Fractions in Action: effective approaches to teaching fractions

Essentials of Algebra ( Answers)

Unit 5 powerpoint[1] algebra (1) from John O'Driscoll

Three PowerPoint Tips, from a man who knows...

I am indebted to Tim Harford, the "Undercover Economist" , presenter of BBC Radio 4's More or Less and Financial Times columnist for these three Powerpoint presentation tips:Microsoft bought PowerPoint 25 years ago. Happy anniversary.PowerPoint has a curious status these days – it’s ubiquitous and yet widely loathed. Both the ubiquity and the loathing are overdone.Here are three tips I’ve found very useful as a speaker.1) There are three things you can do with PowerPoint (or most of its rivals). You can put visual aids on a screen; you can create bullet-point speaker’s notes; and you can produce handouts for people to take home. All of these uses are perfectly legitimate, but you can’t do them all at once. Your speaker’s notes should be on small cards in your hand; your handouts can have contact details, sources, a bibliography, or dense data; your visuals should be simple and look awesome. If you feel you need to do all three, fine: you will need to create three completely different presentations.2) If you don’t have anything useful to display for a particular section of your talk, display nothing. During slideshow mode, press B to show a black slide, or W for a white one. Or if you don’t have direct access to the computer while presenting, insert blank slides as necessary. There’s nothing wrong with giving a talk during which you only show one or two slides – but don’t leave them up as wallpaper.3) You don’t have to use any visual aids at all. You might be surprised at how much people focus on you when you stop competing with yourself for attention.

Essentials of Algebra - Challenge

This is the first instalment of a comprehensive basic Algebra assignment. Try it and look back later in the week for the completed assignment. Best of luck!

Unit 5 pp q only from John O'Driscoll

THE CORNELL NOTE-TAKING SYSTEM.

The Cornell system for taking notes is one I have found useful. Note how the page is divided into three large margins. The area for note-taking is where you write your notes during a lecture, class or lesson. Endeavour to take down key points verbatim or in your own words, phrases or style. This will help your learning and encourage a more productive listening. You will aim to capture a good synopsis of what the lesson has attempted to impart. It should include areas you are not clear on and ideas and challenges that come up in your mind. The recall (Cues) column is for recording a measured review of what you have taken down in your notes, and anything that emerges after a lesson. It could include further understanding that has surfaced, and of course further questions. It may include references to supplementary material that could aid understanding. Above all, attempt to have it as a useful exam preparation aid. The summary area is a synopsis of your notes and hopefully will be something that has cemented your understanding of the topic. Visualise your study of a topic as a layered upside-down triangle where as you approach the apex of the triangle your understanding of a topic is more and more concise and fine-tuned, prompted by short and succinct phrases that are the key to a greater and deeper wealth of knowledge that you have acquired. The building of such a structure in itself is an excellent tool in the journey towards greater understanding.

Closer educational targeting vital to reducing crime rates - The Irish Times - Sat, Aug 25, 2012

Closer educational targeting vital to reducing crime rates - The Irish Times - Sat, Aug 25, 2012:

'via Blog this'

BBC News - Do zero hours contracts create real jobs?

BBC News - Do zero hours contracts create real jobs?:

'via Blog this'

"Us and them" by Peter Mc Verry S.J.

I have taken the liberty of reproducing Peter McVerry's article around the discourses of crime in our society.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0822/1224322660926.html 

 All of us, whether on the political left or right or in the centre, have a common interest in reducing the level of crime in society.

To develop effective policies, it would seem reasonable to discuss the causes of crime. But such discussion often produces more heat than light – perhaps for very understandable reasons.

First, many of us – probably most of us – have been victims of crime at some point, and some have been very upset or even traumatised by the experience. We may have little patience with efforts to understand what causes crime; we just want the perpetrators punished.

Second, any attempt to understand the causes of crime is frequently – and wrongly – misinterpreted as trying to excuse the perpetrators of crime. However, to suggest that a local authority should eliminate a bad bend on a road, where speeding motorists frequently cause accidents, is not to excuse the reckless behaviour of the motorists who speed round the bend. Third, the debate on crime is, to a large extent, filtered through an ideological lens.

Discussion on crime generally presupposes a distinction between the offenders and the victims of crime: “them” and “us”. However, most of us are both victims and offenders.

If I have ever broken the speed limit, I have broken the law. But we do not consider this offence, which is one that “we” might commit, to be in the same category as joyriding, for example, which is one “they” might commit, even though far more deaths and injuries on our roads are caused by speeding than by joyriding. It is also worth remembering that the greatest suffering inflicted on Irish people in recent years was caused, not by burglars in jeans, but by professionals in designer suits.

