P.S. How this all started...
Monday, May 5, 2014
SVA Tennis Tournament Day One
P.S. How this all started...
Friday, May 2, 2014
SVA Tennis Tournament
SVA Tennis Tournament
May 4-18, 2014
New Market Park Tennis Courts
"A Champion Will Be Crowned!"
Welcome to the 2014 Shenandoah Valley
Academy Tennis Tournament! Please read all
the information below to become familiar with the operation of this fortnight
of great tennis! All fans welcome. God bless!!!
Match Schedule
Round of 16 (May
4 and May 7. Must be played by May 11)
Giovanni
Rossi (1) vs. Open/Bye (16)
Jhonatan
Almeida (2) vs. Open/Bye (15)
Juan
Camilo Rodgriguez (3) vs. Open/Bye (14)
Danny
Jimenez (4) vs. Open/Bye (13)
Matthew Harter (5) vs. Dzik Mazando (12)
Sarah Lim (6) vs. Jeffry Vergara (11)
Daniel
Chirvasuta (7) vs. Florin Copaceanu (10)
Andy Rivera (8) vs. Nicolas Lapido (9)
Quarterfinal Round (May
7 and May 11*. Must be played by May 14)
Semifinal Round (May
11 and May 14. Must be played by May 18)
Tournament Final (May
18)
Tournament Player List (Seeds)**
1.
Giovanni Rossi, Junior
2.
Jhonathan Almeida, Junior
3.
Juan Camilo Rodriguez, Sophomore
4.
Danny Jimenez, Junior
5.
Matthew Harter, Freshman
6.Sarah
Lim, Junior (Village student)
7.
Daniel Chirvasuta, Freshman (Village student)
8.
Andy Rivera, SVA Teacher
9.
Nick Lapido, SVA Task Force Dean
10.
Florin Copaceanu, New Market Church, Businessman
11.
Jeffrey Vergara, New Market Church, Businessman
12.
Dzik Mazando, Freshman
Tournament Rules
· Tournament Entry Fee: $5 students/$10 adults (pay Andy
Rivera)
· 16-player, single elimination tournament. If you
lose a match, you are out. Win 4 and you win it all. Top 4 seeds may receive a first-round
bye.
· To advance, you must win best of 3 sets. 7-point
tiebreaker in 3rd set
· Pray with your opponent before every match.
· Gentleman’s rules – No referees. Players agree to
honestly call all shots.
· Each player must bring a can of new balls to their match.
· Winner takes the remaining new can of balls to his/her
next match.
· Matches to be played (generally speaking) on the dates
listed above.***
· Weather delays or other situations may delay match play.
· Respond to your opponent in a timely fashion by phone or
email to avoid forfeit.
· Make arrangements with your opponent if you cannot play
on scheduled dates.
· If your match is not played within a reasonable time, you
and/or your opponent may face forfeit.
· Report match results immediately to Andy Rivera.
* May 11 is Mother's
Day - Mom is first, tennis is second! Fewer matches likely to
occur this morning.
** We will
accept last minute entries. Any
last minute entrants will be paired against top 4 seeds in descending order.
***New Market Courts are
reserved for
the following dates: May 4: 9:00-12:00 p.m.; May 7:
5:30-7:30 p.m.; May 11: 9:00-12:00 p.m.; May 14: 5:30-7:30
p.m.; May 18: 9:00-12:00 p.m. SVA students are scheduled to play at
these times and will be transported to New Market Tennis Courts. Please
do your best to fit in these times. If not possible, contact your
opponent beforehand to make alternate arrangements or you may face forfeit.
We are very flexible, but communication is critical.
ANY PICTURES YOU CAN TAKE AND SEND TO ANDY RIVERA WOULD BE
APPRECIATED!!!
ENJOY!
MAY THE BEST MAN
OR WOMAN WIN!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Serious Reading Takes a Hit from Online Scanning and Skimming, Researchers Say...
Serious Reading Takes a Hit from Online Scanning and Skimming
“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.
But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.
