Mr. McKeague's Math TV

Charles P. "Pat" McKeague is owner of MathTV.com. He's a mathematician (with a B.A. and M.S. in the field), college instructor, published author of math textbooks (covering everything from basic mathematics to trigonometry) and a speaker at mathematics conferences in California and nationwide.

He's also an excellent teacher who provides clear instructions on how to solve math problems as well as bits of life philosophy, like: Do something for the person you will be 5 years from now.

His website, MathTV.com, doesn't even require you to register -- you can start viewing the instructional videos (given by Mr. McKeague and student instructors) right away, or print out textbooks and practice tests.

Take a moment to explore the site in order to reap full benefits. If you need help with long division, for example, you click on Basic Mathematics, then Whole Numbers, then Dividing. Once you get there, you can choose which long division problem you'd like to see solved: if you want to start with a one-digit divisor, try 595/7; for a two-digit divisor, there's 9,380/35. You may prefer one instructor's style to another: I found Katrina a much more thorough teacher than Aaron, although Aaron is fine for a quick review.

If you wish to factor rational expressions to their simplest forms, look under the Algebra topic heading. Radians and degrees are found under Trigonometry, with perimeters, parallelograms and congruent triangles all found under Geometry.

Tip: full screen view makes the videos easier to see and you just press your ESC key to return to Normal Screen.






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Spelling It Right

Maybe good spelling doesn't seem to be all that exciting or fun, but sometimes that's because too much guessing goes on.

Unlike spelling, math is an exact science: you learn the rules and apply them, you get the right answer. This makes it more like a game or competition. (Review multiplication tables by bingo and you non-believers will see how math can become fun).

When kids have to guess at spelling, they don't "win" when they get something right. They just get lucky--there's no "building blocks" going on. English teacher, Roger Smith, thinks that educated guesses are a step in the right direction.

For example, at his site Spelling It Right: Learn How to Spell Confidently, he gives weak spellers a fighting chance when it comes to spelling words with iffy vowels.

When you say words like "relative" or "information", the middle vowels aren't clearly stressed which can make spelling those words correctly a bit tricky. Mr. Smith has a trick up his sleeve that can help: think of another word from the same root, and maybe you can figure it out.

With "relative", he shows the word "relation".

With "information", he shows the word "inform".

Once he's shown you how, he gives you an exercise to complete:

Here's the root word: define. Complete this word: def_nition
Here's the root word: sedate. Complete this word: sed_tive
Heres' the root word: explore. Complete this word: expl_ration

and so on.

It's not just how to spell difficult or tricky vowel sounds -- the free worksheets cover syllables, consonant blends, prefixes, suffixes and word endings. Mr. Smith even goes into subject-specific words taken from science, geography and maths where he shows how the word is spelled and what the difficult bits might be.

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