When you're motivated, everything feels easy. But you're not always motivated, are you? No. And neither am I. So what can we do to stay motivated? Well, I think the first thing we need to do is really be proud of ourselves and our progress and just how far we've come. And I know you probably think I'm crazy, but hear me out. Even if all you did was enroll in essential education and log in to your virtual home room, that is a step in the right direction. Because to get there, you had to do some research. You had to call someone. You had to Google. You had to look into the testing options, the study options. All of these things take time. Right? It was an opportunity cost. You've spent time looking into this, researching this, and choosing the best option for you. That's something to be proud of. And as you continue this process and as you continue to make progress, and this goes for anyone, whether you've studied, you've taken practice tests, you've taken official tests, there will be obstacles. And that's normal. That's okay because reaching your goals takes time. It takes time. So be proud of where you are and then say, okay. What can I do to make this better, to make this more efficient, to have higher quality study time? How can I do that? Well, there's a few things that we can look at just to ensure that what you are doing and how you are studying is the most beneficial to you. The first thing we wanna do is, of course, look at what's working. What do we enjoy? What works for us? What makes us feel accomplished? And then we wanna look at what's not working. And sometimes this list might be a little bit longer than this one, and that's okay. That just means it needs to be reworked. So our list of what's not working could be what time I study. Right? Consider changing your study time. Are you a morning person who's always stuck studying late at night? That's probably not the most beneficial considering when your brain seems to be on the most. The next thing is to consider your study location. Right? Where are you studying? Do you have a quiet space where you can actually focus, take notes, replay lessons, or are you trying to study in loud and busy locations? Because, I mean, sometimes that's the only option we have. And if that is your only option, then we need to say, okay. How can I make this the most quality study time for me at this time of day? But finding a quiet place is always best. Consider how you study. Are you cramming in a bunch of information for hours and hours or are you studying only by listening to the lessons when really you're a visual learner and you need to be watching and maybe taking notes? Right? This all matters because the way that you learn and the way that you retain information makes for a better study session when those things can be applied. And lastly, just make sure that you're taking breaks to take care of yourself. There is nothing worse than trying to power through a study session when really the only thing in the back of your mind is, oh my gosh, I can't wait till this is over. Oh my gosh, what time is it? Oh my gosh, when's my next? We're not even thinking about studying. Right? We're just thinking about when this can end, and that's not beneficial either. At the end of the day, it is going to be quality over quantity, so if that means that you are only able to study in fifteen minute blocks twice a day. Great. Great. As long as those fifteen minutes, you are fully dialed in and focused on what you're working on. Staying motivated is hard. Right? There's a time where it switches from motivation to just discipline, and that's part of it. There's going to be obstacles. There's going to be questions, but there's going to be a lot of people supporting and cheering you onto. You can do this.

Working with fractions does not have to be scary. Actually, what if I told you that to add or subtract fractions, there's really only one main rule that we need to pay attention to? In this video, we're only gonna look at adding fractions, and then in a different one we can work on subtraction. So let's take a look at our rule. We know that we can only add fractions when the denominator is the same. The denominator is the most important number that we are searching for before we start moving things around. So what is the denominator? Well, our denominator is the bottom number in our fraction. So the first place we need to look is the bottom of our fractions. Let's try this together. We have three over seven plus two over seven. So first thing we need to check: do our denominators match? Seven and seven. So our answer is yes, perfect! So we're not going to do anything those don't get added together. It's just going to scoot to the other side of our equal sign. So we're keeping that seven, and now we're going to add our numerators or our top numbers together straight across. So three plus two equals five, and that is our new fraction five over seven. Now before we are completely done with any math problem, we really want to ask ourselves two things: one, is this the number that the question was asking me for? And then is this the most simplified form of this number? And in our case a fraction. So can we shrink five over seven down into anything smaller? Again this is a great time to review your greatest common factors and least common multiples lesson in GED or HiSET Academy because those skills translate so beautifully into working with fractions. So is there any number that goes into both five and seven evenly so that we can shrink this down? Nope, we cannot, right? So five over seven is our final answer. See? I told you it wasn't so bad and we did that all mentally. Now remember if you are taking the GED test you will have access to a calculator for the second part of your test. And if you are taking the HiSET exam, each state does have their own policies and procedures, so you will want to check-in with your state itself, but typically it is a calculator neutral test where you will have access to that calculator to solve these problems. Let's take a look at another example. We have seven over nine plus one over nine. What are we looking at first? Denominators! Perfect! So do these numbers match? We have nine and nine. Yes. So we don't have to do anything with those we're just going to scoot our nine over. And we're going to add straight across with our numerator. So we have seven plus one gives us eight. Again, can we simplify this down any more? No, we cannot! So eight over nine is our answer. Another example: two over four plus one over four. Perfect! We are checking those denominators. We have a four and a four. We don't have to do any extra work, which we love, right? We love that! We'll just scoot our four over, and we will add straight across with our numerators once again. Two plus one equals three. Three over four. Can we simplify this down any lower? We cannot! We cannot. Again, one over three plus one over three. Checking denominators: perfect! Scoot our three right on over, no extra work. One plus one is two. Can we simplify? Nope, we are done! This should be what you hear in your head as you're working through these as well. Do not over complicate fractions. Do not be afraid of them. You can do this! Alright, what about this one? We have two over five plus one over two. What are we checking first? Denominators and uh-oh! What are we going to do now? How can we fix this? Well, of course, if you have a calculator and you want to practice with your calculator, feel free to use it, plug this in, and see what the calculator comes up with. If you're working on mental math and we want to make sure that we know the proper steps, then the first thing we need to do is make our denominators match. Okay, well how do we do that? We're gonna have to make them bigger numbers somehow, right? So what can both of these numbers be multiplied by so that they can equal the same thing? Well we have one times five is five, that didn't make it any bigger. Right we have two times five, give us ten. Well, if two times five gives us ten, that means two times five on the other side will give us ten. So we can increase our fractions make them bigger, give us bigger numbers so that they match. That way we can move forward and keep solving these problems the same way that we always have. So let's do that! On this side, two over five, To get five to become ten, what do we do? We multiply by two, and what we do to the bottom we have to do to the top. So now we have two times two is four. I'm going to write it way out here and five times two is ten. Okay so now we've turned two over five into four over ten. That means this is gone, right? We are replacing it, we don't need to use it anymore. Plus we need this two, this one over two, onetwo here to become a ten, so we have to multiply two times five to get ten, which means what else is times by five? The top, our numerator, the one. So we know the bottom's ten, two times five is ten, one times five is five. And guess what? We're gonna go do the exact same steps that we have then! So where do we look first? Let me look at our denominators. Two beautiful, wonderful tens that we put in the extra work for that's going to stay. And we're just going to add straight across. So four plus five gives us nine. Amazing! And can we simplify? Can we simplify? Nope, we cannot. So a is our correct answer. So when in doubt, right, when these denominators do not match up, we make them match up! And that is just using our multiplication skills so that we can find the same denominator to continue using the exact same steps. I hope that this took some fear and stress out of adding fractions, and we have more fraction videos that you can watch as well as more fraction lessons in your ged and HiSET academy. Don't be afraid of this, you can do it!

Hey, I saw you last night. Hey, are you gonna run out to the store and get the saw? What do those two sentences have in common? The word saw. Right? But when I said, hey, I saw you last night, did you ever think that I was talking about the saw with the blade? No. And why is that? Well, it's because of the context of the sentence and that's what we're going to discuss today. Welcome to part one of our three part mini series where we are going to discuss building vocabulary and the top three strategies for decoding unknown words. In this video we are gonna talk about strategy number one which is context. So what is context? Context is the information around a word. And so when you look at a sentence with a new word you want to ask yourself three questions: What role does the word play? What part of speech is it? Is it a noun? Is it a verb? Maybe an adjective? Does the sentence describe the word at all? Right, sometimes they are giving you that information immediately following the word you may not know. So don't give up, make sure you keep reading to see what you find. And the last question is what does the sentence say about the word? Again, a lot of times they pack all this information into that sentence for you or maybe even into the paragraph you're reading for your official GED test or HiSET exam. So how do we ask ourselves these questions and what does that look like? Let's go through some examples together. Our first example we are going to be looking at the bolded word here, and it says: a predator is an animal that eats other animals. So our bolded word is predator, and we are trying to decode and figure out what this word means. Now you may already be familiar with this word whether it's from your science passages, TVs, movies, whatever it could be, right? But for the sake of our example, let's pretend that we're not familiar with it. What three questions do we get to ask ourselves? One, what role does the word play? Well, it seems to be the subject of our sentence, right? It's a noun. We're talking about a predator, so that's pretty important because we know anything that follows is about well a predator. Two, what does the sentence say about the word? A predator is an animal that eats other animals. So, it's telling us a little bit of information right there, right? An animal that eats other animals. And our third question is: does the sentence describe the word? Well, yeah, a little bit, right? We just talked about it. It says a predator, so that's our noun, that's our subject, is an animal that eats other animals. So basically they're giving us a definition. Let's check and see if we got that all right. A predator is an animal that eats other animals. So what role does it play? It is the subject of the sentence, So it is a noun, right? And that's what we said. Perfect. Does the sentence describe the word? Yes. Right they included the word is. So that is your cue to know that whatever comes next is going to be about our noun or about the subject of our sentence. And what does the sentence say about the word? Well the sentence gives a definition: an animal that eats other animals. It tells us exactly what the word predator means. This is why it's so important not to give up or