Information Management and Statistics, Component A - Case Study Essay

Information Management and Statistics, Component A - Case Study Assessment - Essay Example This paper discusses how chase bank manages their data so as not to hurt their dear customers in the human resources department. It also deals with how the organizations gears towards tight security for their customers’ information from online data warfare which has been growing each day. Further, it will review the ethical issues involved when there is data loss of any magnitude. In addition, this paper will evaluate the laws and the set regulations which are aimed at protecting organizations, and in particular banks, from this menace. Electronic commerce depends entirely data and its security which emanates from how it is managed in the organization and the way customers perceive the organization as far as the issue of data security is concerned (Agnes, G.M 2004). Personal data held by chase bank is under threat from many unauthorized users and their numbers have been rising daily. Credit cards data, identity card numbers, account number as well as social security card numbers are some of the forms data which is most targeted. In this regard, the human resources department has come up with some procedures to manage data and to provide the needed security. First, it is the obligation of the human resources department to ensure that only the well qualified are employed and allowed to see customer’s data. In chase bank, the human resources department uses databases in the management of data about there employees and about customers. The use of a database is an effective way of storing data about a certain aspect at once. Databases in the bank allows for instant changes in the data thus affecting the whole database and not just changing file by file. The database is administered by an expert who engineered it; he has become part of the data management team. Further, through the IT department, the human resources

Nature versus nurture Essay Example for Free

Nature versus nurture Essay The debate between nature vs. nurture has been a controversial and debated topic for centuries. It is a debate on whether or not human development is molded by their genetics or their environment. Many scientist and philosophers have debated and made their own theories for the matter, including Charles Darwin, who in the 18th century developed the theory that human development was shaped by their parents’ genetics. In contrary to Darwin, the French naturalist Jean Lamarck had a completely different view on human development, claiming that genetics did not matter in human development and that the biggest factor in human development was the environment in which this human was developed. Both men had great points and theories but through the years Darwin’s theory has been favored; but as of lately scientists are currently starting to lean more and more to Lamarck’s theory. Agreeing with the scientist, I too am also leaning towards Lamarck’s theory. Although I do believe that human development is definitely shaped by their parent’s genetics, I believe that no matter how good your genetics are that if you are put in a bad environment, your development will be negatively effected, regardless of how good your genes were. Ironically, this debate of nature vs. nurture carried through to a book I was assigned to read this summer called East of Eden. East of Eden was a very interesting and complex book and is one of those books that every time you read it you will discover something interesting and new that you never discovered before. One of the main interesting things that you will discover when reading this book is the idea of timshel, which is introduced by one of the characters in the novel named Lee. Lee was the servant to the main family in the novel and throughout the novel is trying to teach and spread his idea of timshel to one of the main characters in the book Cal. Cal is mischievous and pernicious, and is also a risk taker, and he is also haunted with the idea that he is evil and that he is forced to be evil because his mom was also evil and that he had acquired her genetics. Lee’s purpose in sharing timshel to Cal was to coax him that every human had the ability to be good and that no human is stuck being evil and that with persistence every one can become good. Cal at first is hesitant to believe Lee’s theory but by the end of the book begins to appreciate and believe, that I the main connection between East of Eden and the debate between nature vs. nurture.

