Nonfiction Reading Response #1

   According to the article, Why America’s Kids Need New Standards for Science Education by Anna Kuchment, science education needs to be improved. It is said that in America, barely any high school gets education on areas like Earth and space science. Thus, a group of scientists, educators and policymakers decided that what we need is the Next Generation Science Standards. This designs what we should be learning at each grade. It is a comprehensive set of K-12 students’ expectations for different areas of science: Earth and space, life and physical. This standard has to be made due to the fact that too many people are damaging the environment without out knowing that they are. The only to solve this is by teaching. Learning about the Earth, the environment, and the world around us can tell the kids what we should and should not do. Just by integrating the science programs in the state, it allows the kids to learn more and up-to-date information. This cannot be convinced by only textbooks and words, it has to be done through hand-on experiment with a full understanding of the subject. These are all the things that the New Generation Science Standards encourages. Even if our generation is the one polluting and harming the environment, we should at least make the most effort to assure that the generation after this would be different.

       Wysession convey this message through flashbacks of how we, humans are the main threat to our own environment:

And I thought about the long string of volcanic eruptions, rapid climate swings, tsunamis, droughts, floods, and other geoscience catastrophes that have routinely devastated the human population and prevented any one civilization from lasting very long. Then I thought about the nearly unbelievable changes that we humans were making to our planet, most certainly replacing the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch with the new Anthropocene Epoch. And I wondered how we would know at what point these human impacts would be severe enough to justify replacing the 65-million-year-old Cenozoic Era with a new era, the Anthropozoic Era, the sixth major extinction of life, brought about by the current dominant agent of geologic change on our planet (Wysession).

This quotation illustrates the many aspects and how we change many things. It also shows the fact that many people have been the long term causes of these devastating disasters. Even though many humans had been wiped out, we contribute to the start of these disasters as well as geologic changes. These things occur because humans don’t know about the damages that it can make; we don’t know that we need to protect the environment we live in. And we shouldn’t be blamed because we had never been taught well enough to keep these in our mind. This is where Science comes in, children, from as young as 1^st grade to learn and realize about the environment around themselves. Every tree being cut down reduces less oxygen for us, every piece of garbage we litter; every smoker, car driver, factory worker are releasing harmful chemicals into the air. “It is well known that most Americans get nearly all their science education after they leave high school” (Wysession). Education starts early and we need to make sure that kids get all their science education before high school.

What America needs is the Next Generation Science Standards.

       The Next Generation Science Standards benefits students in many ways. It not only insures that kids get all their science education before college, it also integrates other important things as well. “They integrate concepts of engineering and technology and develop ties to the math and English “Common Core” standards” (Wysession). This helps to bring more lively classes as well as not always staying on one subject. It helps the kids to realize how everything is related and how everything works together. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) also have listed the steps for a kid to understand science:

The aim of NGSS is to identify what students can do, not what they know. After all, if you want to know how many planets there are, you can always look that up on the web. If you want to understand why they are important and how they function as part of a system, the solar system, then there are a set of practices you should do, which the NGSS identify as (1) Asking Questions and Defining Problems, (2) Developing and Using Models, (3) Planning and Carrying Out Investigations, (4) Analyzing and Interpreting Data, (5) Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking, (6) Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions, (7) Engaging in Argument from Evidence, and (8) Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information (Wysession).

The NGSS created this list to insure that every student studying science will have a full understanding of it by the time he/she walks out of high school. Words in a textbook cannot summarize what happening outside of the classroom. We need well-trained scientists and teachers who would work with these kids on projects, hand-on activities, and even as simple as going on a field trip to observe plants. Every outside experience contributes to a major part of the kids understanding of the subject. Reading words is not as the same as feeling it. When you see it and feel it, you have a clearer visual imagine of it and you actually see what the condition it lives in, in person! These are the things that a book, a picture, a magazine cannot tell you.

       Overall, I think that the New Generation Science Standards is really efficient and helpful. It takes science to a whole new level and it makes it so that everyone can understand it. NGSS is providing the opportunity for you, me and all of us to know about the earth, the environment; so that we know the importance of our surroundings and how to protect them. I hope that NGSS will be presented to all the science programs in schools around the city.

                                                                 Work Cited

Kuchment, Anna. "Why America€™'s Kids Need New Standards for Science Education Budding Scientist, Scientific American Blog Network." Why America€™s Kids Need New Standards for Science Education. Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc., 8 Jan. 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Link:http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/budding-scientist/2013/01/08/why-americas-kids-need-new-standards-for-science-education/

Creative Reading Response

The Great Gatsby 

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

   In the eye of Nick or most readers, Gatsby is great. As a child, he dreamed of wealth and luxury, and he has attained them with his own power. But as for me, Gatsby is great for his tragedy. 

     In Gatsby's entire life he has perused two things, one is spiritual comfort, Daisy; the other is materialism. However, what he is always long for, at last, becomes illusions.

     Five years ago, Gatsby felt helplessly in love with Daisy when he was a young officer in WWI, World War One. But Daisy married Tom for his wealth. Since then, Gatsby decided to win his love and his success in whatever ways. But the glamour and excitement of American life has affected Daisy a lot. She has become materialistic, vain and selfish. Gatsby has made a wrong choice at first for that what he wanted never exists. 

     “Her voice is full of money.” Gatsby is clear about reality, but he can’t get rid of his dreams. So he had to cheat himself and found many excuses for Daisy’s abnormal behaviors. “Five years next November.” For five years he is alone to run after a dream which no longer exists. Poor Gatsby! His loneliness was typical in the vivid picture of the modern America in that era. His romanticism is that he has devoted all his “magic” to an image, which leads to his ultimate destruction.

     If Gatsby’s spiritual comfort is a bubble, his material pursuit can also be concluded as a fail. There exists a national ethos of USA in which freedom includes a promise of possibility of prosperity and success. “Life should be better, richer, and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability regardless of circumstance of birth.” Gatsby hold this belief firmly in his heart. He had had strict demands on himself and cultivated good habits in his youth. But it was impossible to become wealthy without illegal trade, which at least proves true at that era in America. Being a bootlegger, he made a fortune, even though there was a law that forbade selling and drinking of alcohol. 

     If the whole society was not in the wrong way to seek fortune, fame and power, then Gatsby wouldn’t have done these criminal activities. This likes a scam. Gatsby seemed to be a piece of the chalkboard of the American society. At last, he became very rich, but the upper old class, well bred and far more refined, didn’t accept him. 

    Tom’s shameless affairs, Myrtle’s violent death caused by Daisy, Gatsby’s framde killed, these crimes went unpunished. Older generation, like Tom and Daisy, would just be “careless”, no fear, and no judgments. A social order has developed the benefit of classes rather than simple human being.

    I witness Gatsby’s kingdom became foam. The world of parties, bright lights, heavy drinking and jazz music suddenly disappeared, turned into disillusion. Gatsby’s life is like a leaf floated onto the ground, covered by the dirt, quietly. 

    What is tragedy? As Lu Xun said, “Tragedy is valuable thing that is doomed to be destroyed and we see the process of its destruction, doing nothing.” Whatever the wealth and Daisy had brought to Gatsby, one thing is clear; he feels neither peace nor any real pleasure. His attempt to fulfill his simple beautiful dream is like a boat rowing against the current. I can’t help clapping for his persistence. In a basis of sense, he is like a worshipper before a shrine.