EVS Orlando Tutor

Thank You Sincerely

Thanks for the start to the lives that we’ve had.
Thanks for the nights that you went without rest.
So many memories, most happy, some sad;
If you weren’t perfect, you still passed the test,
Holding our hands, holding back all the fears.
Thank you sincerely for all of those years.

So many hours that you worked to provide
Multiplied by all the days that we grew,
When we behaved and the times we defied,
Never a doubt we could still count on you,
Making our laughter and drying our tears.
Thank you sincerely for all of those years.

Thanks for the rules that we wished were not there.
Thanks for the wisdom we sometimes denied.
All the attention and all of the care,
All the forgiveness and all of the pride,
Pointing out faults but then calling out cheers.
Thank you sincerely for all of those years.

For the examples you set every day,
Teaching with actions, those lessons hold tight.
We hardly knew just how much you could say
Simply by doing what you knew was right.
Now that we’re older, the logic appears.
Thank you sincerely for all of those years.

Thank you for love not required to be earned,
Not ever fading as time moves along.
You have to know that the love is returned,
Not always showing, but always so strong.
And you still care as your golden time nears.
Thank you sincerely for all of the years.

In honor of Mother's Day on May 12.  This is a wonderful poem to recite to your favorite person, your mom in honor of her day. Thank her for all she has done to help make you the person you have become.  Be creative and design a card with either this poem or create your own poem expressing how you feel about your mother.  There is no better gift for a mother than to receive an expression of gratitude and love from a son or daughter.  Make this Mother's Day extra special with your words put into poetry.

contributed by Ms. Ruiz

Recommended for middle school age:

"Let's be honest: I'm not exactly the target audience for this book. But I read it because I work with high school boys and was hoping it would live up to its hype as an inspirational, real book for young men, and it did. I like Hill Harper a lot after reading this book. He comes across as caring, accessible, and honest. His advice is clear and easy to understand, and he calls on other role models (Barack Obama, Venus Williams, Nas) to help him tackle the issues in the book (school, family, sex, money, etc.). His advice is straightforward and makes sense: save money, don't disrespect yourself or others, make healthy choices about sex, focus on schoolwork, dream big, and always work to improve yourself.

I highly recommend this book!"

contributed by Ms. Cathy

Read the article "Animal Highways" and answer the questions below. 

click here> http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3757909

1. Wild animals are being protected by wildlife corridors that bridge animals with their habitats.

True

False

2. Those directly responsible for protecting wildlife are

a. businesses

b. politicians

c. scientists

d. teachers

3. Wild animals' habitats are broken up by

a. parks

b. businesses

c. towns

d. all of the above

4. Overpasses, underpasses or narrow pieces of land that connect one piece of wilderness to another are called

a. bridges

b. highways

c. corridors

d. pathways

5. Y2Y stands for

a. Yellowstone to Yukon

b. Yosemite to Yellowstone

c. Yukon to Yosemite

6. To determine if the animals used wildlife corridors, scientists used

a. tracking devices

b. undercover spies

c. drones

d. cameras

7. To determine genetic diversity scientists took DNA samples from

a. wolves

b. rats

c. bears

d. elk

8. All animals are using wildlife corridors and it is widely successful.

True

False

Click on the link below and read the article. 

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=11043&eml=OT/e/20130107////BulletinBoard//Groundhog/TNLOpSL2///&ym_MID=1457822&ym_rid=12318765

Then, answer these questions.

1. In this article, what makes the groundhog unique.

2. If the groundhog sees his shadow ____________________.

A. Spring will come early

B. Winter will last one more month

C. There will be six more weeks of winter

D. It will snow tor six more weeks

3. What team was playing the Super Bowl the year this story was written?

A. New York Jets

B. Denver Broncos

C. Pittsburgh Steelers

D. Dallas Cowboys

4. How long had Bill Deely been Punxsutawney Phil's handler?

A. 25 years

B. 15 months

C. 10 years

D. 15 years

5. Hibernating means to sleep through the winter.

True

False

6. How did this tradition start?

A. A radio station contest

B. A TV weather forecaster

C. A mayor of Punxsutawney

D. Superstitious German settlers

7. What is Punxsutawney Phil's accuracy rate?

A. 85% of the time corrrect

B. 50% of the time incorrect

C. 39% of the time correct

D. 69% of the time incorrect

contributed by Ms. Cathy:

Click on the link to "Time For Kids" and read the article, then answer the questions below.

http://www.timeforkids.com/news/never-seen-whale/59326

1. As soon as the mammal scientist, Anton van Helden, heard about the two beached whales, he immediately went to see them.