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville: An Analysis

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville: An Analysis Bartleby the Scrivener was written by Herman Melville in 1853. The book is about a scrivener named Bartleby, and he continuously answers peoples questions with I would prefer not to (Melville 9). In this short story, Melville is asking his readers what makes people stand out from the crowd, and what makes us individual, independent, and unique? Independence and individuality definitely both have a big role in this story. While being independent and unique are two great things to be, there is a point when you can take it too far, to the point where it starts to affect your life. Conflict often produces character and at times will reveal it. Bartleby is an efficient copyist for a successful lawyer at an office building, but he is a quiet and anti-social man. Though he continues to work well as a copyist, he refuses to help or do any other tasks for the office people, and/or repeatedly says I would prefer not to (10). Bartleby is always in the office either working or looking out of dim window (19) in the sad, and dark world he lives in. The workers then find out that he lives at the office, and his refusal to do nothing but work grows at a much larger scale. As this problem grows, Bartleby announces that he will no longer work as a copyist, and then prefers to stay and live in the office building and do no work. Finally, he is strictly and firmly asked to leave by the lawyer and his workers, but, he still does not leave. Rather than taking more severe measures to get Bartleby out of the office, the lawyer moves his operation to a different office. After that, another practice moves into the building and they find out tha t Bartleby, the copyist from the previous practice is still living there. The new people complain, but the new people are told that Bartleby does not seem to be able to leave. After trying to deal with Bartleby staying there, they call the police to arrest him and bring him to prison. The story concludes with Bartleby refusing to do anything and not eat in prison, and Bartleby dies from starvation. To conclude things, the narrator/lawyer informs his readers/workers that Bartleby was previously a clerk in a dead letter office who sorted through the mail, leaving readers wondering if these dead letters somehow influenced Bartleby. In the short story, the characters attitudes towards Bartleby changes as Bartleby changes. In the beginning, the lawyer, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut do not really pay attention to him, but since he refuses to do other work for the office, they start to get mad. Except Turkey seems to have the same attitude towards Bartleby throughout the story, he is a drunk copyist who has an uncontrollable temper, and through the story, he continues to hate Bartleby and wants to get violent. Also, Nippers, like his coworker Turkey, is just an ambitious, discontent, irritated, non-morning person and exactly like Turkey, he stays this way through the entire short story. The lawyer says, Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers-ambition and indigestion (7). Ginger Nut, does not have a pretty big role in the story, he is just a 12-year-old, the youngest worker, his biggest job/role is to get snacks and food for all the copyists. But there is the lawyer, and his attitude towards Bartleby is described in the next paragraph. The lawyers attitude towards Bartleby changes throughout the book from kind, to angry, to firm, to caring. The lawyer at first is kind like a gentleman would be when he first meets and hires Bartleby. He pays more attention to his work in the beginning and knows he is doing good at his job, but then he notices Bartleby and gets concerned when he will not do any other office tasks, then he gets quite angry when he finds out that Bartleby is living there. After that, Bartleby says he will not work as a copyist anymore, but he stays and lives in the office anyway, and now the lawyer must make a decision whether to kick him out, or to be nice and think of something else. The lawyer decides to be nice and offer Bartleby a place in his home, but Bartleby does not take his offer. Then, the lawyer gets strict and firmly asks him to leave the office, but he says no, so the lawyer moves the whole operation to a different office. The lawyer and the workers move to a new office, but Bartleby sta ys there. Afterward, the new people at the building call the police on Bartleby and take him to prison where he does not want to do anything, eat, or talk to anyone. Lastly, the lawyer goes to visit him and try to talk to him but Bartleby does not want to talk to him, the lawyer tries to talk some sense into him but it does not work, Bartleby continues to not eat and he starves himself to death. The lawyer becomes very curious how this all started and he finds out what may have started all of this weird behavior from Bartleby. The behavior of Bartleby is a mystery and it is kind of funny but in a weird way, but besides his seriousness and the level of his refusal, he does not change at all throughout the whole story. He starts off like a pretty normal guy, he does his work right, but then he refuses to do anything, eat, or leave the office. He dies and not much happens after that, the lawyer finds out that his previous job was working as clerk in a dead letter office sorting the letters for years. Possibly the dead letters influenced and changed his definition of life. Bartleby symbolizes a dead letter because the Lawyer thinks that after reading all those letters that were supposed to go to someone who is now dead or gone must have influenced Bartlebys perspective on life. Because Bartleby worked at a dead letter office for years, reading and sorting all of them, he is in the state of a dead man, like a dead letter that has never been opened. Bartleby also represents a dead letter because the narrator/lawyer is the sender of the letter, and he wishes to communicate with Bartleby but he can never get through him. This is one of the stronger explanations that explains Bartleby as a dead letter. The idea of undeliverable letters that speed to death, even when they go on errands of life (29). Finally, think about how conflict produces character and sometimes reveals it. There was some conflict between the lawyer and Bartleby, or between life and Bartleby. Because he feels like the lawyer possibly just added more stress in Bartlebys position, making him feel dead, this was kind of an example of failure to communicate. Nearly everything that happened leading up to Bartlebys death goes back to failure of communication or just more stress in the situation. This all revealed the character of Bartleby to the narrator since he found out that he worked in a dead letter office for years, reading and sorting letters, hundreds of failures to communicate entirely changed Bartlebys perspective on life and the meaning of working hard. Word Count: 1266

