When people say that phonics is “too boring” or... “doesn’t work”, it’s just an admission that they don’t know how to teach it well. Here’s my son working through one of the most difficult transitions in phonics: the introduction of digraphs like “sh” Until now, the words he read could be sounded out one letter at a time - each letter makes its own sound. But once digraphs are introduced, the reader needs to learn to “look ahead” one letter while reading. When reading “fish”, he cannot pronounce the “s” as “ssssss”. Instead of parsing fish as f/i/s/h, he has to notice that the letter following “s” is “h”, switch to parsing the word as f/i/sh, and pronounce the sounds accordingly. To make it easier for novice readers to notice digraphs and parse them correctly, Mentava’s software displays them in a slightly different colored font. As the student demonstrates increased mastery, the font hints gradually fade out to greyscale and then normal black. This gradual process avoids the frustration that would be caused by sudden increases in difficulty, leading to an engaged and successful learner!show more

Did you know that the words spoken by Jaafar... Jackson at the beginning of the #MichaelMovie trailer are inspired by a real letter written by Michael Jackson himself? Around 1979, Michael wrote a letter to himself, making it clear that he wanted to be the greatest at everything he did. Those words served as a true mantra, repeated as a way to maintain focus, motivation, and inner strength something he told himself long before the world recognized who he would become. Over time, that mantra became reality, and Michael Jackson established himself as the greatest artist of all time. During that same period, he also wrote a poem to himself as a way to confront and protect himself from the criticism he faced. In response to those who once called him ugly, Michael would repeat the phrase over and over: “I am beautiful.” 🥺❤️‍🩹show more

Today we’re announcing our new Mentava Basics curriculum, aimed... at kids who are still a bit too young for the standard Mentava curriculum. Here’s what people don’t understand about teaching a 2 or 3 year old to read: The necessary skills for reading don’t all develop at the same time. The ability to associate letters with sounds happens first, and at a pretty early age. If you think about it, learning “this funny shaped animal says moo” is pretty similar to learning “this funny shaped line says aaa.” However, the second necessary skill for reading is blending those letter sounds together, and kids often aren’t developmentally capable of doing that until at least 6-12 months later. Until today, our recommendation has been to wait until the child is developmentally ready to blend sounds. and then we just go full speed and teach them everything all at once, as fast as possible. But sometimes we have students who start a little younger. And then their parents are confused, because they see that their kids are having a ton of fun learning letter sounds super fast, but then are being gatekept from additional learning because they aren't yet developmentally ready to blend those sounds. That’s why we created the new Mentava Basics curriculum. Mentava Basics lets our youngest students focus on letter/sound pairings until they're developmentally ready to begin blending them. Mentava Basics takes the fun and delight of the core Mentava experience, but applies it to a curriculum that’s developmentally appropriate for even younger children. Mentava’s standard curriculum is still the fastest way to go from zero to reading, but with Mentava Basics now we can give kids a head start by helping them learn their letter sounds in advance. If your child is struggling with blending and you think it may just be a developmental readiness issue, you can use the grownup menu to switch into the Mentava Basics curriculum. We save your progress on both pathways, so you can switch back to our standard curriculum whenever you want.show more

