GROWTH MINDSET POSTERS PDF: Perseverance Bulletin Board Ideas (including free growth mindset posters)

Printable Growth Mindset Posters PDF UPDATE September 04, 2020

Back to school with Covid-19 is a tough challenge.

Perseverance quotes can be fun and motivational but we also need to show our students HOW to succeed.

How do we respond to unpredictable challenges like Covid-19, ongoing challenges like systemic racism, or academic challenges that we have at school?

We need to give strategies to our students to encourage a growth mindset…

Yes, start with the pep talk about how other people have succeeded and so can you.

And then show them “HOW” to succeed.

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but do your printable posters show students HOW to keep going when things get tough?

And that’s key. It’s easy to say “Don’t give up” or “Winners don’t quit…”

Okay. So if I need to quit right now, then what? I’m a loser?

(No, it means you’re not there, yet. But with strategies, effort, optimization, and tinkering, you’ll be able to achieve your goals. We need more than just inspirational quotes on motivational posters. We need to show students HOW to survive and thrive!)

It’s also easy to add a bunch of growth mindset quotes like “just add yet to the end of the sentence” or “mindset is more important than ability”… but then what?

The missing piece of the puzzle to a perseverance bulletin board is to encourage students by giving them specific strategies on HOW to not give up.

This means

1. explicitly teaching students about a Growth Mindset, but also
2. teach students strategies to use as we take things one day at a time…

We need to explicitly teach our students strategies to overcome obstacles.

Your classroom decor looks great. Now let’s add some resources to give students suggestions on what they can try when they get stuck.

We can do this by putting students into a Growth Mindset (with this one secret phrase) and then using a strategy based skills approach to build character and help them overcome academic and life challenges.

• Back to school was a great time to show students how to persevere and overcome difficult moments.
• Now is the second best time to introduce a growth mindset.
• The posters (and handouts) in this set are great as a stand alone lesson, but you might also want to check out our character education lesson plans which include a student mindset survey, as well as an activity to allow students to practice perseverance strategies.

Conversations about Growth Mindset sometimes can happen a lot more in elementary and middle school than in high school. But, the reality is that growth mindset is about focusing on the process. Believe it or not, this is still important in high school and life in general. It’s not just a middle school thing!

Growth and Fixed Mindset Posters (PDF) should SHOW students HOW to develop a Growth Mindset

Teachers love finding perseverance bulletin board ideas or putting up Growth Mindset Posters (PDF) up on the classroom walls to help inspire students to persevere and not give up!

Let’s be honest. Sometimes, school is tough.

How often do you hear your students say,

“I tried, it didn’t work. I give up!”

Typical Frustrated Student

One way to help students to teach them the difference between a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset in your classroom. Tell your students that research shows we can choose to shift our mindset just by asking a few questions or phrasing our feedback differently.

• A Fixed Mindset is where we think our abilities are innate – we were born that way. Some people are smart, and some aren’t, and that’s just the way it is.
• A Growth Mindset is one where we think of our abilities as fluid and malleable. With work and effort and by applying strategies, we can become better or change our abilities.

In fact, one simple strategy of adding the word “yet” to the end of a negative sentence can help us to start to challenge our attitudes.

Instead of saying,

“I can’t do this,”

Student with a FIXED MINDSET

try saying,

“I can’t do this… yet“

Student with a GROWTH MINDSET

Adding the word, “yet” is a great first step to getting out of a fixed mindset and thinking you’re not smart enough to do this. Yet means we haven’t got that skill right now, but we could one day.

Ok. Now what?

No, seriously. How do we show students how to pick ourselves up and keep going when the going gets tough

Encourage a growth mindset in your classroom!

Providing concrete strategies on your bulletin board display can help your class to become more self-sufficient and overcome learned helplessness. Sometimes students want to get better, but they get stuck.

