Thousands of hectares of snake fruit plantations in Yogyakarta may turn arid after six irrigation dams were damaged by lahar following recent volcanic eruptions on Mount Merapi.
The six dams provide water to the snake fruit plantations in Tempel and Turi district in Sleman regency. “If the dams cannot be repaired soon, the snake fruit plants will not be able to grow,” Subardiyanto, the head of the Association of Water Consuming Farmers at Wonokerto village, Sleman, said.
He said farmers could not irrigate using rain water as the trees needed large amounts of water.
Subardiyanto added that thousands of hectares of snake fruit plantations — 679 hectares in Wonokerto alone — would be affected by the water scarcity.
“In Turi and Temple districts the snake fruit harvest is the major source of income,” he said.
The threat of drought has put more pressure on snake fruit growers in Sleman regency. Mt. Merapi’s eruptions last year devastated nearly 14,000 hectares of snake fruit plantations, causing farmers to lose Rp 200 billion (US$22 million).
Sunaryo, a snake fruit farmer in Manggong, Turi, said that apart from destroying harvests, the eruptions also destroyed young saplings. Farmers looking to replant can have to wait two years for new growth, he said.
“The harvests this year will fall substantially and also next year as we have to wait for the trees to recover,” he added.
The Sleman administration said snake fruit production in 2009 reached 61.16 tons, but added that this would fall sharply as most plantations in the areas had been affected by the volcanic activity.
One of the officers in charge of monitoring the use of water from the Krasak River, Suhardi, said his office had submitted proposals to the Sleman Water, Energy and Mineral Resources Agency to repair three of the six dams.
“The Sleman administration promised to fund Rp 1.6 billion to repair the three dams,” he said, adding that the money would come out of the administration’s 2011 budget.
However, the Sleman administration also faces the more pressing priority of reconstructing houses devastated by the eruptions.
Suhardi raised doubts about the administration’s ability to provide the funds needed to repair the dams.
The problem is also compounded by the still present threat of lahar. If the dams are repaired, they could be hit by fresh lahar, he added.
Attracting not more than 3 percent of the country’s population, it’s not unfair to claim that Indonesia’s museums are unpopular.
This year, however, the Culture and Tourism Ministry had decided to promote the country’s flailing cultural sites by launching the “2010 Visit Museum Year.”
The program also marks the beginning of the ministry’s 5-year program called the “National Movement of Loving Museums,” which is aimed at revitalizing the country’s museums.
Intan Mardiana Napitupulu, the ministry’s director of museums, said the ministry would spend the year urging local governments and other institutions to spend more time evaluating the condition of museums and start making significant changes.
“We will help finance the renovation of more than a dozen museums,” she said, adding that she hoped that up to 90 museums could receive similar support by 2014.
Intan said it was not easy for most of the country’s museums to make major changes, which would attract an increasing number of visitors, due to financial limitations.
According to Intan, more than half of the country’s 272 museums are currently run and financially supported by regional administrations, while the remainder are managed by businesses, private foundations, government institutions and the army.
The ministry itself is responsible for only 10 museums, including the National Museum, also known as Museum Gajah (Elephant Museum), and the Proclamation Museum, which are both in Central Jakarta and the 250-year-old Vredeburg Fort in Yogyakarta.
“Such decentralized manage-ment should have made it easier for local governments or other institutions to develop their museums,” Intan said.
“Unfortunately though, only a small number of them have the budget to maintain their museums properly.”
Many museums even struggle to meet the ministry’s minimum service standards, including cleanliness and good air circulation, because of a lack of funding, said Intan.
In its 2009 survey, the directorate found that only 40 percent of museums met the standards of comfort and other basic functions specified by the ministry.
As well as poor maintenance in the majority of museums, more than 11 museums have shut down due to financial constraints.
“Some of the museums weren’t regularly open for visitors, while others didn’t have enough staff to manage the maintenance of their collections,” she said.
Intan said human resources was also a problem as few staffers came from an archeology background.
Many museums in Jakarta have vast and complete collections, but most of them are kept in storerooms.
More developed museums in European countries, for example, have a permanent exhibit, but several times a year they hold thematic exhibits of the collection they have in store. Jakarta’s museums, however, never do this.
Data from the ministry showed that Indonesia attracted 6.46 million foreign tourists last year, an increase from 6.2 million visitors in 2008. Many foreign tourists visit museums.
Find out each others’ reading history. What do they read? How different / similar is reading in L1 and L2? (Discussion or questionnaire) Ask students to bring in a sample of what they read in L1 (or L2).
