Teaching Reading Comprehension to Dyslexic Students

Reading comprehension is frequently very difficult for students with dyslexia. They are challenged by word recognition; they may forget a word even though they have seen it several times. They may spend so much time and effort in sounding words out, they lose the meaning of the text or they may need to read a passage over and over to fully understand what is being said. An in-depth report, completed by the National Reading Panel in 2000, provides a look at how teachers can best teach students reading comprehension. This skill is considered essential, not only in learning to read but also in lifelong learning. The panel held regional public hearings with teachers, parents, and students to help form an understanding of what was required in making sure students had a solid foundation of reading skills. Reading comprehension was listed as one of the five most important skills in developing reading. According to the panel, there were three specific themes within reading comprehension that were discussed: Vocabulary InstructionText Comprehension InstructionTeacher Preparation and Comprehension Strategies Instruction Vocabulary Instruction Teaching vocabulary increases reading comprehension. The more words a student knows, the easier it is to understand what is being read. Students must also be able to decode unfamiliar words, that is, they must be able to derive the meaning of the word through knowledge or similar words or through the surrounding text or speech. For example, a student can better understand the word truck if they first understand the word car or a student can guess what the word truck means by looking at the rest of the sentence, such as The farmer loaded hay in the back of his truck and drove away. The student can assume that the truck is something you drive, thereby being like a car, but is bigger since it can hold hay. The panel found that using a variety of methods to teach vocabulary worked better than simple vocabulary lessons. Some of the successful methods included:Using computer and technology to aid in vocabulary instruction Repetitive exposure to wordsLearning vocabulary words prior to reading textIndirect learning of vocabulary, for example, using vocabulary words in a number of different contextsLearning vocabulary in both written text and oral speech Teachers should not rely on a single method of teaching vocabulary but instead should combine different methods to create interactive and multi-faceted vocabulary lessons that are age-appropriate for the students. Text Comprehension Instruction Text comprehension, or understanding what the printed words mean as a whole rather than understanding individual words, is the basis of reading comprehension. The panel found that comprehension is enhanced when readers actively relate the ideas represented in print to their own knowledge and experiences and construct mental representations in memory. Further, it was found that when cognitive strategies were used during reading, comprehension increased. Some of the specific reading comprehension strategies that were found to be effective are: Teaching students to monitor their understanding of the material as they readHaving students practice reading comprehension skills as a groupUsing pictures and graphics to represent the material being learnedAnswering questions about the materialCreating questions about the materialDetermining the structure of the storySummarizing the material As with vocabulary instruction, it was found that using a combination of reading comprehension strategies and making lessons multisensory was more effective than using a single strategy. In addition, understanding that strategies may change depending on what is being read was important. For example, reading science text may require a different strategy than reading a story. Students who are able to experiment with different strategies better equipped to determine which strategy will work for their current assignment. Teacher Preparation and Comprehension Strategies Instruction In order to teach reading comprehension, the teacher must, of course, be knowledgeable of all of the components of reading comprehension. Specifically, teachers should receive training in explaining the strategies to students, modeling thinking processes, encouraging students to be curious about what they are reading, keeping students interested and creating interactive reading instruction. There are two main approaches to teaching reading comprehension strategies: Direct Explanation: Using this approach, the teacher explains the reasoning and mental processes used to make text meaningful. Teachers can explain that reading and understanding text is a problem-solving exercise. For example, when summarizing what has been read, a student can play the part of a detective, looking for important information in the text. Transaction Strategy Instruction: This approach also uses direct explanations of the strategies used in reading comprehension but includes class and group discussions on the material in order to develop a deeper understanding of the material. Source Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, 2000, National Reading Panel, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Government

Early Civilization Throughout China And The Different...

This essay gives an overview of early civilization in China and the different periods within this era. Also, it includes political and cultural pursuits of the people within this time period and the struggles of the Asian peoples and their religious beliefs and community uniqueness and differences. Early on we see the emergence of civilization in China, where relatively isolated within geographical barriers, China’s early civilization developed with little contact with other cultures. During the Neolithic period, peoples living in environmentally distinctive zones—the Yellow and Yangzi River Valleys—mastered agriculture, animals became domesticated, the production of ceramics became more elaborate, built fortified towns, and developed†¦show more content†¦The Shang fell to the Zhou Dynasty, whose first rulers claimed that the Mandate of Heaven had passed to them from the decadent Shang. The Zhou ruled an increasingly decentralized feudal kingdom that ultimately disintegrated into the independent Warring States. For a couple centuries, a code of chivalrous conduct still regulated warfare between the states. During this period, the Zhou society was highly aristocratic. One could witness the distrust of women in politics growing, partly because of the practice of concubinage. Poems compiled in The Book of Songs which contains the earliest Chinese poetry and offered insights into the daily life of the period. Following the Early Zhou Dynasty, we envision the Warring States Period (500–221 B.C.E.). Despite political instability, the Warring States period was a time of great technological and cultural achievement. Advances in military organization and technology, such as the introduction of the crossbow and cavalry revolutionized warfare, and the trend toward centralized bureaucracy fostered social mobility based on individual ability. After the Warring States Period, Confucius and His Followers presented a new way of teaching. Confucius was one of the first men of ideas. Confucius emphasized filial piety and gentlemanly conduct. His teachings minimized the importance of class distinction and opened the way for intelligent and talented