• Here is a set of Perseverance Bulletin Board Ideas with 8 common classroom obstacles and 40 strategies to overcome obstacles.
• The Growth Mindset Bulletin Board SET includes the posters themselves, as well as mini versions of the posters in a Growth Mindset Handouts format so that your students can keep a copy in their binders.

FREE Printable Growth Mindset Posters (PDF):

Here’s a free little taste of our growth mindset posters which includes:

• 2 common classroom obstacles
• 8 strategies to overcome these obstacles

SAVE TIME: Instead of saving the images below one-by-one, why not just download the FREE growth mindset posters PDF by clicking here. Your motivational posters bulletin board just got a whole lot better!

OBSTACLE #3

I got distracted.

Set a time to do it

Schedule time to do it or it won’t get done.

You’ll forget, or you’ll end up doing something else more fun. Try doing it at the same time so it becomes a routine.

Make it a habit

We are what we do repeatedly. The more we do something, the easier it becomes.

Figure out what you want to do, and find a strategy to help you do it over and over again until it becomes second nature.

Write it down

It’s hard to remember everything. Sometimes writing things down makes it easier to handle and remember, especially if you have an organized system like a notebook or agenda.

(Psst. What about using your phone to type it down? Or is that too much of a distraction?)

Avoid Friends

FRIENDS ARE GREAT. Except when they slow you down and distract you from getting things done.

Play when it’s time to play. Work when it’s time to work. Sometimes, this means not working with your bestie or BFF.

OBSTACLE #6

I tried, but it didn’t work.

I give up.

Chunk it out

Make a hard task easier by breaking it into smaller pieces and doing one thing at a time.

• What do you need to do first?
• Can you start with the easiest task first?
• Can you start with a fun part first?

Try something new

Think about something you really like that used to be new. Today, it’s probably comfortable and familiar, but when you first started, it was probably scary.

Sometimes the unknown can be scary. But, remember: new things are only new once. 

Re-Start

TRY AGAIN: The first time you try something, it may not work the way you want it to. Learn from your mistakes and try again. Keep trying until you figure it out.

You can click that restart button as often as you like! 

Add the word “yet”

Instead of saying “I can’t do this”, say, “I can’t do this … yet!”

A small word can make a big change in attitude. It gets your brain wondering about how could you do it (instead of getting stuck complaining about how you can’t…) 

… which includes all of the obstacles and strategies in the Growth Mindset Posters FREE set and more. Your classroom decor and motivational posters bulletin board display just got better!

The full set includes a total of:

• 8 common classroom obstacles
• 40 strategies to overcome obstacles.

• Full colour and “Black and White friendly” PDF posters of the obstacles & strategies
• Student Handout PDF versions of the posters with 4 posters per slide
• Google Slideshow and Microsoft Powerpoint versions of the slideshows to show your class
• You can edit the posters and handouts by modifying the Google Slideshow or Powerpoint files. This way, you can customize the strategies for your classroom needs.
• A sample lesson plan on how to introduce these strategies to your students.

The full download is also available in FRENCH: (Version Française)

NOTE: We don’t have any inspirational quotes in this zipped file.

Instead, what we focused on are common classroom obstacles and strategies for students to try. These printable growth mindset posters are one way to reinforce the growth mindset lessons that we embed into our day-to-day teaching for our students.

The goal is to encourage a growth mindset by explicitly teaching strategies.

• If we stop at simply explaining the difference between growth and fixed mindsets, we’re missing half of the story.
• If we just tell them to add “yet” at the end of the sentence, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Here are our 21st century bulletin board ideas:

Students will get a chance to:

1. practice goal setting, overcome obstacles and achieve goals.
2. build a repertoire of strategies to help us overcome obstacles.
3. reinforce a Growth Mindset by recognizing that by applying strategies, they can learn, and become better.

Homeroom Teachers could use this in their classrooms to introduce character and growth mindsets.

School leaders (Principals, Admin, Division Leaders) could use this package in their schools to create a common language and exploration of growth mindset.

