Bloomingdale Elementary News
September 14,2021
PRINCIPAL'S NOTES
This week, I am sharing an article with our Bloomingdale learning community about “grit”. This is a word that just means perseverance, or not giving up on difficult tasks. So often, we see children who struggle to keep trying when they are asked to do something that takes a lot of work or is a challenge. I hope this article from Bright Horizons is helpful to our parents and staff members as we help our young scholars to build perseverance and grit. Here is a link to the website this article came from: https://www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/encouraging-grit-and-teaching-perseverance-to-children
TEACHING GRIT & PERSEVERANCE TO CHILDREN
Grit and perseverance are important indicators of children’s future success. Here are a few ways to help develop grit in your child.
"Grit" is a term which has been showing up in the lexicon recently. It is defined by Angela Lee Duckworth (2013) as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals." Duckworth found that grit may be as important as or more so than IQ in determining children's school success rates. Grit is actually a better indicator of graduation rate predictions than IQ.
Grit and perseverance are what keeps us trying to meet long-term goals. In many cases, intelligence isn't enough to be successful. Grit is the extra ingredient which helps us reach our goals. It means being able to re-start after experiencing failure. Similar in many ways to resilience, grit is what helps us to try again after not achieving a goal and staying motivated.
The concept of grit has implications for how we encourage our children. Can you remember a time yourself when you tried repeatedly to reach a goal and eventually got it, but it was only after failing multiple times? Often those victories mean more than the ones quickly and easily achieved.
TIPS ON TEACHING KIDS NOT TO GIVE UP
Teach grittiness by example. Try new things and let your child see you struggle and yet keep going. Share age-appropriate stories of when you didn't reach your goal the first time but tried again, maybe even multiple times. Talk about how you set small goals to help your reach a bigger goal and the importance of being resilient.
Provide challenging kid activities not easily achieved. Everything your child tries shouldn't be easy. At the same time, help your child find reasonable challenges, not those which are so outside of her realm of possibility that there is no way she will be successful.
Remember that it is OK for your child to get frustrated sometimes. We tend to want to shield our children from frustration and that may not be helping them. Similarly, remind children that it is OK to fail—you get to try again. He may not be great at everything the first time, but it is sticking with something that is important.
Offer praise and encouragement for your child's strong effort. We tend to praise our children for being smart, but also remember to offer encouragement for completing goals, for not giving up, and for being determined. For example, instead of saying, "Great grade on the science test. You are so smart," try "I noticed how you kept on studying for your science test even though the material was hard."
At the same time, recognize that there are times when it is OK to quit. Be it a sport or after-school activity that your child expressed interest in, sometimes trying multiple times may be more important than actually reaching the goal.
Set realistic and age-appropriate challenges. Most of the above suggestions apply to school-age children. With preschoolers, be sure to fit the size of their challenge to their age and ability and try not to set up a child to fail.
It can be hard for us as parents to see our children struggle, but remember that children learn from the struggle. Ensure that the challenge isn't too big, and offer support and encouragement along the way.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ABOUT ENCOURAGING GRIT AND PERSEVERANCE
Find tips for building resilience in children to help raise confident, happy kids.
Here are some ideas for helping kids cope with anxiety and stress.
Learn why it's important to allow children to fail and learn from their mistakes.
Here are 10 preschool activities for encouraging independence and grit.
Your Proud Principal,
Eric Heady
Notes From Nurse Healy
Did You Know...
Bloomingdale Elementary maintains a uniform closet here at school. Spilled milk? Fell in a puddle? Maybe a little too late to the bathroom? Accidents happen, and no matter what the reason, Nurse Healy will do her best to change any student into a clean, dry uniform so that they can continue their day. If your child comes home with a borrowed uniform, please launder it and send it back to school so that we have it available for another student on another day. If your student has uniforms that they have outgrown, we would gladly accept them as a donation to our closet. We currently are in need of larger uniforms from size 10 and up.
Any questions, please call Nurse Healy at 912-395-3705.
Bloomingdale Elementary' s Talent and Gifted Program
The website National Association for Gifted Children (nagc.org) is a great resource for teachers and parents of gifted children. Here is an activity suggested by the organization to improve students' focus on reading and learning. Ask your child to discuss things that interest them. As the conversation progresses, take note of the different topics your child talks about and use that as a springboard to gather books, videos, and other resources related to the topic. Then you and your child can learn about their topic of interest together. Explore, read and create with your child. We call this a “Passion project”. Kids really get into learning when the topic is something they are interested in!
Media Center News
The Media Center has an amazing selection of books! Did you know that we also offer a collection of thousands of e-books through the SORA app? That’s right, your child can read e-books on devices anywhere they go. Students simply log onto ClassLink and access the SORA app or go to https://soraapp.com/library/savannahga. Here’s a quick video to explain all of SORA’s features. Dyslex font, highlighting, note taking, and more are available for all books. They even have audio books for those that would prefer to listen to their favorite books.
Check out your e-book, today!