Beijing population Free Essays

When we consider the ever increasing global population in today’s world there are many factors which influence the dynamics of population growth. In the past population dynamics was only a matter of live births, deaths and migrations. Life expectancies among the populace were low due to famine; war and disease being common factors keeping most populations from growing. We will write a custom essay sample on Beijing population or any similar topic only for you Order Now However with the advent of modern technology these issues are no longer the threat they once were. Developing countries have now realized that the continued population growth in a country can be a hindrance to their economic development. However an effort to categorize the population growth in the form of population dynamics is far more difficult today due to various extraneous factors that exist. This topic will take Beijing as an example to illustrate the complications in this subject. It is important to note first that China is the first country in the world with a billion people as its constituents. The population growth of China was in the first phase of democratic transition during the late 19th century meaning they had a high birth rate and a high death rate due to widespread famine at the time. However, the Chinese government realized that their country was in the second phase of democratic transition during the 20th century. Meaning they would had a high birth rate and a low death rate with a high rate of fertility which the government surmised would be a huge blow to their economy. In order to counteract this government began enforcing the single child-policy offering incentives for those parents who had one child and taxing those who had more than one. They also encourage sterilization, abortions and kept a strict record of the parents who had children while discriminating against those who had two or more. They started family planning programs which were geared towards voluntary fertility reduction. Migration was also encouraged for youths who wished to leave the country for seek new economic opportunities. While all these factors lend themselves to being calculated by the formulae set by population dynamics. In the case of Beijing these dynamics cannot be calculated due to the immense population which resides there. It should also be noted that most of the population which participates in these voluntary fertility reduction programs are those from the middle class. While those individuals from the lower class not only have more children than the middle class they are also harder to document due to the fact that most of the lower class population is involved primarily in the field of agriculture. Their lower social economic scale lends them to being uneducated and undocumented thus creating a problem in ascertaining the factors of population growth. Additionally the increasing technological progress has also increased the life expectancy in China creating an environment where higher populations of the Chinese people are close to sixty years of age. Documenting the growth activities of such a massive population is not only time consuming and costly. It also creates new complications for the population dynamic that may be unforeseen in a controlled simulation. Economics may increase causing greater emigrations or vice versa, new diseases such as swine flu may strike the elderly portion of the population causing a fundamental decrease, the government may successfully implement greater controls to ensure population decrease, etc. Thus, it is inevitable that the population dynamics of a billion people would reveal certain problems in categorizing the growth potential of a country. However, we must realize that more than anything else this is simply due to the inherent unpredictability’s of the biological and environmental factors at play. References Sociology Online. (2005). Population Patterns And Trends. Retrieved May 20, 2009, from Sociology Online: http://www. sociologyonline. net/text/intro/main/c4b543n. htm How to cite Beijing population, Papers