• School Learning Plans (SLPs) exploring “Growth Mindsets”
• Common Language, Common Learning Goals

Ultimately, this chapter is meant to kick off a year / lifetime of discussion, as opposed to being a one-off activity. We need to encourage a growth mindset throughout the school year, and not just at the beginning of school when everyone is fresh and excited!

If all classes start off with the same approach, then throughout the year, as teachers do different activities, you could still connect it back to concepts of growth mindset, and how to persevere.

Lots of schools like to put up a growth mindset bulletin board. Our set just happens to have strategies for students to try, instead of just inspirational quotes.

LESSON 1 – GOAL SETTING (15 min)

• Introduce goal settings & model thinking
• Student Think, Pair, Share their own goal

LESSON 2 – OBSTACLES to GOAL SETTING & STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME (50 minutes, the following week)

• Review goals from last week
• Pushing through the wall example
• Identify Obstacles – slideshow / package
• Identify Strategies to overcome obstacles – slideshow / package

LESSON 2 – PREP MATERIALS

• Photocopy a class set of a strategy package
  • Obstacle handout
  • Strategies to overcome obstacles handout.
• Slideshow
• (OPTIONAL) Put the growth mindset bulletin board set posters up in your room. (see photos at end for ideas.)

LESSON 3 and onwards

• Have continued conversations about which strategies work well, and
• which strategies we should eliminate from our bulletin board.
• Get students to try to refer to the bulletin board strategies as they get stuck doing other class work.

ALTERNATIVE TEACHING IDEAS:

1. Instead of showing all 40 strategies at once, break them into smaller groups and try reviewing some every week.
2. Give all 40 printable growth mindset posters to students (4 per page), and have them evaluate which strategies would be most effective against which obstacles. Recognize that many strategies are similar. Also, many strategies are effective to overcome multiple obstacles.
3. Put obstacle and strategy posters up in school hallways beside other inspirational posters and growth mindset posters. The idea is that a growth mindset is possible… and the strategies help you figure out how to do it.

Encourage a Growth Mindset in your classroom by giving character perseverance strategies that empower students. Your students need more than just motivational posters with cute pictures.

Here’s what you get in a pretty zipped file:

Common Classroom Obstacles 

• 8 pages
• Colour and “Black and White” friendly versions

Strategies to Overcome Obstacles 

• 40 pages
• Colour and “Black and White” friendly versions

Growth Mindset Worksheets for Students (PDF): Common Classroom Obstacles

• 3 pages  (4 strategies per page.)
• The last page has blank obstacles for students to write their own challenges
• Colour and “Black and White” friendly versions

Growth Mindset Worksheets for Students (PDF): Strategies to Overcome Obstacles

• 10 pages (4 strategies per page)
• The last page has blank obstacles for students to write their own challenges
• Colour and “Black and White” friendly versions

Powerpoint Slideshow (PPT)

• 56 Slides!
• Customizable Powerpoint PPT file so you can change the slideshow, posters, and handouts to fit your classroom needs.

Google Slideshow: 2 Google Slides links

• 56 Slides!
• Get a Google Slideshow link so you can present the slideshow as is (right away without any changes)
• Get a different Google Slideshow link to make a copy in your own Google Drive and modify the slideshow, posters, and handouts to fit your specific needs.

Lesson Plan (PDF)

• 2 lessons to introduce goal setting, and overcoming challenges
• 6 pages.

DOWNLOAD NOW from our TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS store 

• By the way, these Growth Mindset Printables go great with our 1 week of Character Education Lesson Plans
• If you haven’t heard about the one magic phrase that teachers should use, you should read this post about Growth Mindset lessons. (Obviously, there’s no one magic phrase, but it’s still worth a look. Guess what the phrase is before you click here…)
• We added a margin to all of the posters to make it easier to print. Download the updated version to build character and promote a growth mindset in your classroom! Decorate your classroom with more than inspirational quotes.