Discuss their beliefs about reading. Is it best to read slowly and carefully or quickly? Do you have to understand everything? Is it ok to use a dictionary? Where’s the best place to read? Who should decide what I read? etc.
Choosing books / reading material
Point out features of books, blurbs, glossaries, comprehension sections etc.
Ask students to predict the story genre from the cover.
Ensure the books are easy to identify by level (and genre?). use color coding on the spines. Ask students to help.
Students assess whether a book at the level they’re reading is higher or lower than the average book at that level. Reassign the level as necessary.
Ask students to scout local libraries / publishers’ catalogues and bring back recommendations
Students make ‘genre corner’ displays -.e. a selection of horror stories with posters, or romances etc.
Reading
Use the graded readers as free enjoyable reading / listening with no tests and follow-up language work or reports
Read stories aloud to students (either as they read) or as a listening task. Esp good for younger learners.
‘Buddy reading’. 2 students select the same book and exchange impressions.
Building reading fluency
Try re-reading 10% faster.
Read against the clock.
Race read your partner to a certain part of the book (make sure they understand it)
Read for 10 minutes, then re-read the same section and try to go 20% further
Record your feelings of the book as you read and re-read the same story to see if your feelings are different
Listening
Use the CD with graded readers as Extensive Listening (listen 2 levels lower than their reading level)
They listen to one chapter of a story each week. Followed by discussion, comprehension and prediction activities.
Listen and repeat (shadowing). Gradually increase the speed if possible.
Study the intonation and pronunciation on the CD especially spoken dialogs and plays.
Stop at a key moment in the story and the students predict what will happen next.
Have students listen globally first (overall understanding), then re-listen for local (detailed) information.
One student listens to the story, the other reads it. Compare understanding.
Teacher reads part of the text aloud while making mistakes, students listen for errors.
Speaking
Students read the same book and discuss the plot / their feelings, their favorite character / scene etc.
They make a role-play of a section from the book taking on their character and tone. Use their words or ones from the book. Enact in front of the class.
Students enact a scene relating the same emotion of the characters (for fun, emotional scenes can be done in a different tone – e.g a romantic moment in an exciting tone, a sad moment in a happy one.)
10 questions. If students have read the same book then one student thinks of a character or place, the other guesses using yes/no questions only. Are you old? Do you have a sister? They have only 10 guesses.
Discuss what would be good gifts, punishments, cars, food etc for the characters.
Writing
Re-tell the story in their own words. This is writing practice becoming speaking and listening practice. Listeners think of 2 questions as they listen
Write a different ending to the story
Re-tell the story as if it were a character’s diary
They can make a short poem about the story, or from one character to another (good for romances)
They make a map of the places in the story and follow the route
Analyze the characters based on their actions, words and so on. Who do they know is similar to them?
Write part of the story as a screenplay
Make a questionnaire based on a class reader
Write a report on places in the story (or the life of the author of a classic story)
Compare the original story with the graded reader
Compare how the same book from different publishers is different or similar.
Make a class quiz about ‘who said what?’ or other aspects of the story.
Write an imaginary day with one of the characters.
Write a letter / email to one of the characters
Write to the publisher / author telling them what you think of the book
Write a character review of their strengths and weaknesses, habits, background etc.
Assessing their reading
Direct
The ER moodle (www.moodlereader.org)– online graded reader assessment individualized to schools, classes and students
Use the tests provided by publishers – often online or in Activity Books
Write a set of 10 questions on cards for students to see. Randomly, flash them up quickly and see if they can answer quickly.
Book reports –written or oral
Record how quickly their reading speed develops. Keep a chart.
Indirect
Students find key lines from the story and test each other on who said them
Award higher grades for students who read more. To do this they need to record which books they read.
Assess them on how well they write a review / report of the book (or keep a reading notebook).
Assess them on how accurately they can describe what’s in the book. Questions like What do you think of the ending?What kind of book was it? What was your favorite scene/character? catches out those who didn’t read it.
Ask them to summarize the story in exactly 50 words.
Finish the report challenge. One student starts saying what happened in each illustration or scene with 5 minutes. Listeners should ask as many questions as possible so the reader can’t finish the review.
Ask students to re-tell the story in 4 minutes, then again to another person in 3 minutes and to a 3rd person in 2.
Students say how the story relates to their life (or not)
Students draw a picture of a scene or two and re-tell what they are about
Students write a summary of the story – one event per line. They cut between each line and other students have to re-order the pieces of paper.
Pre-reading (best when students all have the same book)
Put many titles on a desk and they discuss which covers are best.
They look at many covers and blurbs and then are tested on what they remember (Which story will probably have a ghost? Which story is about a ship?)