Lowering the Drinking Age to Eighteen Essays -- essays research papers

In 1984 Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole lobbied for all states to raise the legal drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one. The consequence for a state not raising the age was to lose a portion of their federal highway funding. I personally believe that the drinking age being twenty-one is just like when the voting age was twenty-one, if I can go to war and die for my country, then I should be able to go to the bar and buy a beer.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the biggest problems in our society is under age drinking. They tell us how we aren’t allowed to drink, that we aren’t old enough or mature enough to do it, but the more adults talk about it, the more teenagers want to do it. When a kid goes off to college, it’s expected that he is going to drink. Since most kids don’t know what a hangover feels like, or what it’s like to get the spins, they don’t know their limits and when they need to stop. That is when you get people doing stupid things because they don’t know any better. The most important thing for a young drinker to know is his or her limit. Any eighteen year old can drink responsibly if they have a little bit of experience. Unfortunately most parents don’t want their kids to drink, so we have to learn the hard way without anyone there to tell us to slow down or to stop. For some kids that means getting sick one night and realizing that they shou ldn’t drink that much next time, but for some others the idea just never hits them, and they drink too much and that is when the trouble starts. Last Saturday night a friend of mine drank too much while she was out camping. She started to pass out and was puking all over herself. The more experienced kids in the group realized that she was in trouble and they rushed her back to campus where we were able to get her cleaned off and taken care of for the night.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many people argue that when the drinking age was raised to twenty-one, that alcohol related deaths among people under twenty-one dropped from 43% to 21%. What they don’t tell you is that alcohol related deaths among people between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five went up almost as much as the other group went down. Experience is the biggest tool in fighting the problems with underage drinking. The kid who goes to college without ever having gotten drunk is going to go all out at his or her first par... ...er curfews or can stay at a friend’s house. This next piece of information is based on my personal opinion and experiences. For a high school student, alcohol is very hard to get. Some kids get lucky and have older siblings or friends who will buy it for them. For almost everyone else at that age, alcohol is not a big part of their everyday life, and they turn to a much easier to get substance. Marijuana is one of the most commonly used drugs by high school students. It is a lot easier to get than alcohol, and for most kids it doesn’t seem as dangerous. You don’t wake up with a hangover, and you aren’t as impaired as you are when you are drunk. Most kids will drive when they are high and not even think twice about it. There are many reasons why the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen, and there are many reasons why it should stay twenty-one. There is proof that both sides of the argument work. In other countries without a drinking age or with a lowered one, you don’t hear about as many drunk driving accidents as you do in the United States. Maybe the drinking in the U.S. is just like the violence, as Michael Moore put it, what’s so different about us that makes it happen?

