90% of staff admit to having to provide "more support" for students suffering from mental illness over the past 2 years...  Although a range of factors can affect our young people, we have to admit that much of the anxiety they face is a result of stress at school and the pressure to succeed.

​Yes, we want our students to succeed and do their best but not to the point that they are self-harming, or worse. We can do some simple things as teachers to take some of that pressure off and start recognising students for their growth mindset attitude and positive character rather than just their grades. Here is an idea that you easily implement straight away!
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​You want your students to be recognised for their positive mindset, their effort, their resilience, their problem solving skills and support of other students - not just the grades they get. One effective way you can do that is with these growth mindset table tents! 

​The idea is simple: you hand them out to your students to proudly display on their desk when you recognise they are displaying a growth mindset quality, which will motivate them and build up their confidence and self esteem too! You can even let other students award them to one another when they observe demonstrations of a growth mindset to help build camaraderie and a positive classroom community!

These are quick and easy to make: simply print and fold! You can print them onto card stock for more longevity or shrink them down before printing to make them smaller to save paper. There are 2 options included: 20 pages with 2 different tents on a page, or 40 pages with 2 versions of the same tent on each page. This just makes it more convenient for you to print as many as you need for your classroom. Although there are 40 great designs and sayings to choose from, you may want to just focus on one growth mindset strategy at a time such as "problem solving" so then you can print a few pages of the problem solving tents for example!

Finally, let's talk design! Let's be real, sometimes the resources you download often have similar illustrations on them and one resource can quickly blend into another. I wanted to ensure that these table tents would turn heads in your classroom and be really special! So, you'll notice that they have a unique watercolor design with illustrations that have been created by me specifically for this resource - so you're guaranteed to be completely unique!

​​I hope you like this idea and try it out in your classroom! If you want to download the table tent seen below to see how it works, you can get it right here for FREE! (This cactus one is my personal favourite! 😉) 

If you want to learn more, check out this short preview:

If you want to get all 40 designs then you can download them here from TpT (USD) or here from TRF (GBP)!

Do you currently use stations in your classroom? I have started to use them more over the past couple of years and am loving the collaboration and movement that the students are experiencing, but I have just been laying resources out on the desk and it was bothering me that it wasn't immediately obvious where each station was! Hence for this school year I have upgraded my system and I've made these adorable station signs! I'm going to share with you how I made them as well as some suggestions for other ways you can use these signs in your lessons too!​

​First of all let's talk about how you can make your own! You can get the popular Tolsby frames from IKEA. (Or if you're more like me and prefer a home delivery, hehe, you can find them on Amazon too!) These affiliate links take you straight to the frames: 
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• Click here for USA Amazon Tolsby Frames
• ​Click here for UK Amazon Tolsby Frames

They're great as they are however the colours are a bit limited (my IKEA only had white ones) so I chose to decorate my mine to jazz them up a bit and suit my classroom style. Keep reading to learn how you can do these too!

​I found this lovely thin washi tape on Amazon and I totally fell in love with them! Look how pretty they are:

They are so gorgeous and actually come with 10 in a pack! If you want to get hold of these too then here are the Amazon affiliate links for you:
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• ​Click here for Amazon USA thin rainbow washi tape
• ​Click here for Amazon UK thin rainbow washi tape

​4) Then once you're done decorating, you can put whatever signs you like in the frames! I have chosen to have one side which has the station numbers that I will probably keep at all times, and on the other I am free to swap around depending on the lesson I am teaching! Here are some ideas you could use for your lessons:

So aside from using these frames to identify station or group numbers, you could also use them to:

• ​State the lesson's learning objective
• Identify keywords for the lesson
• Show the names of the members in each group
• Provide a clear to do list for the lesson
• Give extension work or support for differentiation
• Explain an exit ticket task for students to summarise their learning

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​5) If you want some ready made signs, you can download these station signs here. The text is fully editable and you will get 5 different watercolour themes in 6 different colours with options for station / group names / numbers for one side and anything else you want to add on the other!

If you're making an effort to embrace technology in your classroom, I applaud you! It is not an easy transition to make, so if you don't know where to start and you're feeling overwhelmed then I suggest you get started with exit tickets! They're quick, easy and a great way of assessing your students' understanding at the end of a lesson. Here are 4 ideas for digital ways you can end your lesson:

1) Create an exit ticket on Google Slides for students to complete at the end of the lesson. ​If you get your students to submit their exit ticket via Google Classroom, then you can dismiss them as you receive their exit tickets, live! If you want to get even fancier, you can use a QR code and display it on screen or on a poster for students to scan with their smart phone and complete! If you want to learn how to make your own exit tickets on Google Slides, you can check out this video e-course where I share step by step videos of how to do it. Or if you want to save yourself the time and bother of making them yourself, you can download these 9 ready made exit tickets here!

2) Use just one resource for the whole class such as this interactive exit ticket activities resource. The way this works is a student comes up and taps a number. Each number is connected to an exit activity. This can be done collectively as a class or you could add the file to Google Classroom or link to a QR code, and have students complete a task individually / pairs / groups. I teach you how you can make your own here or you can buy the ready made interactive activities here:

3) If you want a quick and simple snapshot of your students' understanding that can be viewed as a graph or exported into Google Sheets document (just like Excel) which can analyse their responses, when you might want to consider finishing the lesson with some set questions using Google Forms like these:

4) Finally, this one might need more than a few minutes, but you could end the lesson with a class quiz such as Kahoot! Students just need access to a computer or smartphone which they can then use to answer the questions as they appear on your screen. You won't get individual feedback (aside from the top 3 ranked) but it is handy for general understanding as you see graphs for each question showing how many students selected which answer, plus it's bags of fun!

If you're interested in learning more about how you can create your own digital teaching resources and learning more about Google Classroom and Google Slides etc, then you're welcome to join this video e-course which guides you through every step!