1- Growth Mindset is explained as a person who loves an academic challenge. They thrive for the opportunity to push themselves and allow their abilities to expand or get better. When an error is made, they process it, learn from it, and then correct it. Scientific research was done on the amount of brain activity when an error is made and it showed that people with a Growth Mindset “their brain was on fire”(Dweck), they loved the challenge.

Fixed Mindset is explained as a person who hates an academic challenge. When they were offered the opportunity to challenge and push themselves, they responded negatively to it. Their “intelligence was up for judgment and they failed”(Dweck). When the research was conducted on someone with a Fixed Mindset, it showed that there was barely any brain activity and they ran away from their errors instead of learning from them.

2- a. Praise Wisely. “Not praising intelligence or talent, that has failed, but praising the process the kids engage in”(Dweck). Don’t just praise the answer, or their ability to finish the fastest or who is smarter, etc., but instead praise their focus, their perseverance, their engagement.

b. Reward Effort. Unlike other math games, which only give points on the correct answers, Dweck created a game where kids receive points on their processes and strategy skills and their perseverance on hard problems. “We got more effort, more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time”(Dweck).

c. Dweck says that they told children that “when they push out of their comfort zones, to learn something new or difficult, the neurons in their brains make new and stronger connections and that over time they can get smarter”(Dweck.) After they told them this the kids who heard this had huge improvements on their overall school grades, and the ones who did not had declines on their grades. 

I think the first two answers or solutions are effective. I understand rewarding a kid for trying but I also think you should reward a kid for getting the answer correct. I know math is hard for some people and it is effective to recognize the effort that they have put in, but if someone finds math easier than the others, they too should be rewarded. But the idea of telling a kid that everytime they push themselves out of their comfort zone they can get smarter, kind of irks me. I think telling a child this could really backfire and cause other mental issues. A child should be pushed to struggle and they should be rewarded when they figure it out or their efforts should be acknowledged, but a kid should not be told that when they push themselves they become smarter because not every kid is comfortable enough to push themselves, then they will have other issues because they will feel as though they are not as smart as the other kids.

3- Dweck believes that different mindsets on intelligence and learning can be changed. She says that you can change how a kid views learning and struggling and pushing themselves outside their comfort zones by praising them. But not praising them when they succeed, but praising the amount of effort and time and different strategies. I think that her model is fine and that if you can change how a kid views a hard math problem, instead of giving up but persevering and trying their best, then I think that would be very beneficial to how they deal with other issues that exceed the classroom. 

4- In fifth grade we used to get five minutes to solve as many problems on a sixty problem sheet as we could. If we correctly solved them all, we could move on to the next level during the next ‘five minute math time.’ When I got to the fifth level, I could not finish two problems in five minutes. I shrugged it off and waited for the next time. A week later and I had only made it to the fourth problem. After about two weeks I was on the seventh problem and I had just about given up. I thought it would be useless to even try anymore so during the next five minute math time, I drew flowers all over my sixty math problems, and continued to do so for about four days. When some other kids started to move past the level I was on, I looked around for others who were either on the sheet before me, or the same one and I felt better about myself. My teacher ended up catching on to what I was doing and he helped me work through the problems during a study period. After that I realized it was probably better to try to solve them, then ignore it all together.