Algorithms and Advanced Data Structures

Question: Discuss about the Algorithms and Advanced Data Structures. Answer: Introduction The purpose of this report is to introduce a primary aspect of Dijkstras and prims algorithms to calculate the total wire length and clock distance of all nodes from the root of a spanning tree. This report includes a short description of the data structure, program design, and its implementation. Here the programmer calculates the complexity of the develop the application. After calculating the complexity its compare with the expected complexity value of both algorithms. Data structure design In this application, the programmer uses an array to store the weight of all vertex. Here a multidimensional array is used to store the value in the order of a matrix format. This array contains a data type of integer, which indicate that this array is used to store numeric data. In this application, the programmer uses a user, define method to generate the deferent kind of spanning tree. These spanning trees are nodes same, but the weight of each vertex is randomly generated by the math function in this method. These values are stored one by one, and the self-distance of each node is assign with zero. In this multidimensional array, the first index value represents the number of rows and the second index represents the column value. Program design In this application, the programmer uses Dij1kstras and prims algorithm for calculating the total wire length and clock distance in a spanning tree. However, the programmer implements an algorithm, which includes these algorithms and a randomly generated spanning tree. In this design, the programmer set all value or Wight of all edges of a spanning tree by calling a mathematical method. This method will provide all weights of the spanning tree. After that, these algorithms are operated by a single value of Alfa. Implementation In this implementation phase the programmer, implement both algorithms in two different methods. Initially, a random spanning tree is created by a user define method. In this method the programmer set an order of a matrix, this matrix includes the weight of each vertex. To store the values of this matrix, the programmer uses a two-dimensional array. After successfully create a spanning tree, this matrix is delivered to the method DIKSTRA ( ). This method extracts these values and calculates the shortest path. In this method an integer array DIST [] is use to keep the shortest path and another Boolean array SPTSET [] is use to confirm if the vertex n is included in the shortest path list. Now to calculate the MST the programmer use a greedy algorithm called prims algorithm. Here the programmer uses a method to calculate the minimum spanning tree. In this method the programmer use three different arrays to store the constructed MST, key value uses to pull the minimum weight edge in cut and a set of vertices not yet included in MST. In this algorithm, the parent array contains the constructed MST. Test Result Spanning Tree: Step value 0.1 Vertex Total edge length 0 0 1 88 2 18 3 81 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.2 Edge Clock Distance 0 - 1 39 0 - 2 29 1 - 3 51 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.3 Vertex Total edge length 0 0 1 42 2 3 3 15 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.4 Edge Clock Distance 3 - 1 34 0 - 2 58 0 - 3 27 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.5 Vertex Total edge length 0 0 1 1 2 7 3 48 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.6 Edge Clock Distance 2 - 1 89 3 - 2 24 0 - 3 21 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.7 Vertex Total edge length 0 0 1 20 2 32 3 57 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.8 Edge Clock Distance 2 - 1 39 0 - 2 23 2 - 3 39 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.9 Vertex Total edge length 0 0 1 6 2 53 3 76 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.10 Edge Clock Distance 0 - 1 85 0 - 2 6 0 - 3 22 Spanning Tree: Step value 0.11 Vertex Total edge length 0 0 1 74 2 77 3 33 Comparison of Time Complexities The time complexity of the Dijkstras algorithm is O (V^2). However, the help of binary heap it can be reduce. If the programmer uses the binary heap, then it can be reduced up to O (E log V). In the case of Prims algorithm, the calculated time complexity is O (V^2), whereas it can be reduced by the help of binary heap where the graph is represented using the adjacency list. If so, the time complexity is same as Dijkstras algorithm. Conclusion This report of programming with two algorithms simultaneously calculate the total wire length and clock distance of a spanning tree by changing the value of Alfa. In this report, the programmer included the test result of this application. However, the program calculates the total clock distance and wire length from the root. Now from this result, it can be concluded that the program works perfectly. In this process, the programmer also includes the technology works behind this operation. Here two type of program generate two different time complexity. However, the difference between both time complexities of those algorithms is very short. After computing the both time complexity and compare with the expected result, this report represents the success of evidence of this application. Bibliography Abraham, I., Delling, D., Fiat, A., Goldberg, A.V. and Werneck, R.F., 2013. Highway dimension and provably efficient shortest path algorithms. Microsoft Research, USA, Tech. Rep, 9. Chan, T.M., 2012. All-pairs shortest paths for unweighted undirected graphs in o (mn) time. ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG), 8(4), p.34. Delling, D., Goldberg, A.V., Nowatzyk, A. and Werneck, R.F., 2013. Phast: Hardware-accelerated shortest path trees. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 73(7), pp.940-952. Gao, J., Zhao, Q., Ren, W., Swami, A., Ramanathan, R. and Bar-Noy, A., 2015. Dynamic shortest path algorithms for hypergraphs. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 23(6), pp.1805-1817. Mehlhorn, K., 2013. Data structures and algorithms 1: Sorting and searching (Vol. 1). Springer Science Business Media. Muja, M. and Lowe, D.G., 2014. Scalable nearest neighbor algorithms for high dimensional data. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 36(11), pp.2227-2240. Nanongkai, D., 2014, May. Distributed approximation algorithms for weighted shortest paths. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (pp. 565-573). ACM. Neumann, F. and Witt, C., 2013, July. Bioinspired computation in combinatorial optimization: algorithms and their computational complexity. In Proceedings of the 15th annual conference companion on Genetic and evolutionary computation (pp. 567-590). ACM. Peres, Y., Sotnikov, D., Sudakov, B. and Zwick, U., 2013. All-pairs shortest paths in O (n 2) time with high probability. Journal of the ACM (JACM), 60(4), p.26. Stamatakis, A., 2014. RAxML version 8: a tool for phylogenetic analysis and post-analysis of large phylogenies. Bioinformatics, 30(9), pp.1312-1313. Tewarie, P., Van Dellen, E., Hillebrand, A. and Stam, C.J., 2015. The minimum spanning tree: an unbiased method for brain network analysis. Neuroimage, 104, pp.177-188. Williams, R., 2014, May. Faster all-pairs shortest paths via circuit complexity. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (pp. 664-673). ACM. Zhong, C., Malinen, M., Miao, D. and Frnti, P., 2015. A fast minimum spanning tree algorithm based on k-means. Information Sciences, 295, pp.1-17.