The Amazon Forest

The Amazon is often called the lungs of the earth and produces 20% of the world’s oxygen. For this reason, many people are trying to stop deforestation in the rainforest. Brazil, for example, is working hard to help the rainforest survive.

A few years ago, the Brazilian government put forward a plan called ARPA (Amazon Region Protected Areas). It had the support of many international agencies, including the World Bank, and the German Development Bank, KfW. The main aim was to build new areas of protected rainforest, maintain areas of the rainforest that hadn’t yet been destroyed, and stop deforestation. Deforestation contributes greatly to global warming because carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere when trees get cut down and burned.

One of the first areas to be recognized as part of ARPA was the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park. It is 38,800 km² and is the same size as Switzerland, a small country in Central Europe. It’s the world’s largest protected tropical national park, and the second largest national park. It is home to certain species of jaguar, eagle, and lizard, which can only survive in the rainforest. Many of these species are under threat from climate change and deforestation.

In order to work in the park, conservationists need a reliable map. However, no map existed, and they didn’t have enough knowledge to make one on their own. They came up with the idea of involving local tribes to help them, combining modern and ancient methods to produce a map. The tribes learned to use global positioning system handsets (GPS), in conjunction with their local knowledge of the area, which included fishing and hunting grounds, and places of historical or mythical importance. Aerial photos were a 20useful aid in the process as well. This method of map-making is now the key to the future of rainforests, in Brazil and the rest of the world too.

CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus is a newly discovered virus. It causes a disease called Covid-19. In some parts of the world, it has made lots ............ people sick. Corona is a Latin for crown, because ............. the microscope, these viruses look like a crown .............. spikes ending ............... little blobs.

A lot of symptoms are similar to the flu. You may have dry and itchy cough, fever, lots of sneezing and even hard to breathe. Most of people who has gotten sick with this coronavirus have had a mild case. It means you will not feel the disease. But, for people who are much older or who already have health problems are more likely to get sicker with coronavirus.

If anyone gets sick and feels like they may have coronavirus, they can immediately call their doctors and get help. If there is something we are not sure about the information, confused or worried about, don’t be afraid to ask someone we trust.

Here are some things you can do to protect yourself, family and friends from getting sick: 1) wash your hands often using soap and water. 2) Sneeze into your elbows. It is believed that coronavirus spread through little liquid from our lungs. If you sneeze into your elbows, you can prevent germs for going far into the air. 3) Avoid touching your face. Don’t pick your nose. Don’t touch your mouth. Don’t rub your eyes. They are the places where the virus enter our bodies. 

Remember that this kind of virus can affect anybody. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what country you are from. Don’t forget, there are a lot of helpers out there who are working to protect us from the virus. We can take a part by keeping our health and stay at home to stop the virus spread to others.

The difficult journey to Olympic success

For Jessica Morgan, a young athlete New Zealand, a typical day starts early. Most mornings, she gets up 4:30 a.m., while her family is still bed, and trains before school. As an elite rower, she is one the best in her country, and she aims to compete in the next Olympic Games.

Jessica’s weekly schedule is grueling. She trains twice a day, six days a week, and competes in rowing events on the weekends. However, she’s also a normal schoolgirl, and like every other sixteen-year-old at high school, she regularly does her homework, too. Jessica’s motivation is impressive. She never hangs out with friends or takes a vacation. She isn’t only an amazing athlete – she usually gets good grades in school, too. Of course, it isn’t easy to become successful. Being the best at your sport requires hard work, determination, and the help of family and coaches. Young athletes’ relationships with their family and coaches can influence their success in the future. Jessica’s parents usually spend hours every week taking her to training and competitions, and they help her to eat a healthy diet. Her coach plans her training and enters her for competitions. But both parents and coach must offer emotional support, too – for example, when Jessica loses a competition or she gets an injury. Luckily for Jessica, she has a good relationship with both her coach and family. But in other cases, these relationships can place too much pressure on young athletes. For this reason, some of them lose their motivation to do well. For Jessica, the most important factor in her future success is her own desire to win. “I know talented young athletes who give up because they feel lonely without their friends,” she says. “But I prefer not to think negatively.” Jessica believes she is responsible for securing her future success. “It’s my decision to train every morning and go back to it again every afternoon. It’s my decision not to have a social life, and never to take a vacation.” Not everyone can cope with this kind of lifestyle. But each day Jessica moves one step closer to achieving her Olympic dream.

Texto 01

Going Mobile, Going Further!

By Anderson Francisco Guimarães Maia – October 28, 2016

So what happens to “learning” if we add the word “mobile” to it? The increasing and rapidly developing use of mobile technology by English language learners is an unquestionable aspect of today’s classroom. However, the attitude EFL teachers develop towards the use of mobile devices as an aid for language teaching varies greatly.

The unique benefits of mobile learning for EFL teachers include the ability to bridge formal and informal learning, which for language learners may be realized through supplementary out-of-classroom practice, translation support when communicating with target language speakers and the capture of difficulties and discoveries which can be instantly shared as well as being brought back into the classroom. Mobile learning can deliver, supplement and extend formal language learning; or it can be the primary way for learners to explore a target language informally and direct their own development through immediacy of encounter and challenge within a social setting. We still miss sufficient explicit connection between these two modes of learning, one of which is mainly formal and the other informal. Consequently, there are missed opportunities in terms of mutual benefit: formal education remains somewhat detached from rapid socio-technological change, and informal learning is frequently sidelined or ignored when it could be used as a resource and a way to discover more about evolving personal and social motivations for learning.

One example of how mobile devices can bridge formal and informal learning is through instantmessaging applications. Both synchronous and asynchronous activities can be developed for language practice outside the classroom. For example, in a discussion group on Whatsapp, students can discuss short videos, practice vocabulary with picture collages, share recent news, create captions and punch lines for memes, and take turns to create a multimodal story. Teachers can also create applications specifically to practice new vocabulary and grammar to support classroom learning.

Digital and mobile media are changing and extending language use to new environments as well as creating opportunities to learn in different ways. Mobile technology enables us to get physically closer to social contexts of language use which will ultimately influence the ways that language is used and learned. Therefore, let us incorporate mobile learning into our EFL lessons and literally “have the world in our hands”.

        (Disponível em http://www.richmondshare.com.br/going-mobile-going-further/)

Read TEXT 3 and answer question.  

TEXT 3  

THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING  

Michael Scherer

Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.

Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.

“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”

At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.

Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”

Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.

Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014