Mass Reading in Various Classes
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| Mass Reading in class VI, VII, VIII |
Wednesday 25 September 2019
For your Knowledge
75 educational resources to help kids learn about space
Around 13.8 billion years ago, a big bang set in motion the creation of space, matter and everything in existence. About 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth came into existence. And then came humans.
Stephen Hawking said: "Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious."
These educational resources for students will help satisfy some curiosity, whether in the classroom or at home.
Many of these resources can be applied across STEM and STEAM classes; set for homework; or used to expand students' imagination.
Each resource is listed with the year-level it aligns to in the Australian Curriculum, but most will appeal to students of all years – including adults!
There are brilliant resources from NASA, Catalyst, BTN, the experts at The Conversation and the ABC archives, including high-quality videos, cool games and explainer articles that answer students' most frequently asked questions about space.............................More
Thursday 12 September 2019
Friday 6 September 2019
For Your Knowledge
Can people live in space?
The short answer is yes, but it’s really, really difficult.
Humans are great at living in tough places. Even before we developed modern technology, we had spread out to live in all of Earth’s continents – from the really cold areas in North America, Europe and Asia to the hottest parts of Australia. But there are still lots of places on Earth humans can’t normally survive – like underneath the ocean or at the South Pole.
Those places are dangerous – without protection, you would die in seconds or minutes. But, thanks to modern technology, we’ve worked out how to live there. People can live for months at a time under the oceans or down at the icy South Pole.
How do they manage it? Well, they find a way to make the conditions there more like what we’re used to at home.
To live underwater, people build submarines. They’re warm and dry inside – perfect conditions for people to live in. People take food, oxygen and water with them into submarines, and use electricity to power lights and heaters. In other words, they change a cold, dark and dangerous place (deep beneath the ocean) into something like a home.
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| People live at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station all year around – even during the six month long Antarctic night! |
We do the same at the South Pole. We build special buildings, and dig tunnels, and make them warm and dry. The people who live there take food and water with them, and there’s extra heating so people don’t freeze in the Antarctic winds and ice.
But you can’t live in these cold, dark places forever. Humans don’t cope well if they don’t get enough sunlight, so they do need to get back to “normal life” after a while. And it’s really expensive to bring all the food, water, air and energy to these places.
Life in space
Space is very dangerous – and without protection, people would not be able to survive there. In space, there’s no air – so you couldn’t breathe. It’s cold – so you’d freeze. And there’s lots of nasty radiation (from the Sun, and from the rest of the Universe), so you’d get really, really bad sunburn. But despite all that, we have people living in space all the time!
There’s this amazing place orbiting the Earth called the International Space Station – and there are people who live there, all day, every day. You can sometimes even see it from your backyard, on a clear night!
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| This is what the International Space Station looks like, close up |
The space station is like a submarine built especially for space. A giant tin can filled with air and kept nice and warm – not too hot and not too cold. It protects the astronauts from the cold of space, gives them air to breathe and protects them from all that nasty radiation. We send up regular shipments of food and drink – everything they need to survive.
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| Here’s an astronaut on a space walk outside the International Space Station |
In other words, we’ve found a way to let people live outside Earth, and we do it by making the place we want to live just like home. Again, though, it’s not safe for people to live there forever, and being in space for a long time isn’t good for your body.
If people ever get to live on Mars or the Moon – or other places in the Solar system (and beyond) – it will be because we have found a way to make those places nice, safe and a bit more like home.
While living on the Moon or Mars sounds like science fiction, people are talking seriously about doing just that in the future. It would be very dangerous and really expensive. But who knows what the future holds?
http://education.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/3245905/curious-kids-can-people-live-in-space-
Tuesday 3 September 2019
For your Knowledge
How was maths discovered? Who made up the numbers and rules?
The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to answer. Bianca from Strathfield, Sydney, wants to know how maths was discovered. An expert explains.
We are all born with a brain that understands maths. So are animals, to some extent, but perhaps algebra would be a bit difficult for a giraffe – that is a long stretch.
Throughout history, different cultures have discovered the maths needed for tasks like understanding groups and relationships, sharing food, looking at astronomical and seasonal patterns, and more. There are probably forms of mathematics that were understood by people we don’t even know existed.
Many indigenous cultures worked with different time, measurement, and number ideas suited to their needs and had amazing ways of expressing these ideas. But there are some things that are very common, like counting.