quit reading if you come across a word that you're not familiar with. Now the sentences may not always be so straightforward by including the word is, but there's some other tricks that we can look for to see if they give us more information about what a word is and how we can decode it. Here's our next example: Another way sentences can describe is by putting the description between a pair of commas. So first thing is we need to make sure that we're comfortable looking for the pair of commas, and then we can identify that extra information that the sentence may carry. So predators, that's our bolded word still, comma. Animals that eat other animals, comma, so there's our comma pair, we found it, holding all that great information, are important to the environment. So again we were able to find out that what role does the word play? Predators, right? It's a noun, it's the subject, it's the very, very beginning of our sentence. The information between our comma pair: animals that eat other animals and we know that's the definition from our original example question. And then they go on to say are important to the environment. So actually we got more information out of this sentence than we did the first one because now we found out that they're important to the environment. This is where it can get a little tricky, right? Because we know we can look for the word is very helpful. We know that we can look for our comma pairs great! Helps us narrow some things down and sort through information, but what if they don't include any of that? What does that look like for us? Sometimes sentences aren't so clear when they give a definition, so you will need to use the information and the knowledge that you already have to decode some of these words. Here's an example: The sponge didn't absorb all the water, so some was left on the counter. And our bolded word here is absorb. So we'd have: The sponge didn't absorb all the water, so some was left on the counter. So let's take a look at what that would look like to decode this. Again we're looking at that word absorb. So what role does this word play? It is a verb, right? It describes an action. And how do we know that it's describing an action if maybe we don't know what this word means? Well, we're talking about it doing something because it said didn't, right? You either do something or you don't, and in this case we didn't absorb anything. So we have a verb. Does the sentence describe the word? Not really, right? They they inserted the word there for us, right absorb, and then they just kept going with their sentence. They didn't say the word is, they did not use a little comma pair for us to find a definition, they pretty much left us out here on our own which is why using context clues and your previous knowledge is so important. And then what does the sentence say about the word? Well it tells us about something that a sponge does, And so a great way to decode this is to pull out words from the sentence that you already know and you're already familiar with. For example, you are definitely familiar with a sponge. I think we've all used or have seen a sponge whether it's in our homes or in the store. You know all about water. And you definitely have a counter. So if you take those three words sponge, water, and counter and you put yourself in a situation where you would be interacting with all three, what are we usually doing? Cleaning our counters, right? Whether it's the bathroom counter, whether it's the kitchen counter, cleaning up for dinner or after dinner, you're usually cleaning that, wiping it down. So if there's still water on that surface after you wipe it down and the sponge didn't absorb it. What does absorb mean? Soak in or pool in, right? If we are wiping off a surface and there's still water that sponge is not able to pool in or absorb that extra water off the counter. The reason that decoding can be so challenging is because we also have a different idea in our minds of what things go together and what I would be doing if those three things were involved, right? And that just comes from different experiences. So slow down as you're reading, be very mindful of what the sentence, the paragraph, or the passage is about, and take your time when it comes to decoding these words, especially during your practice. Now, you can always, always, always practice your vocabulary skills in GED Academy or HiSET Academy with some of our awesome lessons that talk about of course prefixes and suffixes, which we're gonna get into in the end of this series, and also just the impact that these words make when they're in these passages. So to close out this video today, let's do a practice problem together and then you should be able to go out and use these context clues to decode words in your passages. Here is our try it question: based on context, what does the word perform mean? So let's look at this sentence here: Dylan wanted to perform well on his job so he could get a raise. Dylan wanted to perform well on his job so he could get a raise. A. To send emails. B. To do a task or action. C. To look good. Or D. To play or do an activity you enjoy. We're performing well at his job, he wants a raise. So let's really take into consideration the context here, right? We're not performing for our friends, we're not performing for an audience, we're performing at our job. So what does that mean? Did you say B to do a task or action? If you did, you are correct! The correct answer is B. But why? Well a says to send emails, and so although we know Dylan wants to perform well at his job, we don't know what Dylan's job is. And maybe he doesn't send emails at all at his job. Maybe he's working in construction and he's very hands on it's just not his responsibility to send emails. So we can't use A. C says to look good. And of course we could argue that if you look good at work as far as completing all your tasks that that will get you noticed and hopefully get you that raise you want, but I just think that it's not specific enough especially when we had option B available which was to do a task or action. And D to play or do an activity you enjoy. Yes, I see how maybe that could be considered as the answer to this question, but what if Dylan doesn't like his job? What if it's not an activity that he enjoys? So the most reasonable answer that we had was option B and that was to do a task or action. Join us next time to talk about part two of our top three decoding strategies. You can do this and we can help!