Have a ‘Book Hunt”, Make a quiz with questions they answer by finding the book. Which book has 5 stories? Which book is s love story with Maria and Felix? Which book did David Andrews write?
Copy several illustrations form books, ask the students which book they come from and why.
Predict the story from the title and cover, art work. Predict when , where it takes lace, the characters etc.
Look at the cover and blurb, then make questions about the story before reading. They read and find the
answers to their questions.
Predict the story by looking only a chapter headings
If the book is a movie or classical story, show a trailer for the movie.
For famous stories ask students what they already know about the book, author, plot etc. e.g. Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, Shakespeare, The Jungle Book, Charles Dickens.
While reading / listening (keep short and simple)
Make notes on the main characters’ personality and actions as they read for later analysis
If they are listening to a story, stop them at key moments and they imagine what sounds the characters can hear, and what they may see and smell
Make comprehension questions at different cognitive levels
Literal – Who fell off the cliff? What time did John arrive?
Logical inference – Who is he waiting for? Why doesn’t he take the bus? Who probably feels tired?
Opinion – Is he doing the right thing? Would you have done that if you were her?
Lead to personal experience – How do you travel to work? Have you been to this place?
Stop and write questions a detective / reporter / a character may want to ask. Read on to find out.
Have students read the same book with different tasks. – word and phrase hunter , character recorder, plot keeper, culture finder. After reading, they share and compare.
After reading a chapter the teacher makes some true/false questions. The team with the most correct answers wins.
Play / read a short section of a chapter, students guess what’s going to happen
Pick out key sentences from the story. Who said it and why?
After reading activities (allow them to check what they understood and practice the language)
Discuss if the title, art work and cover match the story
They retell the story as a chain. Student 1 says the first event in one sentence, the second the next and so on.
Write an ordered summary of the story in one line sentences. Cut it up and students re-order it.
In non-fiction readers, research the places (people, countries, companies etc) mentioned
Write a review and post it on the web
After reading a book, they watch the movie (if available). They discuss the differences.
Photocopy the art or chapter titles from the book, they put it in order or use them to re-tell the story using them
Give a list of adjectives describing characters from the book (daring, stubborn), the decide who it is
Predict what happens after the end of the story, or write a synopsis of the sequel
Play ‘who am I?’ as students guess who others are talking about. This could be yes / no questions only.
Students pretend to be a character and are interviewed afterwards – especially good with crime stories.
The make a time-line of events – useful for stories with flashbacks
Transfer information from the text to a map, chart or table (useful for non-fiction work)
Re-write / re-tell part (or all) of the story from a different character’s perspective.
Analyze each key moment and decide if you would have done that in the same situation.
Students find their favorite picture / scene / chapter and tell others about it.
Students write a letter to one of the characters in the story
Make a profile of the characters – their habits, hobbies, what they eat, their work, clothes etc.
Students research something form the book – Christmas, a festival etc.
Musical chairs. Students sit in a circle facing the middle. One person stands in the middle and asks question such as If you know the main character’s name, change chairs Students race to the empty chairs. The one left standing makes the next question. E.g. If you read book xyz, change chairs.
Getting students involved
Ask students to categorize their books into genres and note this information inside the book cover.
Have a library with interesting books, students help select the titles from publisher’s catalogues
Ask students to be ‘library monitors’ – helping check out, return and shelve books, make displays etc..
Ask them to donate books if they buy them. They write ‘Donated by xxx, date’ inside
They raise money for the library by selling food, holding a readathon or asking for donations at the school festival etc..
Get them to discuss if the book is the same level as other books at that level, suggest re-leveling books
Ask them to make a class/ school blog on a website with reviews and recommendations
Put ‘review cards’ inside each book cover for students to rate the book with stars of smiley faces
Students make a poster advertising a book they read. Put them on the board or wall for them to explain.
Students vote on the top ten books of the semester
Get students to help you build a reading lounge somewhere in the school.
Getting them to read more
Have an interesting library with posters, displays, post book reviews on the wall etc
Have them look at all the books in the library, tell them to make a reading list for the semester.
Give higher grades for students who read more (best do this by number of pages than number of books)
Have wall chart of which student has read how many pages. The top readers get higher grades, prize etc.
Have ‘book spots’ – students tell the class which books they like
They keep a ‘reading log’ of what they have read throughout the week. Everything from textbooks, readers, road signs, posters, adverts etc.
“My best reader’ discussions help others choose good books. The most popular books can be labeled with a star on the cover or ‘best read’ ‘class favorite’ stickers.