A. True

B. False

2. The sighting of the two whales was at which beach?

A. St. Kilda Beach, Australia

B. Vivonne Bay, Australia

C. Opape Beach, New Zealand

D. Hot Water Beach, New Zealand

3. When did van Helden go to see the beached whales ?

A. that day he heard the news

B. a few days later

C. a few months later

D. he never went

4. Spade-toothed beaked whales are very similar to:

A.Humpback whales

B. Gray's whales

C. Beluga whales

D. Fin whales

5. The sighting of these whales is exciting because:

A. they have never been seen in the flesh before

B. they have only been known from bone fragments washed ashore

C. they are the most mysterious of all whales

D. all of the above

6. A spade-toothed beaked whale is the size of a school bus.

A. True

B. False

7. The ultimate goal of these marine scientists is to:

A. capture this whale alive

B. to see one alive in the wild

C. to find one beached on shore

November 2nd deadline

Click on the Art Studio tab to submit a photo or piece of art work. Submission can also be mailed or emailed.

Got a great back to school story or photo for Fall? Share it with us. You could win a $100 Visa gift card! Thanks for sharing your story in honor of "International Literacy Day." 

  For grades 5- 8

Let's test your knowledge of some popular books and hopefully 

spark your curiosity to read those that sound interesting and 

compelling to be your next read. We all would love to hear about

what you have read this summer and what you will be reading 

throughout the school year. Your opinion counts so blog away. 

1. In this book Meg and Charles Wallace are introduced to a world of strangers where tesseracts do exist.

a. When Dreams Die       b. A Wrinkle in Time     c. The City of Ember

2. This is the story of a family with a beginning but no ending and a girl who embraces their world and must choose between them and the world she has always known.

a. The Giver       b. The Hunger Games        c. Tuck Everlasting

3. Teenage gangs and poverty make it difficult for one boy who must struggle to either fit into this society or change his life around. 

a. The Outsiders      b. Marked         c. If I Stay

4. An orphan sets out to find her kidnapped playmate while children are disappearing and being used in experiments by "Gobblers".

a. The Sorcerer's Stone    b. The Golden Compass   c. The Maze Runner

5. Two stories of a boy and girl are told, one in words and the other in pictures, yet intertwined since they both long for a missing parent.

a. Wonderstruck            b. Divergent               c. Graceling

Various companies make their living teaching ‘speed reading’ techniques. I’ve personally explored a couple of different techniques, with mixed results. Some of them are very gimmicky and didn’t help me at all, like using my finger to ‘draw shapes’ on the page to activate my brain’s visual cortex, or some nonsense like that. What did help was the motto “practice.”

If you want to become a faster reader then you should practice reading. It’s just a skill like anything else and can be improved by active repetition. If you become a voracious reader of everything your ability to read faster will improve.  I recommend that you start off with easier texts that won’t have you stopping to figure out new vocabulary every five seconds.  Light fiction is great for this.  Then you can work up to reading harder things, such as philosophical texts, much more quickly.

One of the techniques that actually did improve my speed reading was the chunking process.  This is basically like clumping words together into easy-to-process pieces in your head as you read them, and then reconstructing the sentence afterwards.  It takes some getting used to, but I now read about 500 words per minute, which is pretty fast.

Another thing that can really help is reading in the right position. When I really need to comprehend a massive amount of text I don’t assume my natural reading position (which resembles some sort of amorphous blob of sprawling legs and arms.)  Instead I sit upright and hold my book at a 45 degree angle.  This helps much more than one might think. Making sure you have enough light, and that you have reading glasses if you need them, are also great ideas.