Do you know how to prepare to take your official science test? What if I told you that it was similar to the way that you prepared or will prepare for RLA reading? That's right, it's reading comprehension based. So how do we apply that to science? Well we need to learn the scientific vocabulary that you'll see along the way. There are five benefits to becoming familiar with this terminology. One is boost scientific reading skills. Two, decrease the guesswork, right? If we know the words then that saves us a lot of guessing. Three, time management. Right? We can be better at that time management because we're not spending an extra ten, twenty, thirty seconds on a question trying to decode a word. Build confidence. Right? We all know that going into a test and knowing what we're reading really helps us stay focused and stay confident in ourselves. And five, gain test success, Right? Whether we're taking a practice test or we're taking the official test, the goal is to pass and the more we know the higher the possibility that we get that passing score. So here are ten tips to build scientific vocabulary. One, review common terms regularly. You can't just look at these words once or twice and think they're going to stick. It's important to keep practicing them and keep reading passages that include them. Two, look for new words and practice passages and study material. As you're studying in your GED and HiSET Academy, you'll notice that there are plenty of passages and brand new words for you to jot down in your notes and prepare to study later on. Three, try exposing yourself to different types of reading. Now why is this important? Well there's three main categories that they are going to test you over on your science test. You have life science, earth science, and physical science, and each of these categories have their own vocabulary that go with them. Four, challenge yourself with more difficult content. And that's why those practice tests can be so helpful because even if you don't know everything, you're giving yourself a chance to see it and practice it and that is going to make a huge difference. Five, underline or highlight newly discovered terms. It's so important that we identify words that we don't know while we're practicing and while we have time to look them up. Six, try to use words in conversation or explain a science concept to a friend. You know that old saying if you don't use it you lose it? Well same thing when you're studying new material. Use it in your daily life if possible. Quiz yourself. Quiz your friends. Make it a community event, right? Share that knowledge so that it stays front of mind for you. Seven, use context clues and signal words to decode unknown words. We don't expect you to remember or know all of this terminology, so sometimes you will need to decode brand new words. If you haven't already, we have great lessons in GED and HiSET Academy that you can work on. We also have two wonderful videos about context and signal words so that you can really practice this skill before you need it on the official test day. Draw pictures or diagrams to better understand content. You do have a scrap paper if you're testing in person. You have the whiteboard option if you're choosing to test online from home. So jot things down, draw them out, whatever works for you. Don't make guessing your first option. Try to work it out and do your best. Nine, add decoded terms to your word bank for study and review. As you are jotting down these new unfamiliar words in your notes or you're highlighting and underlining them, you can kind of create your own flashcard system, right? You have new words, you're able to look them up, decode them, and now you can use them to practice your terminology. And ten: put your growing science vocabulary to the test. Practice testing is so so important. It's the best way to get all different types of questions, it's the best way to practice with the timer, and it's a great way to check your progress. Do not be afraid of practice testing and and remember that you do not need to memorize all of this terminology. We just want it to be front of mind and fresh so there are no surprises when you go into test day. You can do this, and we can help.