lot of support from me and my colleagues, she could get a grade B, or even higher. So when she asked me whether I could raise her UCAS grade for her so she would have a better chance of being accepted by universities, it was difficult for me to say no. If I said no, I would be telling her I don't think she can achieve above a grade C. Or at least, that's what she would think I was telling her. And this could affect her self-confidence, and could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If we give a student a low UCAS grade (because evidence suggests that is the grade they are most likely to get if everything remains the same as last year), then we are sending the message that we don't believe they can improve. One of my ex-students came into school the other day and we were talking about how his UCAS grade was a D (which was perfectly reasonable, as he had only got an E at AS) but he ended up getting a grade B. He said, "I proved you wrong". This actually made me quite upset! He had obviously spent the whole year thinking I believed he could not achieve higher than a D. Now maybe this is what motivated him to go on to achieve a grade B, and hence it was a good thing his UCAS grade was so low. But it still upsets me to think that he thought I didn't believe in him!

Conversely, giving a student a high UCAS grade might give them a false sense of security. If they think they are very likely to get a grade A*, they might not push themselves as much. They might see their UCAS grade as the minimum grade they will achieve with the minimum amount of effort.

I believe that predictions can be very powerful in influencing outcomes. When I was revising for my third year exams at university, I made predictions of my percentage scores for every exam I took, wrote these on a piece of paper and stuck them on the wall above my desk. I made predictions before I started revising but these predictions were eerily accurate. Ever since then I have been convinced that what we believe will happen, will happen. I have actually made a vision board for this year's A2 results, and stuck this on the wall above my desk in the maths office. On it it has every year 13 student's name, and the grade I need them to achieve in order for us to get an ALPS grade 1. These grades are not the same as the students' UCAS grades, they are higher. So it doesn't make sense that I'm telling the students I believe one thing when I'm really aiming for another.

I don't want to make the students' UCAS grades too high because it seems against the rules of UCAS, and I want to do things fairly. But am I being silly? Do all the other schools inflate their grades on little evidence? Should I just predict them all A*s and then work my socks off to make sure they get those grades?

Anyone else in a similar situation? What's your policy for making UCAS grades?

Emma x x x

Draw Your Brain: a Growth Mindset Activity

Today I shared an activity with my colleagues and they seemed to like it so I thought I'd share it here too.

I told my colleagues (Maths, Science and Learning Support teachers) that they needed to get into the mindset of 15 year olds so that they could get the most out of the demonstration. Of course then one of my colleagues got a little bit too in character and drew an item of male anatomy on his piece of paper. Actually, knowing this particular colleague's personality, he would have done this even if he wasn't pretending to be a fifteen year old. (Typical Physics teacher).

But anyway, I had given everyone a piece of A5 paper and a felt tip. I told them to pretend to write on their piece of paper, and pretend they were answering a really difficult maths problem. They had to pretend they had worked on it for ages and they were really struggling. Finally, they come to an answer. However, a minute later, their teacher tells them their answer is wrong. I asked my colleagues to think about the emotions they would experience then. They gave me some examples: anger, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment. Then I told them to take all of those emotions, and channel those emotions into crumpling their piece of paper up into a ball. I told them to really make sure that all of their anger, frustration, and feelings of failure were screwed up into that ball of paper. And then I told them to throw their piece of paper as hard as they could, and with it release all of those negative emotions.

Then I asked them to retrieve their piece of paper and uncrumple it, and smooth it out so it's nice and flat. I told them that the piece of paper represented their brains. All of the tiny crease marks on the paper are the synapses, or pathways, inside their brain. I got them to draw over the crease marks with a felt tip pen, and as they did that, I asked them to think about the knowledge flowing through their brains thanks to these pathways. Every time you make a mistake, your brain gains an extra synapse. The only way to gain extra synapses is through making mistakes. So all of the connections and pathways in your brain are due to making mistakes. The piece of paper representing their brain would not have any synapses at all if it hadn't been crumpled up. Those pathways are only there because they made a mistake.

With students, I then tell them to keep this picture of their brain in their folder, and every time they make a mistake in Maths, they should look at it and think about how their brain has just gained another synapse. They can even draw on another synapse each time they make a mistake, and by the end of the year they will be able to see how much their brain has grown, and how much progress they've made.