Mentava’s early literacy software has taken 2yos (almost 3)... to an early 2nd grade reading level in as little as 3 months. Some people think this is a miracle. I do not. If a kid can learn fast, we let them learn fast. If a kid learns slower, we let them learn slower. This should be common sense, but unfortunately it’s opposed by the National Education Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers in Mathematics, and many other groups who drive education policy. It’s a tragic indictment of our education system that Mentava simply reveals how fast some kids can learn and people think it’s a miracle. Mentava’s early literacy software has two main ingredients: curriculum + motivation There’s nothing revolutionary about Mentava’s curriculum. Our curriculum is a typical, extremely structured phonics curriculum. There is a massive body of evidence (and common sense) backing the idea that kids should learn to read by sounding out words. Armed with any decent phonics curriculum, I would expect a skilled parent/teacher who can motivate, engage, and teach a kid 1-1 on a daily basis over a period of several months to get similar results to our software. (I frequently recommend the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons as a cheaper alternative to Mentava.) So why do some families choose to pay $500/month for Mentava? Well, not everyone has the time/motivation/desire to become that teacher. Some people do, and they love that process. On the other hand, some families come to Mentava and say, “I used that book to teach my first child to read. It worked, we both hated it, and I will never do it again.” By contrast, my 4yo wakes me up in the morning asking to do Mentava. He gets mad in the evenings when I don’t have time to do it with him. He LOVES learning to read. What Mentava does exceptionally well is provide motivation and fun - without sacrificing academic rigor. Our team members led some of the top mobile and AAA games in the world. We are very very good at motivation design. In short, we take phonics and gamify it to be as fun, easy, efficient, and motivating as we can possibly make it. So, claims: - Mentava works really, really well for SOME kids - Mentava probably does not work well for ALL kids - Under ideal conditions, other phonics programs will probably perform similarly to Mentava (or better!) No research study will tell you whether Mentava is the best fit for your family. So we offer a two-week free trial. That’s enough time for some families to make it most of the way through our kindergarten curriculum. Use Mentava with the kids it works for. Don't use it with kids for whom it doesn't. Don’t overcomplicate things.show more

IN MY OPINION If Mr. Miles Guo wants to... come out, I do believe that he has an option to make it happen - The question is, why doesn’t he do it ? Once he is released, he will give us an answer in a way that will be unexpected, which may lead to some need more questions while others might fully understand. In my mind, all I knew was that everything he did was because of the NFSC, not just for himself alone. He chose to suffer in order to show that the new Chinese people will be recognized and respected by the whole world. No one knows the detailed outcome of his case more than he does. Up to date, CCP isn’t focused on trying to keep him imprisoned for as long as possible anymore; instead, they are more concerned about how they can face him once he is released.show more

Forcing kids to read things they hate just simply... doesn’t work. Our reading philosophy at Alpha is simple: kids learn to love reading by reading what they love. Sure, it’s important for kids to be exposed to classic literature. But being forced to read highbrow literature as a young teen is often the very thing that makes kids hate reading in the first place. Many of them never bother picking up a novel again. If the goal is to have students fall in love with reading and become life-long readers, then we should cater the material to their interests. Whether it’s comic-books, books about insects, or a biography on the Kardashians, there has to be a better way. We built our own app called Teach Tales to solve this problem.show more

🚨#BREAKING: Hazmat teams are on the scene at the... Florida home of Donald Trump Jr. after he opened a letter and white powder came out 📌#Jupiter | #Florida Multiple fire trucks and personnel in hazmat suits have been spotted outside Donald Trump Jr.’s home in Jupiter, Florida, on Monday evening after he received a letter containing an unidentified white powder, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Trump Jr., the eldest son of former President Donald Trump, opened the envelope, causing the white powder to fly out, as reported by one of the sources. A representative for the former president’s son stated that it remains unclear what exactly the substance was but confirmed that Trump Jr.’s life does not appear to be in dangershow more

Millions of Fish. One Insane Moment. I think most... people are familiar with the great Wildebeest migration in Africa but very few people know of the great fish migration that happens each year along the east coast of Florida. It’s simply called, “The Fall Mullet Run,” but there is nothing simple about it. Millions of fish make their way down the coastline and everything, I mean everything wants to eat them. They get attacked by large predatory game fish from below and when they try to escape by hurling themselves into the air, large winged beasts from the sky are waiting to gobble them up in droves! It’s a rare convergence of multiple biomes colliding in a feeding frenzy of explosive, cinematic chaos. The fish in this clip explode like fireworks into the air. Something massive is hunting beneath the surface and as soon as this young brown pelican decides it has found the motherlode, a snook blasts out of the water, forcing the pelican to hit the brakes mid-air and reroute fast. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. I still remember watching it unfold through the tiny viewfinder of my Sony, and not believing my eyes. It’s one of my favorite times of the year, and it’s coming soon!show more

