What can yo-yos tell us about making learning that matters?
I Recently I was asked to design a session to stimulate people's thinking about growth mindset and help them to strengthen theirs. Without going into the whole session design, I wanted to highlight how and why yo-yos played a starring role.
Drawing on Carol Dweck's work, I got everyone on the same page about some basic concepts in the introductory learning arch, reminding them of the "quiz" they had done as part of the pre-work. This was a bit of a pulse check inviting people to reflect on how often they had thought/said to themselves a series of statements in the previous month. All of the statements were based on the underlying fixed mindset belief that intelligence is static.
There were a few comments about how it wasn't easy to remember their thoughts but the concept of fixed mindset thoughts remained just that, a distant concept. I then set the next learning arch by inviting the participants to choose a yo-yo from our collection and over the next 2 minutes to create a trick with their yo-yo that they would perform for the group. They were asked to do this in silence so that they could "turn the volume up" on their self-talk. Some people's "self-talk" couldn't be contained and was shared spontaneously with the group. "I can't do this". "I've never been good at this". "Mine's not working, I need a new one" (one person changed their yo-yo 4 times ;).
After 2 minutes, the participants were informed that they didn't have to show their trick to the group and a wave of relief spread throughout the room. To land this learning arch though, I asked them to share what their self-talk was during those 2 minutes of working with the yo-yo. And suddenly the concept of fixed mindset thoughts became a lot more real as people shared the thoughts that were racing through their heads as they took on the unexpected, serious play challenge of creating a trick with a yo-yo. This physical experience helped the learners to embody the theory of "turning up the volume on their fixed mindset thoughts", which is one of the first recommended steps to strengthen one's growth mindset. The yo-yos also helped them to remember other situations which triggered them down a fixed mindset path of behaviours. The final learning arches of the session invited the participants to work through the rest of the strengthening steps and apply them to a real-life learning goal they have.
The yo-yos played a starring role in this session, because those 2 minutes were crucial to "jolt" the participants out of their comfort zones and turn something "fluffy" and intangible like thoughts and mindset into something more real and tangible that they could work with and apply. The opportunity to have a physical experience, which allowed them to play directly with the content, was key to achieving the learning outcomes. And it only took 2 minutes!
Learning makers out there, what small but impactful experiential learning opportunities have you offered your learners lately? I'd love to hear your examples.
