This worksheet has been
made for our elementary students (A Senior), who have been taught comparative
and superlative forms of the adjectives during last week’s grammar lessons, in order
to have an extra activity available.
But it’s also available
to everyone who wants to use it. You can download or print it here. The full
Pdf file also contains answer sheet.
In 1999, UNESCO decided to launch an International
Mother Language Day (IMLD) to be observed throughout the world each year on 21
February.
This celebration is designed to promote linguistic
diversity and multilingual education, to highlight greater awareness of the
importance of mother tongue education.
Multilingualism is a source of strength and
opportunity for humanity. It embodies our cultural diversity and encourages the
exchange of views, the renewal of ideas and the broadening of our capacity to
imagine.
Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General
Linguistic and cultural diversity represent universal
values that strengthen the unity and cohesion of societies. That is why
UNESCO’s Director-General, in launching IMLD 2013, will reinforce the
importance of this core message and specifically highlight this year’s theme of
access to books and digital media in local languages.
UNESCO’s Member States worldwide are key actors in the
promotion of mother tongues through their national institutions and
associations. The media, schools, universities and cultural associations play
an active part in promoting the IMLD goals.
Using the slogan “Books for Mother tongue education”,
IMLD 2013 aims to remind key stakeholders in education that in order to to
support mother tongue education, it is essential to support the production of
books in local languages.
The importance of written materials in mother tongues
Mother tongue education in its broader sense refers to
the use of mother tongues in the home environment and in schools. Language
acquisition and mother tongue literacy should ideally be supported by written
resources such as - but not limited to - books, primers and textbooks, to
support oral activities. Written materials in mother tongues reinforce
learners’ literacy acquisition and build strong foundations for learning.
Today, a great number of languages lack a written form,
yet progress has been made in developing orthography. Local and international
linguists, educationalists, teachers work together with for example Indigenous
peoples in Latin America, or tribes in Asia to develop orthography. The use of
computers to produce books and the relatively low cost of digital printing are
promising ways to produce cheaper written materials to enable wider access.
This video was produced by the UNESCO Liaison Office
in New York in 2010, on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day,
to raise awareness on the importance on languages today.
Mother tongue education
UNESCO advocates for mother tongue instruction in a
bilingual or multilingual education approach in the early years because of its
importance in creating a strong foundation for learning: the use mother tongue
with young children at home or in pre-school prepares them for the smooth
acquisition of literacy in their mother tongue and eventually, the acquisition
of the second (perhaps national) language at a later stage in their schooling.
UNESCO defines bilingual and multilingual education as
“ the use of two or more languages as mediums of instruction. The Organization
adopted the term ‘multilingual education’ in 1999 to refer to the use of at
least three languages in education: the mother tongue; a regional or national
language and an international language.
The importance of mother tongue instruction in the
early years of schooling is emphasized in the findings of studies, research and
reports such as the annual UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report.
Activities
UNESCO is launching the IMLD celebration 2013 with an
event at its Paris Headquarters on the theme of the Day: “Mother tongues and
books - including digital books and textbooks”. Experts in languages will
highlight the contribution of mother tongues to the promotion of linguistic and
cultural diversity, and the development of intercultural education through ,
for example, digital archives of the world languages.
UNESCO will participate in a round table at the
University of Evry (France), where the findings of a study, “What languages do
students from the University of Evry speak?”, will be presented. University
professors, students and linguists will address issues concerning languages and
education. UNESCO will present its position on mother tongue instruction in a
bilingual or multilingual education approach.
IMLD 2013 is linked to the World Summit on Information
Society (WSIS). UNESCO is organizing a session on cultural diversity and
identity, linguistic diversity and local content at WSIS on 26 February. The
objective is to increase access to local educational content and related
knowledge and information through the use of local languages in digital
textbooks.
Less than
5km (two miles) from central Nairobi lie the smouldering mountains of rubbish
thrown away by the residents and businesses of the Kenyan capital. Dandora is
one of Africa's largest dumping and scavenging grounds. Every day thousands of
slum dwellers try to eke out a living. This man took nearly three hours to fill
his last bag of the day - and he hopes to sell the contents, which are mostly
scraps of rubber, for $0.50 (£0.30).