(Yes i know the movement is exaggerated, its just... to show the motion, it also doeant move like jello when in vr) -Left is before, Right is after- Ok wall of text time for the nerds Literally everything is the same on both sides except the position of 1 bone (made sure that even after adjusting, the collider would still be in the same spot) The reason for this change is because she wanted to be able to clap her ass in vr, and last time i did this all i did was add a toggle for a hidden bone that moved, and its angle would trigger the sound. Which was because that with my previous position, the cheeks could never really meet in the middle when in motion unless you just pushed them together with your hands, and i wanted to just have the sound actually be triggered by them colliding with each other This is also the first time ive used endbones to help drive the movement, so now thanks to that and all my previous experimenting with squishing as well, I can now get bones to move exactly how i want them to move when in natural motion. And i know a lot of people are gonna ask me to teach them how or explain my thought process but i literally just go off feeling lmao. Like, i just kinda visualize in my head how i want the motion to look, and then i just kinda know where to put everything, so im not even sure how to even start explaining rip. I have the things that artist want where they can just make the shit in their head exactly how they envisioned it lol I have a few more ideas i want to try, so we'll see if theyre good enough to get a tweet lol Thank you for coming to my ted talkshow more

mukoma really said “ in God Hatiperi” mazvinzwa ?... 😭😭😭🙏🏼 I’ve been to shows my whole life, but this one was that show the one that goes down in the books as unforgettable. I don’t know how he managed to pull this off, but he just did. Apologies to the affected fans at the gate pakamboita chaos that was beyond our control. When went to Mukoma to confirm what was going, he told me, ‘I won’t perform until the chaos is resolved and every one of my fans is inside.’ He delayed, and when he finally came on stage haa pakabaka faya! Ladies and gentlemen uyu NDIYE MUKUDZEI and the album is out on all digital platformsshow more

A farmer noticed that the onions he had planted... kept being pulled out of the ground. Unable to figure out why this kept happening, he decided to keep a closer watch on the area and stood guard over the onions he had planted. That's when he learned everything . It turned out that his cat had claimed that area as its own territory and kept using it as a toilet. Whenever it saw the onions in the ground, it got annoyed, pulled them out one by one, and then used the spots where the onions had been as its toilet. Hahahha So funny! 😂😂show more

Learning is something you and your baby do together.... You can think of the process as happening in three distinct stages, during which skills are transferred gradually from you to your little one: During the first stage, your baby is observing the behavior and skills of others. During the second, they begin to emulate these behaviors - and can find success with the support of a helpful adult (you) or more expert peer (often a sibling). And gradually they internalize these skills and perform them all by themselves. This video is a great example of the shared second phase. Infants explore the world with their mouths. But an important lesson of toddlerhood is that some things are for putting in our mouths, while others are not. This little one knows that we don’t eat the Play-Doh. But it sure is tempting! Watch as he breaks off a piece and brings it to his mouth. As he does his eyes lift and he realizes that Mom is watching - which alone prompts some introspection. He grins broadly, shakes his head and exclaims “No, no, no” - using Mom’s past words to affirm his decision to place the Play-Doh back on the table. Left to his own devices, who knows? But together, without exchanging a word, he managed to make the right choice. As a parent it’s important to remember the key role you play in the learning process. And that extends to your child’s behavior. Self-regulation begins as co-regulation. So be there. This sweet little guy was shared to IG by parentosa.show more