There was an explosion of discovery of mathematics in different cultures at different points in time.
The Greeks didn’t really use algebra the way we do now, but they were amazing with geometry. I am sure you have heard of Pythagoras, but do you know of the woman mathematician Hypatia? She was an amazing teacher and writer, skilled at making difficult concepts easy to understand.
Unfortunately, she was killed for her ideas.
Not everyone had the number zero
The Romans were great engineers, but they had a terrible number system. It didn’t even have zero.
The number system used in ancient India had zero, but it was known by other very old cultures like the Mayans in Central America and the Babylonians (from ancient Iraq). And ancient Arab mathematicians not only knew about zero but also really spread the idea of algebra after the 9th century (the word comes from a text by a famous mathematician called al-Khwarizmi).
People in the Middle Ages in Europe thought fractions were the hardest maths EVER! One 11th century monk reportedly said, "After spending months working hard and studying, I finally grasped this thing called fractions!"
And in the 16th century, people thought negative numbers were pretty evil. They had other names for these numbers, like “absurd” or “defective”.
Numbers and patterns have always been there, waiting to be discovered
There are so many number systems! The ones you know were developed over centuries and we are still making up more now. But much of our maths is based on one system called “base 10”, which works on patterns of one to ten (that probably has its roots in the fact that humans have 10 fingers to count on). It’s also called the decimal system.
But there are lots of other systems, like base 2 (also called the binary system) or base 16 (also called the hexadecimal system).
It sounds complicated but they’re just different ways of organising numbers. Numbers have always been there, waiting to be discovered and so were different ways of organising them.
And over time, humans in various cultures have noticed patterns that emerge in numbers and developed mathematical systems around them
Breaking the rules
There are plenty of other rules in mathematics, but they are based on recognising patterns and wondering if something works that way all the time. Let’s look at these two equations:
3 x 2 = 62 x 3 = 6
You’ve probably learned that it doesn’t matter if you multiply three by two or two by three – you always get six, right? That’s a mathematical “rule” called the “commutative law for multiplication” (“commute” means to move around).
But what if there were some maths worlds where that didn’t happen? Well, there is a certain type of maths, called “matrices”, that was discovered in the 19th century, where you get a different answer, depending on which way you multiply.
Why would anyone want to do that? It turns out that this type of maths is really useful in many different areas, including airline travel and engineering.
You may even end up being a famous mathematician that discovers more maths, creates more rules or makes up some more names.
About 100 years ago, a mathematician called Edward Kasner was trying to think up a name for a huge number: 1 with one hundred zeros after it. He asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, who suggested “googol”.
So, Bianca, why not think of a name for a new number? Or look around at some shapes and ask yourself what you might name it?
Monday 19 August 2019
For Your Knowledge
INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY 2019
International Literacy Day 2019 will be celebrated at Sunday, on 8thof September.
INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY CELEBRATION
According to the global monitoring report over education it is noted that one among the five man and two third women is illiterate. Some of them have minimum literacy skills, some children are still out of school and some are irregularly attending the school. South and West Asia is noted to have the lowest adult literacy rate of about 58.6%. The countries with the lowest literacy rate are Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
The day is celebrated having special themes, programs and goals of education all over the world. The theme of year 2007 and 2008 celebration was the Literacy and Health (strong attention over the epidemics to prevent people from the communicable diseases like HIV, Tuberculosis, cholera and Malaria). The theme of the year 2009 and 2010 was the Literacy and Empowerment of women whereas the theme of 2011 and 2012 celebration was the Literacy and Peace.
The importance of celebrating the day is to promote the public consciousness about extraordinary value of written word and requirement to encourage the literate rate of the society. Some of the writers writing to support literacy improvement are Margaret Atwood, Paulo Coelho, Philippe Delerm, Paul Auster, Philippe Claudel, Fatou Diome and many more.
Some of the companies, charity organizations, Global Development Research Center, Rotary International, Montblanc and the National Institute for Literacy are also involved in supporting the social literacy. Literacy shapes the life of human beings as well as builds up their cultural identity.
WHY INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY IS CELEBRATED
Celebrating the International Literacy Day is to promote the human attention towards the literacy and know their rights for social and human development. Literacy is as important as food to be alive and success. It is too necessary to eradicate the poverty, lowering the child mortality, controlling the population growth, attaining the gender equality and etc.