This is a great activity to do with a class that lacks confidence or is stuck in a fixed mindset. I did this with my year 11 intervention class last year, and I think it was a real turning point for them.

Please try this with a class and let me know what impact it has!

Emma x x x

PS I got this idea, plus many others, from the book Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler.

Using Circle Geometry to Hunt Pokemon

If you know me in real life, it will come as no surprise to you that I have spent most of my summer holiday so far playing Pokemon Go. Those of you who don't know me in real life, if you see a pink-haired twenty-something with a phone precariously attached to a Pikachu lanyard wearing dungarees (optimal number of pockets) and Go Walk Sketchers (optimal walking shoe) walking at as close to 7km per hour as possible (optimal PoGo speed) then that's me.

After a few weeks of aimlessly walking around Coventry city centre or sitting on the steps of the bank where some kind stranger will always drop a lure, I decided that I had caught enough Drowzee and would like to make a bit of progress towards catching 'em all. My pokedex was hovering around the 80 mark for a long time, despite making trips to Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham in the hopes of finding exotic local pokemon and hatching eggs like Bernard Matthews. So I decided to give pokemon tracking a try.

In the bottom right-hand corner of the screen when you're in map view, there is a window you can expand that says "sightings" and lists some pokemon that have spawned nearby. Sometimes I would see a rare pokemon on this window, but learned helplessness has taught me that the rare ones never pop up when you want them to. By "pop up" I mean appear on your map as a tappable, catchable pokemon. So I decided that instead of wandering aimlessly and hoping for the rare ones to pop up, I would hunt them down strategically using geometry.

A pokemon will appear in "sightings" when you are within 200m of it. The pokemon will be catchable when you are within 70m of it. So when a rare pokemon, let's say a Charizard, appears on your sightings, you should be picturing the following diagram:

Of course, you could be anywhere in the purple circle (but not in the pink circle, or the Charizard would already be catchable). The fact that the pokemon just appeared in your sightings could either mean that you have just stepped inside the purple circle, or the pokemon has just spawned. Pokemon disappear after 15 minutes, so what you do next needs to be efficient and at a bit of a jog if possible. If you have a buddy with you, this is much easier, as you'll see in a minute.

Let's call the point you're at point A. What you need to do is identify a straight path that you can walk along that goes in both directions from point A. This can be very difficult, depending where you are. I have found that it is much easier in a park than in the city centre. Now, walk along that path, remembering where you started. Ideally, you would count your paces as you walk. Keep walking until the Charizard disappears from your sightings. The point where that happens we'll call point B. This will be a point on the circumference of the circle in your head. Of course, you could get lucky and walk right into the pink circle, in which case, get the razz berries and ultra balls ready! But let's assume the unluckiest situation.

Next, you need to turn around and walk in the exact opposite direction, back to point A and beyond it until the Charizard disappears from your sightings again. Call this point C. If you have a buddy with you, they can do this bit whilst you are doing step one, to save time. Again, it would be good if you could count your paces.

Now that you have identified two points on the circumference of the circle, and have walked a chord of the circle, this is where the geometry comes in. The perpendicular bisector of any chord of a circle always passes through the centre of the circle.

If you don't believe me, think about this: take a random chord of a circle and join up its end points to the centre as in this diagram:

You should be able to see that this makes an isosceles triangle, because two of the sides are radii.

This means that this triangle has a line of symmetry and if you cut it down this line, you get two right-angled triangles:

And clearly this line of symmetry goes through the centre of the circle.


So, back to our hunt. We're at point C, and we need to find the perpendicular bisector of the line segment BC which is the path we have just walked. The first thing we need to do is find the midpoint of B and C. In some places it is easy to do this by eye, if you have a good map or if you're in a very flat area. But if you have counted your paces, you will be able to find the midpoint much more accurately. I personally don't bother with counting. Because we're only trying to get inside the pink circle, not get to the exact centre, we don't have to be that accurate. So, walk to this midpoint, which we'll call D.

