Summer camp at Math Brain Academy will be taught by Allan Chong and Nick Frangos along with many teaching assistants and volunteers.
We aim to provide one lecturer and three teaching assistants for every 25 students.
Camp hours will be daily from 9am to 4pm with after care options to 6pm.
Camp Overview
A Typical Day
For middle school and older kids, during the morning, there will be guided math study, emphasizing drills and worksheets and computational fluency as well as math and quiz team style problems, math puzzles and games.
After lunch we break out the computers where students follow lessons to learn programming at their own pace. Once they have learned the lesson, they can explore enhancing their programs using the knowledge they have gained. Students can continue with their computers or switch to other math games or worksheets as they desire.
For elementary school kids, during the morning, their instructor introduces a different idea/fact/topic each day and they do an exercise around that. They also do worksheets and/or work from textbooks, followed by math games or puzzles, with plenty of break time.
After lunch, they work on computers doing drag and drop programming with Scratch. In the later afternoon, they do more math games/puzzles and activities.
There is optional extended care available where students will do self-guided activities and games.
The Math Program
On the math side, we've developed over 300 pages of worksheets that cover everything in the common core and quite a bit more from rigorous Algebra 1, 2, 3/Precalc, Geometry courses. We supplement with math team type problem solving and additional topics such as probability, combinatorics, number theory, logic, and computer math.
The computer summer program will be characterized by a lack of lectures (not a lack of learning). Short concepts will be introduced at the whiteboard.
Students will immediately work on progressively longer assignments involving those concepts. Some of these assignments will be self assigned projects with guidance from the lecturer after students have many of the basic skills. For example -- play a card game or board game. Devise a program to simulate this game and allow humans to play, (and much later,) devise a program to play the game against a human.
We won't be spending too much time on the operating system (linux, or the mechanics of compiling, but they will get basic exposure to these and learn the operation of them in a narrowly used context.
Students will not be discouraged from playing video games or surfing except in well defined recreational periods (or unless they write it themselves!)
Computer programming will be in C, with optionally some exposure to a scripting language like perl, python, or php. C provides a good framework for understanding how computers work without having to introduce object-oriented or functional features in the beginning. An introduction in C also allows one to generally move on to other languages, while the same is often not true in reverse. A big bonus is that most embedded microcontrollers are predominantly programmed in C, and this results in a large range of real-world interesting projects for intermediate students. We'll avoid discussing C pointers as long as possible.
The Computer Program (Summer)
Mandatory Fun!
During the math mornings, everyone will be forced out onto the field for some mandatory fun. Frisbee, soccer, etc.
We are next door to Belmont's Twin pines parks.
ALGEBRA
Our Instruction will consist of mini-lectures, independent study and problem solving covering Elementary, Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1 or Algebra 2, tailored to each individual students' level.
PROGRAMMING
Our Intro to Programming will use the C language - which will serve as a fantastic base for any other language your child wishes to learn. This is real computer programming, not playing games or building HTML web pages. C will give your child a background for embedded programming topics.
RECREATION
The camp will have various recreational breaks throughout the day. There will also be organized field trips to exciting off campus locations for mandatory fun!