Hold a ‘reading marathon’ e.g. at a school festival. Students compete to read the most in a set time – e.g. 8 hours. Books at different lengths or difficulties could be labeled ‘1km’ or ‘3km’. They have to read 42km (a marathon distance. This can be used to ask people to sponsor people to read at say $1 per book, or 1000 words and use the money to buy books.
Start a Book Club / Reading Corner at your school. Students discuss their favorites.
Making native text easier
Bring in (or ask students to find) newspaper cuttings, magazine articles, website prints etc. the students may like. They select a different one each. Students look up words they don’t know and write on the text in their language. They explain the text to another student. Student 2 can now read it easily as the first student graded it. Put all the papers in the middle of the room and student 3 takes it home. Repeat for the rest of the semester.
Language work
Copy a passage from the book focusing on a particular vocabulary or grammatical feature. Blank out examples of it and students fill them in. They read the book to check.
Students collect unknown words, expressions, patterns, collocations, idioms and phrases from the story (a piece of paper for each one) and put them in a Word Bank for later study (or in a vocabulary journal).
Learn the glossary items before reading
Do the exercises at the back of the book (or from downloadable worksheets)
They make lists of words / phrases they don’t know as they read
They find examples of alliteration (six swimming seals), metaphor (he has a heart of gold ), and simile (as big as a mountain)
If two students read the same book, they can make a bi-lingual vocab test for their partner.
Look beyond the plummeting prices and mounting foreclosures to learn a few lessons that can help us avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
By Tamara E. Holmes of Bankrate.com
The pop heard ’round the world when the housing bubble burst brought a lot of bad news — from plummeting home prices to mounting foreclosures.
But with all bad times comes a slew of good lessons to be learned, says Shari Olefson, author of “Foreclosure Nation: Mortgaging the American Dream.”
Depressed home prices and low interest rates may have you wondering if the real-estate market has reached its bottom. Even if the worst is behind us, it makes sense to take in the lessons of the past few years so we can avoid making the same mistakes again.
Lesson No. 1: Adjust your expectations. Years ago, people purchased a home, lived in it all or most of their lives, passed it down to their children and enjoyed a gradual increase in wealth as the home gained value. But in the last decade, people bought a house expecting it to increase in value about 5 or 10 percent in a couple of years, and they’d move on to something bigger, says Brendon DeSimone, a real-estate agent with Paragon Real Estate Group in San Francisco.
If the housing-bubble nightmare has shown us anything, it’s that you can’t count on a home to be worth more than you paid for it when you’re ready to sell. “It’s back to basics,” DeSimone says. “You have to be in it for the long haul and you can’t be looking at your home value every month to see how much it’s gone up.”
Lesson No. 2: You can’t time the market. When home prices were skyrocketing, many people bought homes they could barely afford — or couldn’t afford — thinking they’d ride the wave of rising equity since the market was on the upswing. Likewise, today, many potential homebuyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to reach its ultimate low.
“You will never sell at the all-time high and you’ll never buy at the all-time low by planning it,” says Tim Burrell, a real-estate agent for Re/Max United in Raleigh, N.C. “The market will time you. You will sell, and on occasion you may happen to hit the all-time high or happen to hit the all-time low, but to study it and plan it and figure out and actually do it — it doesn’t happen.”
Instead, take a long-term approach to real estate and look for a home that enhances your life and will increase in value over time.
Lesson No. 3: Don’t treat your home like a piggybank. At the height of the real-estate market boom, “We had a whole bunch of people refinancing high-interest credit cards with a low-interest second mortgage on their homes,” Olefson says. Today, some of those people have lost their homes or are in danger of doing so because they were unable to handle the mortgage debt.
“As a country, we’ve all gotten way too comfortable with credit and having debt in our lives,” Olefson says. “But the problem really came when that morphed into our homes.”
As the market rebounds, “We need to promote the value of owning your home free and clear again, because residential real estate really is the backbone of our country. It’s the biggest asset for most people,” Olefson says. Likewise, instead of depending on your home for all of your wealth, continue to build up your cash reserves, Burrell suggests.
Lesson No. 4: Do your own research. Some people ran into trouble before the real-estate market crash when they took the advice of mortgage professionals without doing their due diligence and making sure the advice was in their best interest. The wisdom of speaking to a financial adviser, calling a nonprofit housing agency or even reading books on real-estate transactions before signing on the dotted line became apparent as homeowners struggled with changing terms on mortgages that they didn’t understand. It also makes sense to check the credentials of anyone advising you. “Be careful who you trust, take time to educate yourself, and first and foremost, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Olefson says.