Now, turn ninety degrees and walk. But Emma! (I hear you cry) There's two ways of turning ninety degrees! Yes, you're right. At this point, you have not uniquely defined the purple circle. If you draw two random dots on a page, there are always exactly two different circles with a given radius that pass through those two points. You don't know which circle it is, so you have to guess. So turn ninety degrees in any direction and start walking (or running!) until one of two things happen: the Charizard pops up and you catch it, or the Charizard disappears from your sightings, in which case you do a 180 degree turn and run for it! If you have a buddy with you, you can take one direction each and invent some kind of signal for "I found it!" (smoke signal? A whistle? Make a sound like a dying giraffe?)

You have to do all this in the space of 15 minutes which can be tricky, and sometimes involves running and looking like a loon. But me and my husband went out to Coombe Abbey country park and Coventry's War Memorial Park last week and managed to use this method successfully several times. The handy thing is, pokemon can't spawn just anywhere, there are a set number of spawn points in a given area. So once we identified some of the spawn points, we didn't even have to use the method, we could run to the nearby spawn point we found earlier. There are still enough different spawn points around to keep the game challenging though.

In case you were wondering, my Pokedex is now up to 94. I promised my tutor group that I would have caught 'em all before term starts again in September, which is looking very unlikely. Then again, my tutor group promised me they wouldn't fail their AS levels, so I might have a bit of leverage there...

I hope this method helps you hunt down some rare pokemon and maybe understand the relevance of circle geometry a bit more. (Oh my gosh, did I just come up with a "real life" application of geometry??? Noooooo! Keep Maths pure, people!)

Emma x x x

Maths Shouldn't Be about "Getting it Right"

If I had a penny for every time I heard a highly-educated, professional adult say "I can't do Maths", I'd be rich (and if I had £1.74 for every time I heard it, I'd have the makings of a GCSE Maths question).

I've talked before in previous posts that I don't think it should be socially acceptable to say "I'm rubbish at Maths!" and I've received a little bit of criticism from them for being snobbish and condescending because, after all, not everyone can be good at Maths and some people just can't do maths, it's not their fault. What utter rubbish. However, I do understand why so many of you think this, and I'm going to make it my life's mission to undo this damage and encourage teachers to join me in the fight towards making Maths a likeable subject.

When people are asked to recall Maths in secondary school, most people say things like "I was bad at it" or "I was good at it", whereas when asked to recall another subject, most people say things like "it was boring" or "it was fun". For some reason, Maths is seen to be so much more about performance and ability than any other subject. And for Maths, perceived ability and enjoyment are very closely correlated. I think that Art is kind of similar in that ability is more of a factor than in other subjects, but for some reason, Art is still fun to do even if you're "bad" at it. Painting stuff is fun, even if the end product is kind of ugly. In Maths, people seem to believe there is only the end product. The only thing that matters in maths is getting the right answer, and hence getting the right grade. So there is not really anything to enjoy, unless you get all the answers right.

Solution: take the emphasis off "getting it right".

I was looking through some Primary school work belonging to one of my year 13 students, and I found this completely hideous drawing of what was apparently a monkey eating a banana. It looked like nothing. It was just crazy scribbles all over the page. And there in the corner, was a large, very prominent, tick. A tick as in, yes, this is correct. A tick as in an acknowledgement that this piece of work is perfectly acceptable. And that made me think: in art, you can tick something without saying that it is "correct" or "perfect", whereas in Maths, you can only tick something that is correct. If a student writes something like 2.3 + 4.5 = 6.7, I can't tick it. But it's only slightly wrong, and the student has done some good mathematical thought to get to that answer. They have understood place value (a tricky concept), they just counted wrong. So let's just eliminate ticks altogether. Let's use something else that basically means the same thing but doesn't have the same connotations of "correctness", like a smiley face perhaps. I can put a smiley face next to 6.7, even if I can't put a tick. And I can write them a note explaining that they miscounted but that they have understood place value and I'm proud of them for that.

During a whole-class question and answer session or discussion or review, let's not ask questions that have correct answers. Let's ask questions about methods and thinking and pattern spotting. Instead of asking, "What's 67.8 divided by 4?" let's ask, "How could you go about dividing 67.8 by 4?" and let's actually listen to the student's explanation, not just wait for the numerical answer. So often teachers will ask for the numerical answer first, then follow up with a "and how did you get that answer?" when it should be the other way round.