People
rummage through the filth, sorting into large sacks the materials that cannot
be eaten - but can be sold for recycling. Metals, rubber, milk bags, plastics,
meat bones, and electronics are some of the most sought-after recyclables. The
Nairobi city council does not officially condone this informal system of
recycling, which helps to manage the dump. Dandora opened in 1975, and under
international environmental laws should have been closed after 15 years. The
council says it now has plans to open up another site.
An
informal chain of about 6,000 middlemen and women has long done the dirty work
for recycling companies. The self-employed pickers scavenge through the
sprawling 30-acre rubbish dump from dawn until dusk. They then take their sacks
to nearby weigh stations where small buyers purchase them, eventually collecting
enough to sell on to the informal truck drivers, who deliver the loads to the
recycling companies. Pickers say they are lucky to make $2.50 in a day.
Julius
Macharia, 27, who prefers to go by the nickname “Tiger”, is one of Dandora’s
gatekeepers. In exchange for security, truck drivers pay his cartel to enter
the site. Here, he directs a truck to an acceptable location - pickers shout at
him to find a spot that does not spill onto an area they have yet to sort
through. Despite being declared full by the Nairobi council in 2001, an
estimated 2,000 tonnes of waste are still dumped each day.
Tiger
worries about what will happen to those who depend on Dandora, should the
government shut down the dump or open a new one elsewhere. After 40 years, a certain
rhythm of life has developed and families have grown to depend on the income
and food they get from scavenging. "We are like these birds and pigs to
this city,” Tiger says. “They don’t recognize us as people. They don’t care
what happens to us, and if they relocate this place then we will have nothing.”
Pickers
say they never get used to the acrid smoke from the burning piles of waste
which cover Dandora. A 2007 study by the UN's environmental agency found soil
samples containing fatally high levels of lead in a community bordering the
dump. It also found that 154 of the 328 children tested suffered from
respiratory problems because of the site and had concentrations of lead in
their blood that exceeded internationally accepted levels.
At roughly
the same time every day, the unfinished salads, sandwiches, bread, and other
foodstuffs from flights to Nairobi's busy international airport are transported
to Dandora by this green truck. The scraps hardly make it out of the truck
before dozens of men fight over the haul.
The
strongest men and boys climb on every possible inch of the truck - while others
wait their turn or for friends to toss them a morsel. Women usually avoid the
frenzy, hovering in the background waiting for the crowd to thin out before
picking through what remains.
This boy
slurps down a carton of yoghurt - it is hot, liquefied and reeking after being
baked by the sun. Nevertheless, it is one of the most coveted items.
A trip to
the dump is part of the school day for nearly a quarter of the 850 students at
St John’s Informal School, which borders Dandora. For some of them, the food
waste is the only meal they will have all day - and so the school does not mete
out any punishment for absenteeism.
Rahab Ruguru, a 42-year-old mother
of six, lives on the outskirts of Dandora. Apart from a four-year-old, Mrs
Ruguru takes her whole family scavenging at weekends and after classes - to
earn money for school fees, books and uniforms. No matter what regulations the
bureaucrats in Nairobi may issue, she does not see a time they will stop
picking through Kenya's leftovers. “If this site moves, then I will move with
it - or we will not survive,” she says.
Source: BBC News/
Text by David Conrad and photos by
Micah Albert/Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting
Pausing
in the rain, a woman working as a trash picker at Nairobi's Dandora dump, which
spills into households of one million people living in nearby slums, wishes she
had more time to look at the books she sometimes comes across. She even likes
the industrial parts catalogs. “It gives me something else to do in the day
besides picking [trash],” she said. Image by Micah Albert. Kenya,
2012.
Pulitzer
Center grantee Micah Albert's image of a young woman reading in the Dandora
dump site in Kenya placed first in the contemporary issues/singles category of
the World Press Photo Contest. Albert's work is part of the Pulitzer
Center-sponsored project "Buried in Dandora: Voices of Nairobi's Waste
Management Disaster" which documents the livelihoods of the people in the
communities surrounding the massive dump.