Speed reading can help you in many daily tasks.  Everything from getting a whole newspaper read quickly to preparing for a presentation can suddenly take a lot less time than it used to.

Learn more about learning at www.tutoringclub.com.

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The Hunger Games is the first book in the trilogy. This book has action and romance, so boys and girls both love it. I recomend this book to teenagers and adults because there is a lot of violence. 

This book is about a girl named Katniss from district 12 who is entered in to the hunger games to fight to the death. Each district has one male and one female entered. The male from distict 12 is Petta. Petta and Katniss have to pretend to be in love so they can both win. Do they? Read this awesome book to find out!

     I hope you have been able to read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee this past month.  If you had, then I am quite confident that you were intrigued by the story as well as the characters involved.  With every story we read we will always be introduced to a variety of characters that we will come to know quite well.  Whether it be through their actions, interactions, what they say or their physical description given by the author, you are drawn to those characters and how they are woven into the story.  Every character is there for a reason, whether to be the protagonist, antagonist or to add insight into the other characters and depth to the storyline.

     In To Kill a Mockingbird, the characters are as diverse as they are interesting and they all add dimension to this classic novel. 

     Look up the words protagonist and antagonist and let us know who you think is the protagonist and the antagonist in the story.     Also pick out your favorite character, explain why and write up a facebook page for that character complete with family members, friends, likes, dislikes and physical description along with a favorite quote. Enjoy and Blog Away!

June assignment for ages 6- 9, read and review the story of "Babe The Gallant Pig!" To start, join the blog and receive a free copy of "Babe the Gallant Pig" in the mail. Tell others about the story and what you liked most about it. 

If you had the opportunity to go to the play or watch the movie I am sure you were enlightened by To Kill a Mockingbird.  However nothing compares to reading the novel by Harper Lee.  This Pulitzer Prize winning book is set in the South during the Depression.  Reading this book will take you into a world where you will meet diverse characters and where racial injustice and lost innocence are central themes throughout the novel. 

We will be exploring this novel and its complexity in the next few weeks. So please get a copy of this timeless book so you can participate in discussions and blogs with others.  Remember that reading holds the key that opens doors to worlds you would otherwise never have known.

Comprehension practice: Read the article and answer the questions.

Contributed by Stephen Ornes

You’ve probably been “as hungry as a bear.” But in the Everglades in southern Florida, you’ll sound more local by comparing your hunger to a python. That’s because in this region’s swamplands, giant snakes called Burmese pythons gobble alligators, birds, raccoons, opossums — even 80-pound deer.

With their ferocious appetites, the snakes have made their presence known to residents and scientists alike. In two new studies, researchers report that in areas where the pythons roam, the mammal population has dropped dramatically. Numbers of deer, bobcats, fox and rabbits are far below what they were 20 years ago, before the pythons arrived.

Federal officials think Burmese pythons were first released into the rugged wilds of the Everglades between 15 and 30 years ago. Since then, the snakes — native to Asia — have gotten comfortable in their new home. Most of the 30,000 or so that now slither through the swamps were probably born there. Others come from pet owners who release the pythons when they get too big.

Scientists know about the pythons’ eating habits because of the wide variety of animals, including alligators and large mammals, that have been found in the snakes’ stomachs, says Michael Dorcas, who led one of the new studies. “But until now, there hadn’t been any indication that the snakes were altering the ecosystem,” he told Science News.

An ecosystem includes all the living things, like animals and plants and other organisms, in a particular region. Dorcas, an ecologist at Davidson College in North Carolina, studies how organisms interact with each other and the environment they share.

The Everglades’ wet fields, mangrove forests and cypress groves are hard for humans to explore. To count animals, Dorcas and his colleagues had to get creative. They took to the roads, driving 313 nights between 2003 and 2011, to count all of the mammals — dead or alive — they saw. Then, they compared their observations to animal counts made from the road during 51 nights in the 1990s.