Let's not give year seven students a Maths test on their first week of secondary school and use this to put them into "ability" classes. Let's give them a "thinking styles" test instead - one that assesses the way they think about maths and their approach to solving problems. Then we can use this data to put them into classes instead (or at least let them think that's what the classes are based on, if you can't actually stomach doing this).

Let's teach our students that Maths is about more than just getting a correct answer. After all, we all have calculators and Wikipedia. Learning Maths needs to be about learning problem solving techniques, pattern spotting, making connections, and communicating all of these things with multiple representations. Let's forget about the notion of being "good at maths" or "bad at maths" and focus instead on everyone "doing maths".

And whether you agree with me or not doesn't matter because this debate has no correct answer :)

Emma x x x

It's about Time!

Secondary teachers: have you been astounded in recent years by the sheer number of students who cannot tell the time, and, in many cases, seem to have absolutely no concept of time itself?

I certainly have.

Now if you're a non-maths teacher, you might be thinking: "why haven't those lazy maths teachers taught them how to tell the time?" If you're a maths teacher, you might be thinking, "why didn't those lazy Primary school teachers teach them how to tell the time?" And if you're a Primary school teacher, you might well be thinking, "why don't parents teach their children to tell the time these days?"

Of course it is the joint responsibility of parents, Primary teachers, and (I would argue, to a lesser extent), Secondary Maths teachers, to teach students how to tell the time. However, some responsibility also lies with non-maths Secondary teachers too. The sad thing is, some teachers (Maths teachers included) are actually un-teaching students about time. That is to say, they're actually worsening students' understanding about time. Let me explain.

I have noticed that the only classrooms in my school that have wall clocks are the Maths classrooms. When I was in charge of numeracy across the curriculum at my school, I asked some representatives from other departments about why that was, and whether they would like me to order clocks for their classrooms (from the Maths budget!) and I was surprised to hear a resounding "no thanks". Their reasoning was that if there is a big, visible clock in the room, students will spend the lesson clock-watching, and will hence be less engaged.

Whilst I do sympathise with this, having experienced my fair share of disengaged students, I do think that we need to rethink this. I have sixteen year old students who have absolutely no concept of how long five minutes feels like, who have no idea what quarter of an hour feels like compared to three-quarters of an hour. And I believe this is because they do not do enough clock watching. Think about it: the youth of today are more likely to watch on-demand TV, Netflix, or youtube instead of scheduled programming, so they don't really have the experience of waiting for 7:30pm for Top of the Pops to start. It is experiencing things like this that teach us about time.

Have you ever told your class, "you have three minutes to finish this activity, and then we'll discuss it as a class"? I'm sure you have, because time limited activities are recommended by teaching and learning experts. But do you actually wait three minutes exactly? Or do you wait an arbitrary period of time, until the noise level has risen just enough to tell you most students have finished, or the time it takes you to give out the glue sticks? Sometimes we jokingly refer to these periods of time as "teacher minutes", but what's really not funny is that these "teacher minutes" may be the only experiences our students have with time periods, and when they build up an understanding of a minute based on this, they are going to be left with a completely warped impression. You could actually be damaging their conceptual understanding of the passage of time by doing this.

Have you ever sat with a student in a ten minute detention and had them squirm in their seat and ask after two minutes, "can I go yet?" They aren't being rude exactly, they just honestly have no idea what ten minutes feels like. And with no clock in the room, they may feel completely lost, the way a directionally-challenged person like myself might feel in the middle of a large homogeneous field with a map but no compass. What makes this all the worse, is that often we get bored of the detention, or we remember we have a meeting to get to, and we cut the detention short, knowing that the student won't realise. Thus reinforcing dodgy concepts of time.

