Praising Effort

Megan — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:17:36 +0000

Last month, David and I had the privilege of presenting a workshop on music and mastery motivation at the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) national conference in Dallas. David played a number of songs from his new CD, Tough Stuff, and I shared some research on mastery motivation.

The way that parents and teachers communicate to a child around effort can be critical to their motivation to mastery. One might believe they are being very supportive when they say, “Look how fast you did that puzzle! You’re so smart.” However, this pattern is setting the child up for a performance orientation. When the child encounters a difficult task that requires effort, they may feel that they’re not smart. To promote mastery motivation, instead say, “I really like how hard you worked on that. You should be so proud.”

Mastery motivation is something we work on every day at our Children, Inc. centers, as it is so important to elementary school success. The key message to teachers and parents is to remember to praise effort not intelligence. Research has shown that praising intelligence actually harms motivation and importance. If we want our children to be persistent on task and to seek out challenging problems, we must be consistent in our praising of effort.

Tom Lottman

Project Director

Growing Sound

Welcome to Growing Sound

Megan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:15:40 +0000

Welcome to “Growing Sound: Ready for School- Ready for Life”. The niche or idea behind Growing Sound is to take key insights from child development and neuroscience research and convey them to parents and teachers in a fun way that effectively gives them new tools for building social, emotional, language and cognitive skills in young children.

Breakthroughs in brain development research have underscored the importance of early childhood experiences in the actual architecture of brain pathways. And recent research has confirmed music as an important teaching tool.

David Kisor’s unique approach to children’s musical compositions avoids the often used “dumbing down” of children’s music to the point that adults have difficulty tolerating hearing them over and over. David’s music has a richness and variety which appeals to both children and adults. His mastery and use of diverse musical instruments such as the Tibetan Singing Bowl and the Native American flute provide a new perspective to children’s music.

At Growing Sound we offer unique musical tools inspired by research findings to help you make your child ready for school and ready for life. We will be constantly adding new songs, books, games and other parent support products so that we hope it becomes a favorite site that you’ll return to often.

In the Growing Sound blog you’ll find regular postings from several bloggers:

I will report the latest findings from child development research and how we are integrating them into our services and parenting resources.
David Kisor will share details about songs he is writing and other new emerging projects.
Amy Schardein, a librarian will talk about how she uses the songs in her specialty of early childhood and as a parent of two young children.
Sharon Boh an experienced early childhood teacher, will relate classroom sucess stories and ideas related to the songs from Growing Sound.

We also heartily invite blogs from parents and teachers who have used Growing Sound products in the home and in the classroom. Send your blogs to info@childreninc.org.

Tom Lottman

Project Director

Growing Sound

Children Inc. | Growing Sound » Early Brain Research

Praising Effort

Welcome to Growing Sound