Brave New World: Utopia or Dystopia Essay

The novel Brave New World has often been characterized as dystopia rather than utopia. Nevertheless, the superficial overview of the novel implies a utopian society, especially if judging by what the Controller said to John, the Savage: People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. (Huxley, 2002: 151) Enjoying themselves in feelies, electromagnetic golf and in soma they are never worried, sad, nor solitary. The most frequent sentence pronounced in the novel which describes the people’s emo tional state of mind is „Everybody’s happy nowadays.â€Å" People spend time at work, spending money on new things, having fun and sex which does not involve any deep feelings or love relationship. The moment we take a deeper insight into this society, ideal perfection, or utopia, immediately disappears. The human kind is artificially generated, people are conditioned to suit their social roles in the Community, they are unconscious that their lives are carefully planned, manipulated and controlled by a few leaders. This picture does not imply a Brave New World to be a utopian society. Opposite to utopia stands dystopia, defined by dictionaries as „an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful livesâ€Å" (Hornby, 1995: 362). A little bit softer tone of this definition can be applied to Huxley’s society. People do not live in a fear, they do the job they are predestined to and therefore comfortable with, they lead the life they are made for, without making any arguments, and the most of all they are satisfied and happy with the way the things are. „All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own.† (Huxley, 1995: 155) are punished. But â€Å"Brave New World has its own gentler punishments: for non-conformists, it’s exile to Iceland, where Man’s Final End can be discussed among like-minded intellects, without pestering â€Å"normal† people – in a sort of university, as it were.â€Å" (Atwood, 2007: par. 17). Contrary to this civilized society, there is another smaller society, a Savage Reservation. John, the Savage, raised in the Reservation, has been taken to the Other Place. He was eager to go there as his mother told him beautiful stories about that civilized world. People living in the Reservation are considered not to have been „civilizedâ€Å" and they lead their lives as people did before, in harmonization with nature. They believe in marriage, they are monogamous and religious. Family is important to them. All the aspects of their lives are considered as uncivilized by people from the Other Place who consider them primitive. They still undergo the process of aging and mourn when someone dies. Growing old is artificially stopped in the Other Place, and death is accepted as the usual end. In a Hospital for the Dying eighteen months – old – children get accustomed to death. „All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.† (Huxley, 1995: 109). This society, the World State, has its motto „Community, Identity, Stabilityâ€Å" which governs its citizens’ lives. The society is arranged so that apart from the division to social classes, everybody is part of one unit, one large community which is controlled by only a few people, called the Controllers. The Controllers created the environment which suits people’s lives in order to benefit the Community. Identity is related to the Bokanovsky process. This process creates identical people, twins of the same qualities. They can hatch out up to 96 twins from only one ovary and a gamete. These armies, or sets of identical people with same abilities serve the Community. Therefore „Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!† (Huxley, 1995: 7). Community has to be stable in order to survive. They strive for stability, â€Å"the primal and ultimate need.† (Huxley, 1995: 31). For this reason, apart from bokanovskification, controllers do their best to satisfy people’s impulses and vices, so they arranged â€Å"no strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies.† (Huxley, 1995: 153). Unrestricted copulation and the proverb â€Å"everyone belongs to everyone else†, repeated for so many times during hypnopaedic lessons, complete one another together. They can copulate with anyone they like whenever and wherever they want. Moreover, it is quite impolite not to do so. Having been raised in this manner it was so strange for Lenina when the Savage rejected to be intimate with her. Unlike Lenina, he relies on monogamy and romance, which in the World State are considered as „a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.† (Huxle y, 1995: 29). Even though they are not burdened with problems, people in the Brave New World are deprived of most human qualities. They cannot think for themselves as they have literally built-in instincts, aspirations and abilities. They are ufamiliar with what the term family connotes. What used to be the base of a prosperous and a healthy society is now regarded as something unnecessary, impure and offensive to talk about. When the Controller talked to students about family and relations in family „one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick.† (Huxley, 1995: 27) since the negative attitude and feelings towards family and family life are embedded from their early childhood. The Controller once more reminds them: â€Å"And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group!† (Huxley, 1995: 28). According to Atwood „The word â€Å"mother† – so thoroughly worshipped by the Victorians – has become a shocking obscenity.â€Å" (Atwood, 2007: par. 18). Wherever in the novel characters mention mother it drew impure connotation, like „that smutty word againâ€Å" (Huxley, 1995: 27) „full of mothers–therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity† (28) or â€Å"the word made Lenina look uncomfortable† (79) and finally â€Å"To say one was a mother–that was past a joke: it was an obscenity.† (103). One of the main characters Bernard, an Alpha plus, an intellectual, occasionally shows independent opinion. When he and Lenina were in a visit to a Savage Reservation and saw two mothers breastfeeding, Bernard noted: â€Å"What a wonderfully intimate relationship,† he said, deliberately outrageous. â€Å"And what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you’ve missed something in not being a mother, Lenina. