Bamboo Press Issue 25

The Redesigning of Bamboo Press

We are excited to announce the redesigning of school magazine Bamboo Press after this issue, considering how to keep parents

updated with students activities and educational news most efficiently. Redesigned Bamboo Press will publish one article in a week

and all articles in a month will be re-edited and published on school's website: www.cdeschina.com at the end of each month.

Thank you all for your support.

The Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset versus Fixed Mindset

People who have a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed, while people with a fixed mindset believe that

intelligence is a fixed trait. People with a fixed mindset think of intelligence kind of like eye color. They believe that you're born

with a certain amount of intelligence, and you can't do much to change that. People with a growth mindset think of intelligence

more like a muscle. They understand that when you put in effort and challenge yourself, you can get smarter, just like when you

put in effort at the gym and challenge yourself by lifting heavier weights to make your muscles stronger.

Think about this statement: You can learn new things, but you can't really change your basic intelligence. People who really

agree with this statement have a fixed mindset. People who really disagree with this statement have a growth mindset, and, of

course, people might be somewhere in the middle.

It turns out that the more students disagree with statements like these, the more they have a growth mindset, the better they do in school. This is because students with a growth mindset approach school differently than students with a fixed mindset. They

have different goals in school. The main goal for students with a fixed mindset is to show how smart they are or to hide how

unintelligent they are. This make sense if you think that intelligence is something you either have or you don't have. You want

to show that you have it.

Students with a fixed mindset will avoid asking questions when they don't understand something because they want to preserve

the image that they are smart or hide that they're not smart. But the main goal with students with a growth mindset is to lea rn.

This also makes a lot of sense. If you think that intelligence is something that you can develop, the way you develop your

intelligence is by learning new things. So students with a growth mindset will ask questions when they don't understand

something because that's how they'll learn. Similarly, students with a fixed mindset view effort negatively. They think, if I have

to try, I must not be very smart at this. While students with a growth mindset view effort as the way that you learn, the way that

you get smarter.

Where you'll really see a difference in students with fixed and growth mindsets is when they are faced with a challenge or setback.

Students with a fixed mindset will give up because they think their setback means they're not smart, but students with a growth

mindset actually like challenges. If they already knew how to do something, it wouldn't be an opportunity to learn, to develop

their intelligence.

Given that students with a growth mindset try harder in school, especially in the face of a challenge, it's no surprise that they

do better in school.

How a Growth Mindset Leads to Higher Achievement

A growth mindset focuses students on learning rather than simply performing well. You can even see this when you look inside

the brain. In one study, scientists brought people into the lab. The scientists put an EEG cap on participant's heads to measure

how active their brains were. While scientists were measuring brain activation, they asked participants a trivia question.

Participants gave their answer, and then the scientists told them if they were right or wrong. In other words, they were given

performance feedback.

The scientists found that the participants with a growth mindset and with a fixed mindset both had active brains when they were

told whether they were right or wrong. So all participants paid attention to the performance feedback. What's interesting is what

happened next. Participants were then told the correct answer, and, again, the scientists looked at how active the participants'

brains were. The brains of people with a growth mindset were significantly more active than the brains of people with a fixed

mindset. People with a fixed mindset were tuning out after they found out that they were right or wrong. Even if they were wrong,

they weren't interested in learning the correct answer. At the end of the study, the scientists gave participants a pop quiz with the

same trivia questions. Not surprisingly, the people with the growth mindset did better.

In another study, researchers were interested in the kind of feedback people would seek out after they struggled. Researchers

gave participants a difficult test and then told the participants that they hadn't done well on the test. Then they gave them a choice.

Did they want to look at the tests of people who had done worse than them or the tests of people who had done better? People

with the growth mindset chose to learn from people who had done better than them, but people with the fixed mindset seemed

more interested in making themselves feel better. They looked at the tests of people who had done worse.