Burmese pythons let loose in the Florida Everglades are a problem for the swamplands’ alligators and mammals. Credit: Bob DeGross/NPS

Rabbits, among the region’s most common animals in the 1990s, had vanished from the more recent count. The numbers of opossums and raccoons had dropped by 98 percent between the two counts, which means that if the scientists counted 100 of the animals in the 1990s, they counted only two in the 2000s. Across the board, the numbers of small and medium-sized mammals had dropped.

Biologist Joshua Holbrook of Florida Atlantic University in Davie, who worked on another recent study of the region, said he and his collaborator Thomas Chesnes, of Florida’s Palm Beach Atlantic University, turned up similar results. They also drove around southern Florida to estimate how the ecosystem has changed. Over four nights of driving on Everglades roads, the scientists counted only nine mammals. On another stretch of driving, over five nights, they didn’t count any.

“Within the Burmese python’s Florida range … it seems that the sighting of any mammal (especially small mammals) is a rare occurrence,” Holbrook and Chesnes reported in their study.

Efforts are underway to rescue the Everglades from the pythons. Government officials have already removed more than 1,000 Burmese pythons from the area, but that has barely made a difference. In January 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interior officially made it illegal for people to bring Burmese pythons — or other giant snakes like anacondas and some constrictors — into the country.

And the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has just started holding what they call “amnesty” days for pet owners who want to give up pythons and other pets that are not native to Florida. The agency has begun organizing occasional, one-day events around the state so that people can surrender their exotic pets free of charge with no questions asked. “Every attempt will be made to place all healthy animals with qualified adopters,” this Florida commission says. Its programs will accept nonnative reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and invertebrates. But forget Fido and Puss. The program will not find new homes for conventional pets like dogs, cats and ferrets.

 Review by Cathy McLarnon

1. Burmese pythons are native to what area ?

A. Africa

B. Australia

C. Asia

D. Europe

2. An ecosystem includes all non-living things in a particular region ?

A. True

B. False

3. Burmese pythons arrived in Florida ______________ years ago.

A. 5-10

B. 40-50

C. 15-30

4. Most of these snakes were released by pet owners or born there ?

A. True

B. False

5. A scientist who studies how organisms interact with each other and their environment is called a(n)__________________ .

A. geologist

B. environmentalist

C. ecologist

D. archeologist

6. Scientists know that the pythons are changing the ecosystem because they have spent years counting the wildlife in the area ?

A. True

B. False

7. It is legal to bring giant non-native snakes into the U.S. ?

A. True

B. False

8. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission hold "_____________" days so pet owners of non-native pets can be given up.

A. adoption

B. surrender

C. amnesty

D. illegal

POWER WORDS

ecosystem- A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

python- A large, heavy-bodied, nonpoisonous constrictor snake.

mammal- Warm blooded animals that have backbones and often possess hair or fur. Females secrete milk for the nourishment of the young.

biology- The study of living things.

Often times literature is transformed by the theater or motion picture industry.  One example of this is the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of my favorite all time classics.  This was beautifully reinacted 50 years ago as a movie starring Gregory Peck.  It is now being performed through March 4 at the Pointe Performing Arts Center on International Dr.  Each child accompanied by an adult is free.  Also a study guide with a discussion of the story's issues with be available at the box office.  This will be one of our R.E.A.D. Book Club selections in the future.  So please take advantage of this performance and enjoy one of the most enlightening stories ever written.  Let me know your thoughts and feelings and take time to pick up a copy of the book To Kill a Mockingbird. 

1. Research Asperger's and discuss how Caitlin's world is different from most other children.

2. Caitlin must find closure in her life.  What does closure mean and have you ever had to find closure at some point in your life.

3. How does Caitlin relate to the book To Kill a Mockingbird?

4. What do you think is the symbolism behind Devon's unfinished Eagle Scout project?

5. The author, Kathryn Erskine, wrote this book to enlighten others to some of society's issues.  What are some of the topics she highlights and what are your thoughts about these?