Lesson No. 5: Think long-term financing. Adjustable-rate mortgages appealed to those who wanted the lowest possible interest rates and expected to be able to either sell their homes or refinance them before the mortgages reset. However, after the real-estate market crash, many didn’t have enough equity to refinance and houses began to sit on the market as prices went into a free fall. When it comes to financing, “you can’t just look at the next six weeks or two months or next year,” DeSimone says. “You have to say, ‘What happens to me in five years?’”
Ultimately, the real-estate market collapse was a lesson in learning to adapt, experts say. “When you see overexuberance, expect that it’s going to change,” Burrell says. “The only thing constant is change.”
Reindeer have no internal body clock, according to scientists.
Researchers found that the animals are missing a "circadian clock" that influences processes including the sleep-wake cycle and metabolism.
This enables them to better cope with the extreme Arctic seasons of polar day, when the sun stays up all day, and polar night, when it does not rise.
The team from the universities of Manchester and Tromso report their study in Current Biology journal.
The body clock, or circadian clock, is the internal mechanism that drives hormone release on a rhythmic 24-hour cycle.
Light also influences these hormonal rhythms, but in most mammals, this "circuit" also involves the circadian clock, which can influence the release of hormones without the influence of light.
“ This could be the case for a range of animals living at the poles of the earth or in the depths of the ocean ”
Professor Andrew Loudon, University of Manchester
Anyone who has experienced jet lag is familiar with the effect of the body clock.
But the research team from research institutes in the UK and Norway found that, in Arctic reindeer, this circadian clock was absent.
Professor Andrew Loudon from The University of Manchester took part in the study.
He said that the reindeer may have "abandoned use of the daily clock that drives biological rhythms" in order to survive the extreme conditions in the Arctic.
He and his colleagues studied reindeer living in Northern Norway, 500 km north of the Arctic circle. Here there are 15 weeks of continuous daylight in summer and eight weeks during the winter where the Sun does not appear over the horizon.
They investigated levels of the hormone called melatonin - which is important in the sleep-wake cycle - in the reindeer's blood
They found that there was no natural internal rhythm of melatonin release into the blood - the hormone simply responded to the cycle of light and dark.
Professor Loudon said he believed that evolution had "come up with a means of switching off the cellular clockwork" and that the result was "a lack of internal daily timekeeping in these animals".
He commented: "Such daily clocks may be positively a hindrance in environments where there is no reliable light dark cycle for much of the year.
Organisms use their circadian clocks to correspond with their living environment; but if their environment has a very different cycle, it may be better to follow that rather than use the internal clock.
"This could be the case for a range of animals living at the poles of the Earth or in the depths of the ocean."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8565233.stm
The critical thinking process starts out with knowledge. All thinking starts with knowledge, whether a little bit or a good understanding of your thinking topic. For example, if you were thinking about how to fix a machine, you would want a good understanding of how it works and what the problem is.
The next step in the process is comprehension. It is the understanding of what you think about. If you can't comprehend what you're thinking about, you can't think about it effectively.
Another important step is application. If you can't apply your thoughts and knowledge to anything, what good is thinking about it? Find something useful to think about.
The next step that you need to do is analyze what you're thinking about. Divide information up into categories and subcategories. Select things that are the more important aspects, and solve them first.
The second to last step of the critical thinking process is synthesis. Syntheses is organizing, constructing, composing, and creating your finished result.
The last step is evaluation. See if you like your finished product. If not, go back through the process with different objectives and goals, keeping in mind what you didn't like. If it comes out to your liking, use it!
9 Tips to become a better Critical Thinker
Be open-minded to new ideas.
Know that people have different ideas about the meaning of words.
Separate emotional and logical thinking.
Question things that don't make sense to you.
Avoid common mistakes in your own reasoning.
Don't argue about something that you know nothing about.
Build a strong vocabulary to better share and understand ideas.
Know when you need more information.
Know the difference between conclusions that could and must be true.
If you made a list of the high points in your life, perhaps some low points too, you would have a list of creative writing topics so long you would never be able to build stories around them all.
In analyzing aspects of your life and those who people it, you will find enough material for writing a character analysis or two. You would definitely be writing character sketches. Not necessarily would you be writing about one person in particular. You would borrow this trait from one, that trait from another.
A perfect example of this is my fiction short story, Grandpappy’s Cows, which is posted in the Flash Fiction section.
Then...
...in a completely different genre, check out my Recipes. These are listed in this Short Story section because each one is written with a short story attached. Spice up your recipes by writing stories based on the recipes.
The first recipe/story is Ahi Steak for Busy People. It's a delicious fish recipe that takes only a few minutes to prepare.
