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Closing Down

Picture caption: "Sorry, we are closed."  Uploaded by Zenith86 to Wikimedia Commons on 24 September 2017 Released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
By Clarence Thompson
To those who have been following the progress of the Flying University Project, …
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Life Is A Word Problem

By Clarence Thompson

We have reached an interesting juncture in our teaching.  Our most advanced students have become both comfortable and competent in performing the four basic operations on single and multiple-digit numbers, so we have been giving them real-world word problems to solve.  This mo…
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Multiple-Digit Math Fun

By Clarence Thompson
One of our last sessions before the winter break consisted of teaching multiple-digit operations to some of our kids.  We were pleased to see that kids as young as six are perfectly capable of grasping multiple-digit addition without carrying, and that kids as young as eight a…
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Book 4 - Elementary School Math for a Flying University

By Clarence Thompson

I am pleased to announce that we now have Book 4 of our Elementary School Math series online.  It can be found under our "Math Resources" page on this site.  We will probably make a few minor modifications to the book over the next week, mainly consisting of adding s…
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The Viva Voce Demonstration of Student Learning

A fifth grade student in our North Portland group demonstrates how to compute the average (arithmetic mean) of a set of numbers

By Clarence Thompson

Those who have followed our work so far have probably noticed the prominent role that the video recording of student performance has played in our tea…
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Conceptualizing Rounding and Estimating

By Clarence Thompson
In our North Portland teaching group, some of our older kids have advanced beyond the written materials we have published to date, so we are scrambling a bit to provide them with materials appropriate to their age level and to the topics to which they are being exposed in scho…
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Teachers' and Textbook Writers' Meeting - November 2018

Some of our Fall 2018 kids demonstrate single- and multiple-digit addition.
By Clarence Thompson
Our teachers' and textbook writers' group had a productive meeting today.  Book 4 of our Elementary School Math series is progressing nicely, but is not quite ready yet to take out of the oven. …
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So...What Is A Parallel Institution, Anyway?

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Wikimedia Commons, by Fuzheado (Andrew Lih).  Released Under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license
By Clarence Thompson

I thought I'd provide a bit more clarification regarding the …
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Word Problems for Young Adults - Book 4

Climate March 1085 - Sign, Wikimedia Commons, Edward Kimmel, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
By Clarence Thompson
This post concludes our preview of word problems from our upcoming Book 4 of the Elementary School Math for a Flying University series.  It…
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More Word Problems: The State Fair and the Shoe Company

Child Enjoys The View Through the Lens of a Binocular, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
By Clarence Thompson
Below are two word problems written by my friend Craig Haynes for the upcoming Book 4 of our Elementary School Math series.  When you try to solve them, please remember the four problem-sol…
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Word Problem Preview: Sophie's Bicycle Ride

Japanese keikaisha, Bridgestone Message Men's Type. Image created by Imoni, licensed underCreative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

By Clarence Thompson
Here is another word problem for adventurous kids and grown-ups to chew on.  To solve i…
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150 Pounds of Garlic

Herb Garden, Kline Creek Farm, by Erika Smith.  Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons
By Clarence Thompson
I have been very busy for the last two months with community organizing.  The last three weeks have been especially interested as I am taking an online class related to creating social moveme…
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