The Odyssey maximizer. Of the people who claim to... have read the Odyssey, I would say at best 15% of them have. And of that 15%, maybe 10% genuinely had the knowledge, familiarity with the time, people, place, technology, wars, cultures and conflicts to have anything of interest extracted and result in knowledge of the material. It’s like they “died with the odyssey” rather than “from the odyssey” Most normal people don’t want to spend a lifetime in the rabbit holes of “why did xyz use this word and not that word” “why did he say this and not that” and so on and so on, forever. How many copies of the book sold last year, maybe at best, I’d guess worldwide - maybe around 200,000 and that’s across all countries, languages, translations and they all seem to those convene on X like it’s the bar on Cheers “Norm!” I have studied in depth Machiavelli, the sources Machiavelli refers to, the Borgia’s, The medicis, the history of Florence, his plays and not just Livy’s histories but the histories he used as source material, so I understand machiavelli’s intention of irony, I understand thr use of cruelty in the shocking death of de orco , I understand his use of numbers and so in and so in. I have read many many academic papers covering the most minute things in his works. I don’t discuss Machiavelli except in passing, I acknowledge “oh you read The Prince (a shorter book usually assigned in schools because it easily fits within the semester)” and then usually disengage. Should a movie be made of any of his works I would see it and if it gets a few people interested in learning more and going to the library that would be great. Likewise, for almost all people - the Machiavelli movie would be enough to have satiated their desire to know ‘who he is and what he wrote and why he wrote it’ I am not a snob. I read just enough Plato to say “I read Plato” and that’s it. Some people want to delve deep into his works. I didn’t - but by definition I have “read Plato” But Plato is easy to read because it’s bite size. The odyssey isn’t bite size. Remarkable that on this platform that exploits a super quick attention span, these same users who can’t make it though an axios article or a 4 tweet thread can flip a switch in their noodle and transform themselves into the Burgess Meredith character in The Twilight Zone. These are the notes I have taken of the things I have read and my own writing to please the cognitive senses👇 (The ones marked “audiobook’d” are so I could also absorb the material by “hearing it in my head”) 👇show more

This sort of situation isn’t new. Indeed, I have... seen this exact scene - a white person being assaulted by a group of people (most or all being black and/or ethnic minority) but somehow ending up being the only person to get into trouble - play out previously. It happens to police officers who are assaulted too, btw, not just members of the public. This is why I sometimes find it difficult to criticise policing (or at least, frontline policing and the Federated ranks), because I know how difficult the Job is for frontline officers, and I also know that even when they are assaulted, the Job will throw them under a bus if the circumstances are convenient. But, the repeated examples of this behaviour are inexcusable and clearly policing has reached a point of no return - the murder of Henry Nowak was probably that point. Though, you could argue that the cover up of the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs - which goes as far back as the 1960s and the supposed halcyon days of policing - was when policing truly failed ordinary people (we just didn’t know it then). Serious reform and a return to Peelian policing is required. At present, however, there just doesn’t appear to be the political will to do what is required.show more

This is gonna be so long omg but when... it comes to translating in Korean, it’s very very important to take in consideration of 1) Culture 2) Seniority, the Closeness & Intimacy of the people involved in a conversation. Because this gives an entire different vibe for the context. And we have to keep in mind that there are Korean phrases and expressions that simply don’t have just One way, exact words that can be translated in English. Translators can find ways to convey the meaning, but it requires more explanation and understanding of the context while conveying it, and not relying on assumptions. How about “인상 덜 쓰기” or “인상 쓰다“ then? Here, a direct translation can simply be 인상 덜 쓰기 - be less grumpy/ frown less, etc 인상 쓰다 - being grumpy, frown, make a face, etc Here, I include an educational video of an English speaker talking with a Korean speaker where they’re discussing a similar expression, “인상 좀 쓰지마!“ (which in word by word in English, it sounds something like “Don’t frown/ Don’t make a face”) Now, as an English speaker, that sounds a bit harsh doesn’t it? That’s because such expression doesn’t exist in just One interpretation in English, so if we only read it as it is, without considering the context and the speakers’ closeness, we’re bound to misunderstand the context. Quoting some parts of this video, 💚: “Now, Tyler’s expression for today is ‘인상 좀 쓰지마!’. Have you ever heard of this expression? 🩶: I’ve heard something like that before 💚: Then doesn’t this mean there’s a same expression in English too right? 🩶: Oh! I’ve only heard it in Korea 💚: Ah really? The guy then explained that if you say something like this in english, it can be rude. so it’s better not to say it in English-speaking countries. He gave examples like “If you do that, you’ll get wrinkles”, and the other guy added something like “If you make an ugly face, you’ll have wrinkles” and said that “If someone (an English speaker) hears this they would think I must be crazy” Here, they’re talking about the cultural differences. A phrase like this, when expressed directly, without considering people’s closeness, and being translated exactly like that, would sound so negative to English speakers. *also notice how this phrase is being worded in various ways??? ‘HOW’ it can sound to someone, really depends on their culture, their closeness with the person, and context* So later on, he gave a few more examples like, “stop making such a long face”, and “stop wrinkling your forehead”. And concluded that: 💚: Well in that case, the phrase “인상 좀 쓰지마” is basically a phrase that doesn’t exist in English. 🩶: It’s an expression that we don’t use. It’s not that it doesn’t exist. (This part, he’s explaining that there’s no such a thing as word by word to explain this phrase in English, bcs we English speakers use different wordings that is more suitable for a situation’s nuances.) Then again, we have to consider speakers’ closeness as well because in Korea, it’s a huge thing. If you don’t understand how this works, you won’t understand the nuances of a conversation. You’re bound to misunderstand. If you refuse to understand it then, I don’t think you want to respect their culture. Because again, this is a huge thing.show more