World
Press Photo's annual contest brings global attention to chosen works through
exhibitions and publications. The foundation exists to inspire understanding of
the world through quality photojournalism.
Dandora
Nairobi’s
Dandora Municipal Dump Site has been officially "full" for years and
is implicated in a host of diseases--yet provides employment to scavengers.
Views from the dump and from those nearby.
Kenya’s
Dandora Municipal Dump Site is the only dumping location for waste in Nairobi,
East Africa’s most populous city, and serves as a provocative starting point
for understanding the growing health, poverty, and sanitation problems facing
the rapidly expanding capital and region.
Located
just 8 km from the central business district, the 30-acre Dandora site
literally spills into the households of nearly 1 million people living in
nearby slums. This project addresses what proximity to the dump has meant for
the the health, dignity, spirit, and landscape of these surrounding
communities, in the process uncovering the neglected voices of the people whose
livelihoods are affected daily by Dandora. Behind the statistics of children
with respiratory ailments, toxic blood lead levels, skin disorders, and fatal
diseases directly attributed to the waste are stories of communities that have
grown to depend on the dump--from street children who live off the money they
make selling food and other items they find in its piles to residents who are
paid pennies a day by private cartels to sort and recycle waste.
The
country’s leadership has long shown alarming indifference to Dandora – ignoring
environmental laws, UN-commissioned health studies, and calls for closure from
human rights groups. A contested February 2012 process to decommission the site
was recently canceled. Through a narrative of survival amidst tragic health and
environmental consequences, this project explores a marginalized population
long overshadowed by an industrializing city’s expansion.
The Photografer
Micah
Albert is a freelance documentary photographer represented by Redux Pictures
photo agency. Based in northern California, he specializes in and is passionate
about difficult-to-access regions and the ensuing, and often times
under-covered, issues.
He
received his B.A. from Point Loma Nazarene University’s Keller Visual Art Center
in Graphic Communications in 2002. Since 2005 Micah has worked on documenting
projects including the global food crisis in Yemen, Dinka cattle camps in South
Sudan, insecurity and unrest in Darfur refugee camps in Chad, marginalized
Kurds living in Syria, undocumented refugees living in Jordan, gender-based
violence in rebel-controlled territories in DR Congo, post-election unrest in
Kenya, and overfishing practices in Tanzania.
His
clients include The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC, The Washington
Times, National Geographic Traveler and many others.
He
currently lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife and daughter.
Keeping up with and
supervising children’s online activity can challenging, especially when they
have their own computers, smartphones, tablets and games consoles ... or they
are in other people’s homes. Understand the risks yourself and plan ahead before
allowing children access to the internet.
Get started...
Make sure children are
educated about the risks of going online.
Use parental control
settings.
The Risks
Inappropriate contact:
from people who may wish to abuse, exploit or bully them.
Inappropriate conduct:
because of their own and others’ online behaviour, such as the personal
information they make public. They may also become either targets or
perpetrators of cyberbullying.
Inappropriate content:
being able to access sexually explicit, racist, violent, extremist or other
harmful material.
Commercialism: directing
aggressive advertising and marketing material at children.
Children gaining access
to your own personal information stored on your computer.
Children enabling
viruses and spyware by careless or misinformed use of your computer.
Keeping Children Safe Online
There are several ways
to safeguard children. Undoubtedly the most effective is to educate them from
an early age about the risks they may encounter when online ... what these
risks are, how to spot them and what action to take. There are a number of
online age-appropriate educational resources available to parents/guardians and
teachers, and children themselves, covering every aspect of online safety for
children.
You should also take the
following measures. Remember that these factors will change as children grow up
and should be reconsidered regularly.
Set ground rules about
use of the internet, email and texts. They should learn to take responsibility
for their own actions and develop their own judgement.
Make children aware that
online contacts may not be who they say they are.
Children must keep
personal details private.
Ensure that they use a
family email address when filling in online forms.
They must never meet unsupervised
with anyone they have contacted via the internet.
Get children to report
concerns about conversations, messages and behaviours to you or another known
and trusted adult. Encourage them to share their internet experience with you
and make it a shared family experience.
Get children to report
bullying online, by text or phone immediately to you.