“It’s like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they say,” she confessed. “When I realize what’s happening, I have to go back and read again and again.”
To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe’s experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.”
If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf said, is bringing about an eye byte culture. Time spent online — on desktop and mobile devices — was expected to top five hours per day in 2013 for U.S. adults, according to eMarketer, which tracks digital behavior. That’s up from three hours in 2010.
Word lovers and scientists have called for a “slow reading” movement, taking a branding cue from the “slow food” movement. They are battling not just cursory sentence galloping but the constant social network and e-mail temptations that lurk on our gadgets — the bings and dings that interrupt “Call me Ishmael.”
Researchers are working to get a clearer sense of the differences between online and print reading — comprehension, for starters, seems better with paper — and are grappling with what these differences could mean not only for enjoying the latest Pat Conroy novel but for understanding difficult material at work and school. There is concern that young children’s affinity and often mastery of their parents’ devices could stunt the development of deep reading skills.
The brain is the innocent bystander in this new world. It just reflects how we live. “The brain is plastic its whole life span,” Wolf said. “The brain is constantly adapting.”
Wolf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game.”
“I’m not kidding: I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words, organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so disgusted with myself.”
Adapting to read
The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.
Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said. We’d know a protagonist died on the page with the two long paragraphs after the page with all that dialogue.
The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.
“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading. “We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.”
Brandon Ambrose, a 31-year-old Navy financial analyst who lives in Alexandria, knows of those consequences. His book club recently read “The Interestings,” a best-seller by Meg Wolitzer. When the club met, he realized he had missed a number of the book’s key plot points. It hit him that he had been scanning for information about one particular aspect of the book, just as he might scan for one particular fact on his computer screen, where he spends much of his day. “When you try to read a novel,” he said, “it’s almost like we’re not built to read them anymore, as bad as that sounds.”
Ramesh Kurup noticed something even more troubling. Working his way recently through a number of classic authors — George Eliot, Marcel Proust, that crowd — Kurup, 47, discovered that he was having trouble reading long sentences with multiple, winding clauses full of background information. Online sentences tend to be shorter, and the ones containing complicated information tend to link to helpful background material.
“In a book, there are no graphics or links to keep you on track,” Kurup said.
It’s easier to follow links, he thinks, than to keep track of so many clauses in page after page of long paragraphs.
Kurup’s observation might sound far-fetched, but told about it, Wolf did not scoff. She offered more evidence: Several English department chairs from around the country have e-mailed her to say their students are having trouble reading the classics.
“They cannot read ‘Middlemarch.’ They cannot read William James or Henry James,” Wolf said. “I can’t tell you how many people have written to me about this phenomenon. The students no longer will or are perhaps incapable of dealing with the convoluted syntax and construction of George Eliot and Henry James.”
Wolf points out that she’s no Luddite. She sends e-mails from her iPhone as often as one of her students. She’s involved with programs to send tablets to developing countries to help children learn to read. But just look, she said, at Twitter and its brisk 140-character declarative sentences.
“How much syntax is lost, and what is syntax but the reflection of our convoluted thoughts?” she said. “My worry is we will lose the ability to express or read this convoluted prose. Will we become Twitter brains?”
Bi-literate brains?
Wolf’s next book will look at what the digital world is doing to the brain, including looking at brain-scan data as people read both online and in print. She is particularly interested in comprehension results in screen vs. print reading.
Already, there is some intriguing research that looks at that question. A 2012 Israeli study of engineering students — who grew up in the world of screens — looked at their comprehension while reading the same text on screen and in print when under time pressure to complete the task.
The students believed they did better on screen. They were wrong. Their comprehension and learning was better on paper.
Researchers say that the differences between text and screen reading should be studied more thoroughly and that the differences should be dealt with in education, particularly with school-aged children. There are advantages to both ways of reading. There is potential for a bi-literate brain.
“We can’t turn back,” Wolf said. “We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age. It’s both. We have to ask the question: What do we want to preserve?”