A study with junior high students looked at the relationship of fixed versus growth mindsets and achievement in math, a subject

that many students find challenging. Students with a growth mindset earned higher math grades over time compared to students

with a fixed mindset. Mindsets have also been shown to predict who takes more advanced courses. In a study with middle school

students, those with a growth mindset were more likely to be placed into advanced math over time.

On the Chilean national achievement test, students with a growth mindset earned higher scores. The more a student disagreed with statements like “You can learn new things, but you can't really change your basic intelligence,” the more they had a growth

mindset, the better they did on the achievement test. In fact, students who had a growth mindset were three times as likely to

score in the top 20 percent of students nationally while students with a fixed mindset were four times more likely to score in the

bottom 20 percent of students.

What's most exciting about all of this is that mindsets can change, and when students adopt a growth mindset, they do better in

school.

Why is it Important for Students Entering into

Grade 6 to Begin Learning a Full Western Curriculum?

Beginning a child’s Western education in at least grade 6 is an essential component of beginning a strong development for

Chinese students who are planning to study abroad. It is all about the science of how a child learns and develops during the

middle grade years.

What a student learns and how a student learns is based on what are called Plains of Development. These plains of development

are the periods of when and how a child grows scientifically. A child’s brain and body grow in different ways when they are in

middle school than when they are in high school. The middle school student is developing the fundamental processing skills

that he or she will need to conduct academic work. The high school students is operating on what they developed during their

middle school years. The middle school student’s brain is essentially learning how to process data at an advanced intellectual

pattern. The importance of a Western international education that begins at grade 6 is that students are trained to think in both

English and Chinese to conduct academic work and this goes much farther in developing the skills and habits that will make a

child a successful student. Students are then more natural English thinkers and readers who are able to understand western

concepts and ideas and capable interacting in both languages. At the same time, the previous exposure of the Chinese language

during the ECC and Elementary grades provides a strong foundation of identity and thinking that remains formalized permanent

lying the child’s brain. Essentially, the child becomes bilingual and multicultural in their approach to thinking and problem

solving.

A second reason for beginning a full Western academic course of study in grade 6 is the emphasis on creativity, individualism,

problem solving and science that are a major part of this type of schooling. Students in the middle grades in a Western school

are exposed to greater intellectual challenges in thinking which goes much further in developing their minds for critical

study. This development has been proven to help students develop greater curiosity and self-expression as well as be more adept

at more rigorous forms of academic development in high school and at the university level. A major difference between

traditional Chinese schooling and Western schooling is the focus on less memorization and greater problem solving and critical

thinking. This major aspect is a hallmark of Western study and should been important part of a child’s early

development. Students who are exposed to this form of thinking, in place of excessive memorization, are found to be much

more capable of engaging in higher level thinking and academic work.

Children who learn to think both academically and socially in English at an earlier age are developed for more successful long-

term Western academic studies. These students have a decisive advantage over their peers who only begin this form of study in

the later grades. Chinese students who begin learning Western curriculum beginning in grade 9 are hampered by their lack of

critical development during the middle grades and their lack of exposure to critical thinking and problem solving. Their brains

and academic abilities by grade 9 have already been set to process the world around them how they were developed during the

middle grades. The result is a lack in the much needed critical thinking component. Western academic concepts and the English

language then become more difficult to master as the student becomes older and one form of thinking becomes formalized in the

brain.

This is why we believe that students should begin a full course of Western academic studies in grade 6. The end result is a

student who is better prepared for international study and academic competition.

Events Review-Spring Extravaganza

CDES Spring Extravaganza was held on April 21th, the focus of this activity, in addition to promoting public welfare and

environmental protection, is mainly about promoting reading. Students and families plan and execute their own projects.

The money raised from this event has already been used to purchase more books for our students. We hope that CDES student

will be encouraged to love and enjoy reading.

Important Dates

2017.05.11

Parenting Seminar

2017.05.18

Bilingual Education Seminar

2017.05.30

Dragon Boat Festival

2017.06.01

Celebrate Children's Day

2017.06.02

Mother's Tea Time

2017.06.05-09

CDES Spirit Week

2017.06.09

CDES Dad's Lunch