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own. †¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Huxley, 1995: 76) Such an observation was not something somebody would notice in that way, nor say out loud. Lenina is shocked. She looks for soma to calm her down. Her reaction is not unusual, most of the people coming from the World State would react this way for they reproduce artificially and do not take care of the children. The controllers developed many ways to manipulate people’s lives. Reproduction, which used to be the primary goal for all species, including the humankind, is now artificially carried out in laboratories. There are the so called „hatcheriesâ€Å" where human babies are hatched out of bottles and conditioned to fit their anticipated social position. The positions are occupied according to the level of their intelligence. Huxley used the Greek alphabet to name positions, starting from Alpha, the most intelligent people, and ending with Epsilons, morons who are capable for manual work. Different components are given to them while they are in bottles, as well as the amount of the oxygen. This manipulation with lives and deciding upon the role in the society in the Brave New World is a dehumanizing act. Mustapha Mond, one of the controllers, proudly explains to the Savage, who is getting more and more disappointed with what he has seen, the great biotechnology of people mani pulation „his conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run. He can’t help himself; he’s foredoomed.† (Huxley, 1995: 152). Another element of manipulation is soma. It is a kind of a drug, distributed by the State, which brings about pleasant feelings, makes people happy and easygoing, with no side effects. â€Å"Soma promotes a superficial hedonism and causes alienation from the kind of â€Å"real human life† that we know. Furthermore, soma is used to keep the social order as it is.† (Schermer, 2007: 121). When his mother dies in the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying, the Savage encounters Deltas who are about to get their portions of soma. Thinking of his mother, Linda, who died as a slave he decides to free the others. He cries out â€Å"poison to soul as well as body.† (Huxley, 1995: 145) and asks them if they would rather be slaves and puppets, than to experience manhood and freedom. He creates chaos among Deltas when he starts to throw the soma pills out of the window. Deltas panic and attack him. In the end policemen spray the soma cloud into the air and play the Voice of Reason and the Voice of Good Feelings. â€Å"Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging one another–half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace.† (Huxley, 1995:147). Peace and social stability were restored. World State controllers apply the so called hypnopaedic lessons to manipulate people’s psychology. Hypnopaedic proverbs, rhymes, prejudices and wisdoms are played to children while they sleep. The hypnopaedia turned out to be â€Å"the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time.† (Huxley, 1995: 21). Moreover, hypnopaedic lessons are not the same for all social classes. For example, when Lenina, the Alpha, saw Deltas she noted â€Å"what hideous colour khaki is.† (Huxley, 1995:42) the hypnopà ¦dic prejudices of her caste. Among many of the themes hypnopaedia covers, some of them are about â€Å"hygiene, sociability, class-consciousness and toddler’s love life† (Huxley, 1995: 99). They also use the hypnopaedic rhyme â€Å"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.† ( Huxley, 1995:35) to encourage people to get rid of old things and constantly buy new ones. In this way they created a society accustomed to get rid of the old things and immediately replace them with the new ones. „The novel provides a prophecy of a world of test tube babies, genetic engineering, and social control.â€Å" (Carter and McRae, 2001: 433). This prophecy turned out to be in practice nowadays. Test tube babies are for those who cannot have children in natural way and genetic engineering is used to improve organisms. Ordinary people know almost nothing if those are used for manipulation and creating lives or organisms to compromise humankind. Huxley saw the beginnings of consumer society and therefore incorporated it into the novel. „There was the conscription of consumption. Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry.† (Huxley, 1995:35). Nowadays there are numerous shopping malls in cities attracting consumers. Buildings and roads are full of billboards as well as mass media with advertisements which hypnotize masses and make them anxious to spend money. „Brave New World eliminated all problems, sense of loyalty or compassion, love for art and philosophy, as well as any other activities which can lead to individual thinking or even more dangerous to induce passion or feelings.† (Koljević, 2002: 133). In this way Huxley tried to warn the society of his time what can to happen to humankind if people are deprived of activities which can induce individuality, like philosophy, art, religion, family, and above all freedom, to be free to make their own choice and think for themselves. Likewise the existence of one community in the novel, the contemporary world is under the process of globalization, erasing borders between countries, and turning into one global village, one state, offering the same products worldwide and promptly delivering information. The present world is a mixture of the futuristic elements which Huxley mentioned, but it retains all activities which enable people to show their skills, their individuality. In the end the Savage dies. â€Å"The Savage seeks the admittedly narrow freedom to be unhappy rather than to escape into an induced, tidy and controlled soma dream.† (Sanders, 1994: 556). Despite his eagerness to live in the World State with all amenities it offers, he realized that he would rather feel pain if it meant to be free, than to be happy and at the same time to be someone’s slave. Brave New World developed technology to manipulate people. Its dystopian environment eventually killed the Savage, a representative of true moral values which raised the question: Will the true moral values resist as technology and science move forward? Nobody cannot stop their development, but can make use of them for proper purposes. Hopefully the humankind will be smart enough to take out the best of its history, develop science and technology to benefit people, and prevent creating uniformity and sameness to preserve the diversity of human souls. Bibliography 1. Atwood, Margaret. (2007). Everybody is happy now. Retrieved November 5, 2012, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/17/classics.margaretatwood 2. Carter. R. & J. McRae (2001). The Routledge History of literature in English: Britain and Ireland. New York: Routledge 3. GaÃ… ¡parić, Velimir. (2011). Vrli novi svijet – Novi Svjetski Poredak. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from http://2012-transformacijasvijesti.com/novi-svjetski-poredak/vrli-novi-svijet-novi-svjetski-poredak 4. Hornby. A.S. (1995). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press 5. Huxley, Aldous. (2002, May 18). Brave New World. Retrieved November 6, 2012, from http://www.idph.com.br/conteudos/ebooks/BraveNewWorld.pdf 6. Koljević, Svetozar. (2002). Engleski romansijeri XX veka. Beograd: Zavod za udÃ… ¾benike i nastavna sredstva 7. Sanders, Andrew. (1994). The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press 8. Schermer, M. H. N. (2007). Brave New World versus Island – Utopian and Dystopian Views on Psychophar macology, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10:119 –128