Wolf is training her own brain to be bi-literate. She went back to the Hesse novel the next night, giving herself distance, both in time and space, from her screens.
“I put everything aside. I said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’ ” she said. “It was really hard the second night. It was really hard the third night. It took me two weeks, but by the end of the second week I had pretty much recovered myself so I could enjoy and finish the book.”
Then she read it again.
“I wanted to enjoy this form of reading again,” Wolf said. “When I found myself, it was like I recovered. I found my ability again to slow down, savor and think.”
An Article from The Washington Post
"Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say"
By Michael S. Rosenwald,
Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to.“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.
But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.
“It’s like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they say,” she confessed. “When I realize what’s happening, I have to go back and read again and again.”
To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe’s experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.”
If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf said, is bringing about an eye byte culture. Time spent online — on desktop and mobile devices — was expected to top five hours per day in 2013 for U.S. adults, according to eMarketer, which tracks digital behavior. That’s up from three hours in 2010.
Word lovers and scientists have called for a “slow reading” movement, taking a branding cue from the “slow food” movement. They are battling not just cursory sentence galloping but the constant social network and e-mail temptations that lurk on our gadgets — the bings and dings that interrupt “Call me Ishmael.”
Researchers are working to get a clearer sense of the differences between online and print reading — comprehension, for starters, seems better with paper — and are grappling with what these differences could mean not only for enjoying the latest Pat Conroy novel but for understanding difficult material at work and school. There is concern that young children’s affinity and often mastery of their parents’ devices could stunt the development of deep reading skills.
The brain is the innocent bystander in this new world. It just reflects how we live. “The brain is plastic its whole life span,” Wolf said. “The brain is constantly adapting.”
Wolf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game.”
“I’m not kidding: I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words, organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so disgusted with myself.”
Adapting to read
The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.
Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said. We’d know a protagonist died on the page with the two long paragraphs after the page with all that dialogue.
The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.
“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading. “We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.”
Brandon Ambrose, a 31-year-old Navy financial analyst who lives in Alexandria, knows of those consequences. His book club recently read “The Interestings,” a best-seller by Meg Wolitzer. When the club met, he realized he had missed a number of the book’s key plot points. It hit him that he had been scanning for information about one particular aspect of the book, just as he might scan for one particular fact on his computer screen, where he spends much of his day. “When you try to read a novel,” he said, “it’s almost like we’re not built to read them anymore, as bad as that sounds.”
Ramesh Kurup noticed something even more troubling. Working his way recently through a number of classic authors — George Eliot, Marcel Proust, that crowd — Kurup, 47, discovered that he was having trouble reading long sentences with multiple, winding clauses full of background information. Online sentences tend to be shorter, and the ones containing complicated information tend to link to helpful background material.
“In a book, there are no graphics or links to keep you on track,” Kurup said.
It’s easier to follow links, he thinks, than to keep track of so many clauses in page after page of long paragraphs.
Kurup’s observation might sound far-fetched, but told about it, Wolf did not scoff. She offered more evidence: Several English department chairs from around the country have e-mailed her to say their students are having trouble reading the classics.
“They cannot read ‘Middlemarch.’ They cannot read William James or Henry James,” Wolf said. “I can’t tell you how many people have written to me about this phenomenon. The students no longer will or are perhaps incapable of dealing with the convoluted syntax and construction of George Eliot and Henry James.”
Wolf points out that she’s no Luddite. She sends e-mails from her iPhone as often as one of her students. She’s involved with programs to send tablets to developing countries to help children learn to read. But just look, she said, at Twitter and its brisk 140-character declarative sentences.
“How much syntax is lost, and what is syntax but the reflection of our convoluted thoughts?” she said. “My worry is we will lose the ability to express or read this convoluted prose. Will we become Twitter brains?”
Bi-literate brains?
Wolf’s next book will look at what the digital world is doing to the brain, including looking at brain-scan data as people read both online and in print. She is particularly interested in comprehension results in screen vs. print reading.
