← The week

Monday, May 18 — Day 5

Week 2 begins. Same topics as last week. Different shape.

Quick honest review

You did good work last week. The notes you wrote are real evidence of that — for example on Wednesday's a-gcf-3 you wrote:

"for 9 i did 1, 3, and 9, like in the video i saw at the start of this morning! good thing i watched it"

That's exactly the move. You found a tool, you used it, you got the answer. That sentence is the whole game.

The one thing that didn't work was Friday. Three brand-new operations got dropped on you at once with no real teaching first. That wasn't fair to you. We're not doing that again. One new thing per day. The rest is review.

Today's deal

  • Time. 9:00 → 12:30, with two 15-minute breaks. That's 3 hours of work. We dropped one hour from last week, so we expect more focus per minute.
  • Today's only new thing. Fraction addition with different denominators (cross-denominator). You went 4/6 on this last Wednesday — let's get it to 6/6 today.
  • Everything else is review. GCF (you have this), LCM, periodic rows 1-2, wars 1-4, the early-Earth events.

Today's exam (22 questions)

  • 3 GCF + 2 LCM + 6 fraction addition (2 same-den + 4 cross-den)
  • 4 periodic table — rows 1-2
  • 4 wars — the early American set (1-4)
  • 3 evolution — Big Bang, Earth, first life

Adding fractions — the rule (one more time)

Three steps. Always the same three steps.

  1. Find a common denominator. Use LCM if they're different.
  2. Rewrite both fractions over that denominator. Multiply top and bottom of each fraction by the right number.
  3. Add the tops. Keep the bottom. Reduce.

Worked example: 2/3 + 1/4

  1. LCM(3, 4) = 12.
  2. 2/3 = 8/12. 1/4 = 3/12.
  3. 8 + 3 = 11. Answer: 11/12.

When the denominators are already the same, skip step 1: 1/5 + 3/5 = 4/5.

Practice before the exam

Do at least 15 fraction-addition problems before you start the exam. /fractions has a generator. We told you on Day 3 to do 20 — the same rule applies all week. Practice is the difference between 4/6 and 6/6.

For LCM, do a quick sanity loop: pick any two numbers under 20, list their multiples, find the smallest match. Five problems. Two minutes.

Help links

And a reminder

You can take version A or version B (or both — they're independent). Hit "Report a problem" if anything on the page is broken. The exam emails me your full results with explanations for every question, so you'll see exactly where each step went right or wrong tonight.

Checking your status…