Use the parental control
settings on your browser, search engine and internet security package.
Alternatively, consider
buying specialist parental control software.
Block pop-ups and spam
emails.
Consider enabling online
access from only a family computer located in a shared room.
Always sit with younger
children when they are online.
Consider choosing a
child-friendly home page in your browser settings.
Learn the language of
chatrooms and log on yourself so you know how it works.
Consider setting up a
family e-mail account which can be used specifically to register for websites,
competitions etc.
Tell your children not
to illegally copy copyrighted content such as music, films or software.
Ensure that your
children do not have access to your logon account so that they cannot access,
alter or delete your files.
Take care to limit
children's access to credit card and bank information. Similarly, ensure they
cannot gain access to an online shop or other website where your details are
stored.
Set limits on when they
can use the computer, and for how long.
Remember that a lot of
the above advice also applies to your children’s use of mobile phones, tablets
and games consoles.
Know how
to recognize the causes and signs of this common problem in kids
By
Katherine Lee
Anxiety
is an all-too-common problem faced by children today. As with adults, children
respond differently to stress depending on their age, individual personalities
and coping skills. When it comes to anxiety in children, younger
grade-schoolers may not be able to fully explain their feelings whereas older
kids may be able to say exactly what’s bothering them and why (though that’s no
guarantee that they’ll share that information with mom or dad).
In most
cases, fear and anxiety and stress in children change or disappear with age.
For instance, a kindergartener who experiences separation anxiety may become a
social butterfly who bounds into school in the later grades. A second grader
who is afraid of the dark or of monsters may grow into a kid who loves ghost
stories.
Once parents
determine whether what their child is experiencing is something temporary or a
more deeply-rooted anxiety disorder, they can then find ways to help their
child manage stress and anxiety.
Signs of
Anxiety in Children
Changes
in behavior or temperament are common flags that may indicate that your child
may be experiencing stress and anxious feelings. Some common signs include:
Complaints
of stomach aches or headaches
Sleep
problems or difficulty concentrating
Behavioral
changes such as moodiness, a short temper or clinginess
Development
of a nervous habit, such as nail biting
Refusal
to go to school or getting into trouble at school
Common
Causes of Childhood Stress
The
source of anxiety and stress in children can be something external, such as a
problem at school, changes in the family, or a conflict with a friend. Anxious
feelings can also be caused by a child's internal feelings and pressures, such
as wanting to do well in school or fit in with peers. Some common causes of
stress in children include:
Big
changes in the family. Major life changes that can lead to stress in children
include divorce, a death in the family, moving, or even the birth of a new
sibling. These seismic shifts can rock your grade-schooler’s world and turn it
upside down. Major life changes can shake your child’s sense of security, and
make her feel confused and anxious. For example, a new sibling can make a child
feel threatened and jealous. A death in the family, particularly of a
grandparent or someone else close to the child, can create confusion and grief,
as well as anxiety and stress.
Overly-packed
schedules. If your child is constantly running from one activity to another, he
may feel stressed, especially if he’s the kind of kid who needs some quiet
downtime to himself every once in a while.
Self-inflicted
pressure. Many children can experience anxiety about wanting to do well in
school. They may want to fit in with other kids and be liked. Self-generated
pressure is particularly common in children who are afraid of making mistakes
or not being good at something.
Stress
caused by something at school. Bullies or cliques can become an issue once kids
enter grade-school. Even if a child isn’t being bullied, the pressure to fit in
and be popular can be stressful and lead to stress in children. For younger
grade-schoolers, separation anxiety can be a common problem.
A
terrible news event. News headlines and television news images about natural
disasters, terrorism, and violence can be upsetting and can often cause stress
in children. When kids see and hear about terrible news events, they may worry
that something bad might happen to them or to someone they love.
A scary
movie or a book. Fictional stories can also cause distress or anxiety in children.
Children are commonly affected by frightening, violent, or upsetting scenes
from a movie or passages in a book. While some kids might be more sensitive to
some media content than others -- what's scary or upsetting for one child might
have no affect on another -- it's a good idea to know what might upset your
child, limit violent media content, and stick to age-appropriate movies, books,
videogames and other media.