Literacy has the ability to raise the family status and hence the country status. It is celebrated to encourage the people towards getting continuous education and understand their responsibilities for the family, society and the country.
INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY THEMES
International Literacy Day celebration takes place on a specific theme of the year in order to make it effective by executing some strategic plan to resolve the problems related to the illiteracy all over the world in many countries. Some of the year wise themes of the International Literacy Day are mentioned below:
> Theme for 2006 was “Literacy sustains development” to focus on achieving social progress.
> Theme for 2007 and 2008 was “Literacy and Health” to focus on literacy and epidemics (communicable diseases like HIV, Tuberculosis, Malaria, etc).
> Theme for 2009-2010 was “Literacy and Empowerment” to focus on gender equality and empowering women.
> Theme for 2011-2012 was “Literacy and Peace” to focus on importance of literacy for peace.
> The theme for 2013 was “Literacies for the 21st Century” to promote global literacy.
> Theme for 2014 was “Literacy and Sustainable Development” to promote sustainable development in the areas of social development, economic growth, and environmental integration.
> Theme for 2015 was “Literacy and Sustainable Societies”.
> The theme of 2016 was “Reading the Past, Writing the Future”.
> The theme of 2017 was “Literacy in a digital world”.
> Theme for the international literacy day of 2018 was “Literacy and skills development”..
Saturday 17 August 2019
For Your Knowledge
MOST PRECIOUS MOMENTS OF INDEPENDENT INDIA
- In 1951, India’s first general election was held. The voter turnout was 45.7%.
- In 1951, India started a new legacy when we hosted the first Asian Games.
- In 1966, Reita Faria Powell became the first Asian woman to win the Miss World.
- In 1974, our first organised resistance to destruction of forests, the Chipko movement, began.
- In 1974, we also entered into the nuclear club and carried out our first nuclear test in Pokhran.
- In 1975, Aryabhatta, our first man-made satellite, named after the 5th century mathematician, was launched. Since then we never looked back and progressed in this field.
- In 1979, Mother Teresa’s charitable work was noticed at a global level when she won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
- In 1983, India won the cricket World Cup for the first time, and made a mark as world-class sportsmanship.
- In 1984 Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to enter space opening the doors for bigger outer space ventures.
- In 1991, India opened its gates to the global market and initiated economic liberalization.
- In 1999, India defeated Pakistan in the Kargil War and re-captured Tiger Hill.
- In 2005, India became one of the few nations to enact the Right to Information (RTI).
- In 2007, India became one of the first few countries to have a woman head of state when Pratibha Patil took over as President of India.
- In 2007, India won the T20 World Cup.
- In 2008, we always had hits and misses at the Olympics, but we reached new heights when Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal in the 10m Air Rifle event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
- In 2009, A.R. Rehman brought a proud moment for the country when he received an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire.
- In 2011, India won the cricket World Cup again.
- In 2011, we decided to take a stand against the system and supported Anna Hazare in his campaign against corruption.
- In 2012, Defence Research and Development Organisation successfully tested the missile Agni – V, taking a big step towards being more powerful.
- In 2012, the Indian government declared the Golden Quadrilateral complete. Over 40,000 km of highways and expressways were added to our infrastructure.
- In 2014, after years of battling with Polio, India was declared polio free.
- In 2014, we became the first country to reach the Mars orbit in the very first attempt.
- In 2014, after several years of disappointment, our hockey team made a glorious comeback when they defeated Pakistan in the 2014 Asian Games.
- In 2014, Kailash Satyarthi made us proud when he received the Nobel Prize for Peace.
- In 2015, India successfully reduced its school dropout rate by 90%, ensuring primary education to all its children.
- In 2015, the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, New Delhi, won the award of best Airport from Airport International Council.
- In 2016, India carried out surgical strike across the border on terror outfits in Pakistan territory.
- In 2017, India’s first full time woman Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman took charge.
- In 2017, India’s Manushi Chillar was crowned Miss World in an event in China.
- In 2018, India’s longest railroad bridge over Brahmaputra (Bogibeel Bridge) was inaugurated by the Prime Minister in Assam.
- In 2018, India launched its first ever Semi High Speed electric train named Train 18 or Vande Bharat Express.
- In 2019, India launched Chandrayaan-2, its second moon exploration mission on 22nd July 2019.
