Using Digital Writing Portfolios to Develop a Growth Mindset
Digital writing portfolios are powerful tools for students to document their journey, celebrate successes, and even embrace failures. Including a failed project in their portfolio can be transformative, fostering a growth mindset and encouraging reflection on progress. This mindset encourages students to view failure as a part of learning. By reflecting on failures, students can learn to see them as opportunities for growth and learning, fostering resilience and perseverance. I was thinking about Open House and how we only share our best work. Then I started thinking about what-ifs. What if you had your students include a failure in the work that they share? Isn’t that where the learning happens?
Rethinking Open House
I was thinking about Open House and how we only share our best work. Then I started thinking about what-ifs. What if you had your students include a failure in the work that they share? Isn’t that where the learning happens? Open House is often a night for students to share their learning by showcasing their best work, but what if you asked them to include something different?
Most of my student’s “best work” is shared through digital writing portfolios in the form of a website. Each student has their own Google Site where they add examples of their work throughout the year, but what about the work that doesn’t make it to the website? There is value in that, too.
So, I have asked my students to share an example of a failed attempt at something with a written reflection explaining why they decided to include this piece.
How I Presented this Idea to my Students
Do you have an example of a failure that you can share? Look through your Google Drive, and you will likely find something you didn’t add to your digital writing portfolio. Take another look at this unsuccessful piece of work and ask yourself:
- What problems did you encounter while you were working on this piece?
- What did/do you find frustrating about it?
- In what ways have you gotten better at this kind of work?
- In what ways do you think you need to improve?
- Find another recent work you did to compare and contrast with this piece. What changes can you see?
The trick is to look at your mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow—and try again. Instead of dwelling on mistakes you’ve made, think of them as positive experiences that have helped you grow and improve.
Change your mindset. One way to approach work you view as a failure is by viewing it as a valuable learning opportunity. Rather than allowing yourself to get bogged down by your errors, consider them positive experiences that allow you to show how much you have improved. By adopting this mindset, you can embrace your failures rather than be embarrassed by them and use them as a tool for reflection to celebrate your successes in learning.
Modeling a Growth Mindset & Sharing My Mistakes
What better way to make students feel more comfortable sharing their failures than by sharing that you sometimes blog about your failed attempts at progress, too? When we first began integrating technology in our school, I wrote a blog post about my tech fails called “Failing Forward… with No Regrets.” That post was an excellent example for my students, not just because I can be brave enough to share my failures but also because it serves as an example for structuring a blog post about their failures.
Look at an example from one of my 6th-grade students:
A student has chosen to reflect on two compare-and-contrast writing assignments in the example below. All this work was done during the pandemic while we were learning online from home. I feel like I should get bonus points for that because a year of unplanned distance learning was hard.
When comparing their past work with their current work, students gain valuable insights into their progress and development over time. This reflection helps them better understand how their skills, knowledge, and understanding of the subject matter have evolved, which in turn can boost their confidence and motivation.
In doing this portfolio assignment, I witnessed students having an aha moment. They only saw the end result (their best work), and this comparative reflection helped them remember all the learning it took to get to that result.
Additional Resources on Digital Writing Portfolios
Thinking about going digital with your interactive notebooks? In this video, I share some time-saving tips for managing your workflow, giving feedback, and how to grade digital interactive notebooks as I compare my experience with digital to analog. Information about using Google Sites for digital student portfolios is also included because it is a key element in my grading workflow.
Related Post: Writing Notebooks: Let’s Get Digital
