Author: admin

You can watch this video at any time. Use the textbox below to list any words you do not know or questions you have. (You may want to have a piece of paper out, so you can write down questions you have.)

Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me. If you ever want to reach out, please email me at mbriscoe@myedme.com.

Here are links to the materials a current student is using to explore Units 0, 1 and 2. She has high math anxiety so we are discussing each topic so she feels comfortable that she is prepared. The two biggest math issues are: 1) no understanding of part-whole relationships from a math sense; 2) no conceptual understanding of proportions.

Here are links to those pages:

• Unit 0 teaching, practice and support
• Unit 1 teaching, practice and support
• Unit 2 teaching, practice and support

More Advance Topics

ADVANCE is about being ready for junior-level courses as well so here are some resources we are using for advance math topics:

• Calculus
• Calculus support for focusing on rate of change

Reading Example: Autobiography of Frederick Douglass

STEM from Mason/edMe

This event was Wednesday, 12/4. We have a partnership with the American Society of Naval Engineers to design their STEAM outreach and that is what is depicted by the boy that steals the show in this ABC7 piece:

https://wjla.com/features/spotlight-on-education/fairfax-county-george-mason

Outreach Opportunities

https://vimeopro.com/gmutv/stem

This is the most recent video we took inside the store.

Fighting Superbugs

1. Contribute – help add to
2. Antibiotics – medicine that kills bacteria (small things that make you sick)
3. Superbugs – dangerous new diseases

Student scientist, Mosufa, became independent professionally and personally at Mason.

Project: Paint Sprayer to Stop Corrosion

• Hull – the bottom of the boat that touches the water
• Telemetry – sensors that measure location
• Corrosion – rust that weakens metal (“salt water is corrosive”)
• XYZ position – Math used to describe a point in three-dimensional space
• Yaw, pitch, roll – Three measurements used by naval engineers

Mason scientists use biology to measure things in the brain that are hard to easily see.

Project: Safely moving concrete

• Cure – Concrete becomes harder as water evaporates from wet cement
• Substitute – Replace one thing with another

Vulcan engineers make designs safe for everyone often using parts they design themselves.

Welcome to the first Saturday School! Scroll down to find your fun. You will see some fun for other people, but be sure to start with the thing you find most fun!!

Flight School – Paper Airplane Style

You might have made paper airplanes before, but not like this!

Things you need:

• Paper (obviously!!)
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Hard work
• Using science

Step 1. Fold your paper airplane. Try 2 of these 3 ways:

1. Read the instructions
2. Use these pictures from MIT
3. Watch the origami video

While you build: Explore videos on our Flight page

Step 2. Test & Record data!

You can make your own table or print this one.

You are the scientist! Think about what variables you want to look at. Do you want to use different paper

Step 3. Use your data to make the best final design.

Share your data (and a picture of your plane if possible). Show off your STEAM success!

Dec 7 – “A date that will live in infamy”

“Infamy” means famous for a bad reason. In 1941, U.S. president said that quote because Japan attacked Hawaii. Many people died that Sunday, and then the U.S. joined World War II.

You can see the actual video of President Roosevelt here. (This is a primary source because it is the actual information from the time.)

This CBS News story explains the Pearl Harbor attack and President Roosevelt’s speech.

Vocab you will hear:

• hastily – very fast
• transition – change from one thing to another thing
• advisors – people that give advice
• processing information – learning things
• casualties – deaths
• dictate – spoke to someone
• deliberately – on purpose
• paralyzed – cannot move legs (or arms)

Question: Do you think it was good this speech was six and a half minutes? Why or why not?

This video from Crash Course covers World War II. We start it right before John Green describes the Pearl Harbor attack.

Your turn to study the history! Everyday someone tells you what to write. You choose today! You could write about:

• What led to the attack on Pearl Harbor?
• What events happened on December 7, 1941?
• What happened after the attack on Pearl Harbor?

We found some great sources to help you gather facts:

• The Naval History and Heritage site has details about many aspects of the attack: https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1941/pearl-harbor.html
• The Park Service at Pearl Harbor has information on the people, places and events: https://www.nps.gov/valr/learn/historyculture/index.htm
• The U.S. Navy wrote many articles about the attack. The page was at http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm, but now is saved at: https://web.archive.org/web/20100818203925/http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm
• Need something easier to read? National Geographic Kids has an article with more facts: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/pearl-harbor/

Share your pre-writing here. (If you want feedback, create an account and we can email you feedback quickly!)

Share your first draft here.

If you get time to finish your draft, you can always save it here.