- In 2019, Government of India abrogated Article 370 from the state of Jammu & Kashmir on 5th August 2019.
Friday 16 August 2019
For your Knowledge
Lets Know more about our Tricolor
Do you Know Flag hoisting is done in accordance with flag code of India 2002. This Code was made by Ministry of Home affairs. Please read the PDF as whole to know more about our tricolor.
Flag Code of India is meant to preserve the Integrity and respect of the tricolor
Flag Code of India is meant to preserve the Integrity and respect of the tricolor
Significance and Meaning of the National Flag of India
The Tiranga is a horizontal rectangular tricolour of India saffron, white and India green. It has an Ashoka Chakra, a 24-spoke wheel, in the shade of navy blue at its centre.
On August 15, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, hoisted the national flag at Lahori Gate of the Red Fort in Delhi. Henceforth, on each Independence Day, the incumbent Prime Minister customarily unfurls the tricolour and addresses the nation.
Notably, the Indian National Flag is a horizontal rectangular tricolour of India saffron, white and India green. It has an Ashoka Chakra, a 24-spoke wheel, in the shade of navy blue at its centre.
The Tiranga was adopted during a meeting of the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947. It went on to become the official flag of the
Dominion of India on August 15, 1947.
The flag is based on the Swaraj flag, a flag of the Indian National Congress designed by Pingali Venkayya which was first unfurled in 1923.
By law, the flag is to be made of khadi, a special type of hand-spun cloth or silk, made popular by Mahatma Gandhi and its manufacturing process and specifications are laid out by the Bureau of Indian Standards.
Khadi Development and Village Industries Commission has the right to manufacture the flag.
Usage of the flag is governed by the Flag Code of India and other laws relating to the national emblems.
According to the Flag code of India, the Indian flag has a ratio of two by three. All three stripes of the flag (saffron, white and green) are to be equal in width and length. The size of the Ashoka Chakra is not specified by the Flag code of India.
The flag was first proposed by Mahatma Gandhi to Indian National Congress (INC) in 1921 and subsequently the centre representing a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi's goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing was created.
The design was then modified to include a white stripe in the centre for other religious communities.
The saffron, white and green win the flag; represent courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry respectively.
Days before India gained independence; a specially constituted Constituent Assembly decided that the flag of India must be accepted by all parties and faiths. Thus, a new version of the Swaraj flag was chosen where even though the tricolour remained the same, the charkha was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra representing the eternal wheel of law
Rules for Hoisting our Tiranga
1. The national flag of India is ideally made of hand-spun and hand-woven wool, cotton, and silk or khadi fabric. It is always rectangular in shape and the ratio of its length to height is 3:2.
2. When the Flag is flown, it should occupy the position of honour. The Flag should be positioned with the saffron band on top and the green band at the bottom.
3. Where it’s customary to hoist the Flag on a building, it will be flown on all days, including Sundays and public holidays. The flag will be hoisted from sunrise to sunset, irrespective of weather conditions.
4. Tiranga should not be in a disheveled condition. It shouldn’t be torn, damaged or disrespected in any manner.
5. The Flag should never be stuffed with sweets, flowers or confetti while unfurling.
6. The tricolour should never be hoisted at half pole. Once hoisted, one should keep in mind that the flag should never touch the ground or trail in water.
7. The national flag should be hoisted at a fast pace but lowered slowly. It is to be noted that while hoisting and lowering the Flag, bugle sound should play.
8. While the flag is being hoisted, everyone should face it. People should stand in attention and sing the national anthem.
9. No other flag should fly higher than the Indian flag or placed side-by-side.
10. The Flag should be taken down in the evening and should be folded and kept in a wooden box.
Display of Tiranga
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| The Tiranga is colored with saffron as the top band, white band in the centre, dark green band at the bottom and a navy blue Asokha Chakra placed at the centre of the white band. |
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| Correct horizontal and vertical display of the flag |
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| Placement protocol for the Indian flag with another country's flag |
Thursday 8 August 2019
Lets Play
Do this without lifting your pencil
When I was five years old, a kid in my neighborhood challenged me with a puzzle that I’ve remembered ever since. As it turns out, there’s much more to this puzzle than meets the eye.
Puzzle 1: Draw this shape without picking up your pencil or redrawing the same stretch of line more than once. ........
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