Teachers are not the only ones to blame. When I was a kid I referred to a bus timetable to know when my bus was due, and my watch to know what the time currently was, and I worked out from there how long I had left to wait. Today, I simply look at the electronic display inside the bus shelter that says "6A - Pool Meadow - 8 minutes" and watch the time count down to zero, and then the magic word "Due". National Express minutes are even worse than teacher minutes. Sometimes the time remaining increases. Sometimes it stays on the same number for several minutes. I am aware of this because I have built up a good understanding of time over the years. Many young people today, however, have not, and hence this is just more misleading information about time to warp their understanding.

Now I'm going to stop complaining and start offering solutions.

1. If you're a teacher, get a clock for your classroom, and don't discourage clock-watching. If a student asks how long it is until the end of the lesson, point at the clock and get them to work it out. Help them with this if they can't read it. Don't be surprised if some of your year elevens cannot read an analogue clock. What would be even better is putting some words around the edge of your clock saying "o'clock", "quarter past", etc. This way students get used to this vocabulary.

2. When you use time-limited activities, time them properly. Don't use "teacher minutes". If possible, display a countdown clock or a large analogue clock on your interactive whiteboard during the activity, so that students can monitor the time themselves as they do the activity.

3. When doing exam practice, get students used to timed conditions by having a large analogue clock on the interactive whiteboard and refer to it frequently. For example, saying something like, "It's quarter past at the moment which means you've had twenty minutes and you've got another twenty left, because we finish at twenty-five to" and pointing to the position of the minute hand as you do so.

4. If you have a student who is perpetually late and you think may not have a good understanding of time, give him or her a time-based job to do so that they have to be aware of the time. For example, you could say, "Daniel, at two o'clock can you do me a favour and go and give this note to Mr Edwards? It's really important so can you remind me just before two o'clock so that he gets it on time". Now maybe you're thinking that if half of Daniel's attention is on the clock, he's not going to be able to learn as much or be fully engaged in the lesson. But I do think it's important that students learn to be time-conscious in order that they can be effective working adults.

Am I over-reacting here or do you also think this is a big issue that needs addressing? Do you strongly agree or disagree with any of the points I've made? Let me know in the comments.

Emma x x x

Should I Encourage My Students Not to Fast During Exam Season?

You may or may not have noticed that Ramadan largely coincides with A2 exam season this year. All of the A2 maths exams this year are during Ramadan. As I have 18 Muslim students in my A Level maths class (and one Christian) this could have a big impact on my results. As a teacher (and form tutor), should I try to gently persuade my students that fasting might not be a good idea?

During Ramadan, Muslims do not eat or drink (even water) during daylight hours. This means staying up pretty late (in summer) to eat, and going hungry and thirsty most of the day. All exam advice I've ever read definitely says make sure you get plenty of sleep, eat a good nutritious breakfast, and keep your brain well-hydrated. Therefore surely fasting is going to lead to worse results?

Kids do not have to fast, technically, only adults, but most of the young people I know do choose to fast (or possibly their parents force them?) and are often very proud of the fact that they do. In case you are worried for their safety, I should point out that Muslims break their fast when they are ill (and make up the time afterwards) and girls do not fast when they are menstruating. Fasting is not about self-punishment or about inflicting suffering on yourself.

So should I try to convince my students not to fast? I do believe that fasting makes a difference to exam performance, and obviously I do want my students to do their best (because I care about them, not because I may get a good performance-management rating, for once). However, I don't want to encourage them not to fast. I can see that fasting is important to them, and helps them connect to God. Surely that is more important than exam results at the end of the day (or the end of life, in fact)?

As an Atheist, I don't believe that pleasing God is going to have any kind of positive effect in this life or the next, but I do believe that spirituality has an overall positive effect on a person's happiness, far more so than getting a good exam result. As a non-religious person, I'm almost jealous that these guys have something they have dedicated their life to, that they can practise in such a simple yet meaningful way. Who am I to take that away from them? As a white, non-Muslim person, who am I to advise Muslims on what parts of their religion (or even their culture) they should follow and which they shouldn't? And so what if non-Muslims have an unfair advantage in this year's exams? I'm sure Islam teaches that life doesn't always seem fair, but God will make sure you're all right in the end (Insha Allah, as my students would say).

So I'm not going to encourage my students not to fast, even if their results suffer.

I'm just going to hope that all of my female students happen to be on their periods for their C4 exam.

Emma x x x