Some research of ours – Try it out!

Have some math energy? Try out these problems we are researching.

• Playing Music questions
• Running Races questions

Email us if you have any questions, edMe@myedme.com.

You deal with whole numbers and money every day so we suggest starting with Unit 2 Practice first if these initial practices seem difficult. You memorized many rules about adding and subtracting fractions, and we are quickly going to more “rules” into common sense.

“Comparing apples and oranges” is a common phrase stating you cannot compare 2 things that are not alike. Young children start by adding 2 apples and 3 apples to find there are 5 apples. Similarly, you could add 2 orange wedges and 3 orange wedges to get 5 orange wedges. If both oranges had 8 total wedges then you may have just added 2 eighths and 3 eighths.

The biggest mistake to avoid

When we add and subtract, we have to add the same thing. Consider adding a half and a quarter.

The mistake is to add 1 half and 1 fourth and get 2 sixths. When you see it in words, hopefully it makes this mistake more obvious. You can also think about money: half a dollar is $0.50 or two quarters. So, when you add one half and one quarter it equals three quarters ($0.75).

We started with the big idea that is easy to make mistakes so that you could practice with this in mind. We really like this simulator so you can get used to building fractions and mixed numbers with different denominators.

In pizza terms, you can remember that one quarter of a pizza plus one half of a pizza is still three quarters of a pizza. This video will give you another resource for thinking about adding fractions.

Multiplying Fractions

This video explains how to multiply fractions. (You may want to start a “cheat sheet” with an example of each operation so you can become fast and accurate with these fraction calculations.)

Progress Check

Practice: This worksheet has subtraction of whole numbers, fractions and decimals. Click here when you are ready to check your answers.

Many people looking at NOVA find decimals more familiar than fractions because they work with money every day. If this sounds right to you, use this foundational fact to convert fractions into decimals to help you play to your strengths.

This interactive shows how to multiply decimals. (You can use it to add fractions up to 3.0, too!)

How to Multiply and Divide with Decimals

Converting between fractions, decimals and percents

We have talked a lot about fractions, decimals and numbers. Those core ideas will help you see how they are related. You know that 1/2 = 0.5 = 50%. You can divide 1 / 2 to find that the answer is 0.5 and you know that if something is 50% off, then it costs 1/2 as much. These two videos are 3-minutes long and give you the quick deep dive on how to convert between any numbers.

The big idea is that these type of numbers can represent similar numbers. The key to convert from fractions to other numbers is to divide the top number by the bottom number. Decimals and percents are very closely related. The only percents that may be surprising to you are fractions greater than 100%. If a bank account with $50 increases by 120%, then the increase is $50 x 1.2 = $60.

Word Problems

The new word problem idea is to make sure you use the correct units in your answer. In the actual question, underline the unit if you think you may forget it. Sometimes a word problem will give you all the measurements in inches and then ask for the answer in feet. You will need to remember to convert inches to feet. You may need to convert the answer after you calculate it (Example 1) or after you calculate it (Example 2). Here’s an example:

• Example 1. A tile is 40 centimeters long and 10 centimeters tall. What is the area of the tile in square meters?
• Example 2. Pauley has 24 toy cars end-to-end on a shelf. Each car is 3 inches long. How long must the shelf be?

What’s great about these types of word problems is that we are using real-life to understand fractions and decimals so the word problems may even be easier.

By the way, Example 1 is answer 0.4 meters x 0.1 meters = 0.04 square meters. For example 2, the cars cover 24×3 inches = 72 inches, which is 72/12 = 6 feet.

You can leave comments below if you have questions!

Some of this may be rusty, but this help will refresh these ideas. We strongly suggest doodling number lines for a few days. Everyone needs to doodle, you need to practice, clearly doodling a few number lines will help you see the structure in counting by 2s and 5s.

These rewarding dings will help you practice multiplication and division. We particularly love the “Factor” game because it emphasizes how multiplication and division are related.

If it’s possible, practice the above tool until you can quickly and accurately remember the facts up to 10×10.

This two-digit multiplication tool will help you see why we “carry tens” and how you can solve any multi-digit multiplication.

One last thing. averages help us fine the middle of numbers. We add up all the values and divide by the number of values. The average will always be in the middle (it’s easy to miscount the number of values). Here’s a classic 3-minute or less video about finding mean (which is the average), median and mode.

We love finding the ways to make education engaging. Even during your next party! Let us know a few details and we will follow up with you shortly!

For a limited time, we are charging $50/hour for up to 20 children. We look forward to helping you maximize your next adventurous party!