Already, there is some intriguing research that looks at that question. A 2012 Israeli study of engineering students — who grew up in the world of screens — looked at their comprehension while reading the same text on screen and in print when under time pressure to complete the task.
The students believed they did better on screen. They were wrong. Their comprehension and learning was better on paper.
Researchers say that the differences between text and screen reading should be studied more thoroughly and that the differences should be dealt with in education, particularly with school-aged children. There are advantages to both ways of reading. There is potential for a bi-literate brain.
“We can’t turn back,” Wolf said. “We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age. It’s both. We have to ask the question: What do we want to preserve?”
Wolf is training her own brain to be bi-literate. She went back to the Hesse novel the next night, giving herself distance, both in time and space, from her screens.
“I put everything aside. I said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’ ” she said. “It was really hard the second night. It was really hard the third night. It took me two weeks, but by the end of the second week I had pretty much recovered myself so I could enjoy and finish the book.”
Then she read it again.
“I wanted to enjoy this form of reading again,” Wolf said. “When I found myself, it was like I recovered. I found my ability again to slow down, savor and think.”
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Gruß von unsere Klass!
Gruß!!! From our class in Virginia to you in Austria, we want to say hi and may God bless you...
Do you remember this video?
Do you remember this video?
Friday, October 4, 2013
Rivera Tennis Challenge - October 7 & 8
To Mr. Rivera's Students...
I challenge you! I challenge any of my students to a tennis match. I don't think you can beat me. What do you think? I suggest you begin to practice (in your mind)!
If you accept this challenge, I will take you with me to the New Market Park on Monday (4:00-5:30 p.m.) and Tuesday (5:30-7:00 p.m.). I have all the tennis equipment (racquets and balls) you will need. Text me* your name at 413-325-4656 to get on the list.
If you beat me, I'll buy you an Italian Job Pizza. If I beat you, you will clean my classroom after 11th period for a week.
Hope to see you on the courts!
*(or email me at andy.rivera@sva-va.org)
Sunday, September 15, 2013
English Fundamentals 1 and 2: Study Schedules
This week we will begin using our textbooks for 3rd period: English Fundamentals 1 and 4th period: English Fundamentals 2. Here are the schedules we will follow for the rest of the semester. READ EVERYTHING!
English
Fundamentals 1 – Study Schedule (September-December)
This is the schedule we will follow in the textbook and
workbook, Fundamentals of English Grammar.
Chapter 1 – Present Time (September 16-27)
Chapter 2 – Past Time (September 30-October 11)
Chapter 3 – Future Time (October 14-25)
Chapter 4 – Present Perfect and Past Perfect (October
28-November 8)
Chapter 5 – Asking Questions (November 11-22)
Chapter 6 – Nouns and Pronouns (November 25-December 6)
Chapter 7 – Modal Auxiliaries (December 9-18)
- For each chapter we will have classwork, homework, quizzes, and a test.
- Your homework will mainly consist of completing the workbook chapter that corresponds to the schedule.
- Your grade will be determined by 5 criteria: classwork 25%, homework 25%, quizzes 25%, and tests 25%.
- Your final grade in the class will be determined by the following scale: A=90%, B=80%-89%, C=70%-79%, D=60%-69%, F=less than 60%
English
Fundamentals 2 – Study Schedule (September-December)
The following is the schedule we will follow in the textbook
and workbook, Understanding and Using English Grammar. Note that the first 6 chapters in 6
weeks. The final 4 chapters will be done
over 8 weeks.
Chapter 1 – Overview of Verb Tenses (September 16)
Chapter 2 – Present and Past; Simple and Progressive
(September 23)
Chapter 3 – Perfect and Perfect Progressive Tenses (September
30)
Chapter 4 – Future Time (October 7)
Chapter 5 – Review of Verb Tenses (October 14)
Chapter 6 – Subject-Verb Agreement (October 21)
Chapter 7 – Nouns (October 28-November 8)
Chapter 8 – Pronouns (November 11)
Chapter 9 – Modals, Part 1 (November 18-December 3)
Chapter 10 – Modals, Part 2 (December 3-13)
- For each chapter we will have classwork, homework, quizzes, and a test.