Many of those who end up in prison were also, in their earlier years, victims of serious crime. Following a visit to Mountjoy Prison some time ago, I was reflecting on the lives of the nine prisoners I had just met: six were known to me to have been victims of sexual abuse as children, and the other three I did not know well enough to be able to say. As a society, we express a great sympathy for the victims of institutional abuse, but my very conservative “guesstimate” is that at least one prisoner in four is a former resident.

The majority of people in our prisons come from a small number of disadvantaged communities, as John Lonergan, former governor of Mountjoy, repeatedly tried to remind us.

We know from various studies that a totally disproportionate percentage of people in prison have low levels of literacy, lack skills and qualifications, have left school early and never had a job. A high percentage have an addiction to drugs and/or alcohol. The incidence of mental illness among prisoners is also disproportionate; many have experienced homelessness and/or housing insecurity.

This is not to excuse their involvement in crime, as most of those who experience poverty and deprivation do not turn to crime, but it does suggest that if we are really serious about reducing crime then the social deprivation and addiction problems that underlie much criminal behaviour would be a good place to start.

Furthermore, if we want to reduce crime, then the focus of imprisonment must be rehabilitation, given that recidivism plays a major role in crime levels. The recidivist rate in Ireland is high: one in two leaving prison will be back again within four years.

Why should we be surprised? Great numbers of our prisoners spend their time in overcrowded, drug-filled and violent prisons with little or no constructive activity to occupy them. The only skills that many prisoners acquire while in prison are how to commit crime more successfully when they get out.

The boredom, even meaninglessness, of prison life, combined with a ready availability of drugs, creates a drug culture within some of our prisons that is difficult for some prisoners to resist. I personally know of at least 40 young people, who never touched a drug before going into prison, and came out addicted to heroin. Warehousing of prisoners is not conducive to their rehabilitation.

Many people leave prison with no arrangement having been put in place to ensure they have accommodation, access to a social welfare payment, and supports to help them adjust to life outside. When people are in custody, we have a great opportunity to address the personal difficulties that they have experienced in life. We also have a duty of care to ensure that on release they have some chance of not rapidly sliding back into crime.

Ultimately it is society’s attitude to criminals such as “them” that prevents any serious attempt to reduce crime levels. Most people now know that 196 young people died in, or shortly after leaving, the care of the State in the decade 2000-2010.

Most died from unnatural causes – drug overdose, suicide, violence. There was an investigation and a report, followed, quite rightly, by widespread outrage at the failure of the State to adequately care for them.

The need to rectify the deficiencies in the system and provide the necessary resources to do so was agreed by all political parties.

However, in the same decade, 135 people died while in prison or within one month of leaving prison. In other words, at the time of their death they were, or had recently been, in the care of the State.

Most died from unnatural causes – drug overdose, suicide, violence. But there was no investigation, no report, no outrage, no comment from any politician and, of course, no commitment to dealing with the deficiencies in the system that may have led to some of these deaths.

Some will read this opinion piece through their own ideological lens and write it off as typical left-wing liberalism. But through my ideological lens, it is common sense. And this is where most discussions on crime end up.

---

Fr Peter McVerry SJ is a director of the Peter McVerry Trust and a member of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice team. He will be speaking at the conference Re-imagining Imprisonment in Europe, Trinity College Dublin, September 5th-7th 2012. For information visit www.jcfj.ie

The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats with music by the Waterboys

This is a magical poem put to music beautifully by Mike Scott and the Waterboys. We all grew up with the myth of the fairies and who knows maybe they do exist. They certainly exist in our imagination. Some say they are the Tuatha De Dannan who were driven underground with the arrival of the Celts to our shores. Yeats paints a dream-like landscape, where one can venture for sometimes this 'world's more full of weeping than you can understand.'






Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you can understand.

Spelling, English and Maths websites

I have put together some of, what I consider to be, excellent Internet resources. Have a  look and see what you think!

http://www.commonlymisspelledwords.org/

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/misspelled_words.html

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0781709.html
All  above courtesy of leavingcertenglish.net

http://www.algebrahelp.com/
For all the algebra topics you will meet. Excellent self-testing exercises are a great feature.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/
BBC GCSE Bitesize is a brilliant study resource for all subjects and utilises all the media that is at the BBC's disposal.


http://www.mathtutor.ac.uk/

Clicking a title from 7 subjects will open up a list of topics, each one having a video tutorial, support text, diagnostic test and an exercise to do. Some topics also have an extension film and/or an animation to accompany them.

Work through at your own pace, pausing, rewinding, testing and exploring until you've grasped the concept. Mathtutor is not a course and does not offer accreditation - but it does offer excellent revision possibilities! So off you go. Get stuck in!'

http://patrickjmt.com/

In his own words: making free and hopefully useful maths videos for the world.