what im about to say is just MY vision!... this is how i see it i feel like the car in the mv represents heeseung himself and everything he has gone through over the years. in the mv, when he first got the car, it’s bright red. red symbolizes his passion, excitement, and happiness as he finally achieves the dream he had worked toward for so long. he has debuted, he is standing on stage and he is doing what he always wanted to do as the story progresses, the car becomes almost completely gray. i see this as a reflection of heeseung’s burnout and emotional exhaustion. the feeling of becoming drained after constantly giving so much of yourself without having enough time to recover. heeseung had dreams and desire to release his own solo music and show a different side of himself as an artist, but he wasn’t able to do it, he pushed it aside for a long time so he started losing hope. the fading color of the car mirrors how his passion and motivation were slowly being overshadowed by frustration and disappointment yet the car never becomes entirely gray. the driver’s door is still red. that remaining red represents the part of heeseung that refused to let go of his dreams and passion. no matter how exhausted he became, no matter how much disappointment he faced, there was still a small part of him that continued to believe that things could get better. the car is literally following heeseung and refusing to let go. i feel like it symbolizes the passion that survived even when everything else seemed to be fading away – the fully red car shows the joy of a dream coming true – the gray car shows the emotional cost of everything that came afterward – and the driver’s red door shows that no matter how difficult the journey became, he never completely lost himself that’s why i believe the car represents heeseung/his dreamsshow more

There is a rule in Florence that has not... been broken in over five hundred years: nothing in the city may be built taller than a dome finished in 1436. The dome belongs to the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and it is the work of Filippo Brunelleschi. When you look at a photograph of Florence and notice that its skyline seems strangely, impossibly intact, you are not imagining it... The city has protected that view, by custom and by law, since the Renaissance. To this day, no building in Florence is permitted to rise higher than the cupola. What it guards is one of the most astonishing structures ever built. When Brunelleschi began in 1420, no one in Europe knew how to raise a dome that wide. The technology had been lost with the Romans. The cathedral had stood for decades with a hole in its roof, because the span was considered impossible to cover, and the city had essentially gambled that someone would one day work out how. Brunelleschi built it without the wooden scaffolding everyone assumed was necessary, laying over four million bricks in a self-supporting double shell, one dome inside another, in a herringbone pattern that let each ring hold itself up as it rose. Six centuries later, it remains the largest masonry dome in the world. Nothing built since, in brick and stone, has surpassed it. The Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, who was born in Florence, once explained what that means to him. "When I feel depression creeping in," he said, "I return to Florence to gaze at Brunelleschi's dome. If human genius was able to achieve something so great, then I too can and must try to create, to act, to live." That is what a skyline can be when a city decides that beauty is worth protecting... I write a weekly newsletter for over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us for free at the link below, and if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible: Thanks for reading.show more

There are some actions that must be taken with... extreme urgency. One of them is to begin firing gendarmes and former gendarmes. Leo XIV has started putting the “Pontifical Household” and his closest collaborators in order. Now is the time to remove the valets who in recent years have been wandering around the State with the envelopes of cash entrusted to them by Bergoglio to pay the bills. This smug, arrogant and dismissive attitude that has defined Zanetti for years has finally worn out many. It would be wise for him to be reassigned to St. Paul Outside the Walls as well.show more