- Your homework will mainly consist of completing the workbook chapter that corresponds to the schedule.
- Your grade will be determined by 5 criteria: classwork 25%, homework 25%, quizzes 25%, and tests 25%.
- Your final grade in the class will be determined by the following scale: A=90%, B=80%-89%, C=70%-79%, D=60%-69%, F=less than 60%
Monday, September 2, 2013
SVA ELL Classes 2013
Back in Business
I am finally getting our class blog up and running (operational). Sorry it took so long. This year has already been quite an adventure. This blog will be the place where I post (publish) things for you to read and watch. It will all help you with your English learning and cultural adaptation at SVA. Here is some information on our classes and textbooks. You can buy the books in several places, but the easiest is here.
MAKE SURE TO VISIT AND USE THE LIST "IMPORTANT ELL LINKS"!
3rd period: English Fundamentals 1
Textbook for class: Fundamentals of English Grammar
Workbook for homework: Fundamentals of English Grammar Workbook
We will use a lot of grammar powerpoints. You can find them on the desktop of your computer. Begin with the red folder (review) and continue with the black (this year's book).
4th period: English Fundamentals 2
Textbook for class: Understanding and Using English Grammar
Workbook for homework: Understanding and Using English Grammar Workbook
We will use a lot of grammar powerpoints. You can find them on the desktop of your computer. Begin with the red folder (review) and continue with the black (review) and blue (this year's book)
5th period: U.S. History & Culture
Textbook for class: United States History
10th period: Writing/Reading Laboratory 1&2
This class will be a challenge because we have World Language students using our computers...
Advanced ELL students will also need this book: Understanding and Using English Grammar
Some things we will do:
Video Squad
English Journal Writing - Prompt List
Blogging
TOEFL Preparation & TOEFL Vocabulary book work
Tutoring non-ELL class reading/writing assignments & homework
11th period: Listening/Speaking Laboratory 1&2
Video Squad
Rosetta Stone
TOEFL Preparation & TOEFL Vocabulary book work
Pronunciation "Lose your Accent in 28 Days"
Guest speakers in class
Watch English Movies and TV
Grammar, Pronunciation, Writing, Reading,
I am finally getting our class blog up and running (operational). Sorry it took so long. This year has already been quite an adventure. This blog will be the place where I post (publish) things for you to read and watch. It will all help you with your English learning and cultural adaptation at SVA. Here is some information on our classes and textbooks. You can buy the books in several places, but the easiest is here.
MAKE SURE TO VISIT AND USE THE LIST "IMPORTANT ELL LINKS"!
3rd period: English Fundamentals 1
Textbook for class: Fundamentals of English Grammar
Workbook for homework: Fundamentals of English Grammar Workbook
We will use a lot of grammar powerpoints. You can find them on the desktop of your computer. Begin with the red folder (review) and continue with the black (this year's book).
4th period: English Fundamentals 2
Textbook for class: Understanding and Using English Grammar
Workbook for homework: Understanding and Using English Grammar Workbook
We will use a lot of grammar powerpoints. You can find them on the desktop of your computer. Begin with the red folder (review) and continue with the black (review) and blue (this year's book)
5th period: U.S. History & Culture
Textbook for class: United States History
10th period: Writing/Reading Laboratory 1&2
This class will be a challenge because we have World Language students using our computers...
Advanced ELL students will also need this book: Understanding and Using English Grammar
Some things we will do:
Video Squad
English Journal Writing - Prompt List
Blogging
TOEFL Preparation & TOEFL Vocabulary book work
Tutoring non-ELL class reading/writing assignments & homework
11th period: Listening/Speaking Laboratory 1&2
Video Squad
Rosetta Stone
TOEFL Preparation & TOEFL Vocabulary book work
Pronunciation "Lose your Accent in 28 Days"
Guest speakers in class
Watch English Movies and TV
Grammar, Pronunciation, Writing, Reading,
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