Literacy Strategies to Use in Lessons for Struggling Readers

Literacy Strategies to Use in Lessons for Struggling Readers In many districts, students with reading difficulties are identified in the primary grades so that remediation and support can be given as early as possible. But there are struggling students who may need support in reading throughout their academic careers. There may be struggling readers who have entered a district in the later grades when the texts are more complex and the support services less available. Extended remediation for these groups of struggling readers can be less effective if the strategies that are chosen limit a students creativity or choice. Remediation with structured lessons that repeat the same material will result in less content covered by the students. So what strategies can the classroom teacher use to teach these struggling students who cannot read to access the content? When a text is critically important, teachers need to be purposeful in selecting literacy strategies for a content lesson that prepares struggling readers for success. They need to weigh what they know about the students with the most important ideas in the text or content. For example, a teacher may determine that students need to make inferences from a fiction text to understand a character or that students need to understand how a map illustrates how rivers are important to settlement. The teacher needs to consider what all students in the class could use in order to be successful and then balance that decision with the needs of the struggling reader. The first step could be to use an opening activity where all students can be engaged successfully. Successful starters An anticipation guide is a lesson opening strategy meant to activate the students prior knowledge. Struggling students, however, may lack prior knowledge, particularly in the area of vocabulary. The anticipation guide as a starter for struggling readers is also meant to build interest and excitement about a topic and give all students an opportunity for success. Another literacy strategy starter could be a text that all students, regardless of ability, can access. The text must be related to the topic or objective and can be a picture, an audio recording or a video clip. For example, if inferences are the objective of a lesson, students may fill in thought bubbles on photos of people in response to What is this person thinking? Allowing all students access to a common text that has been selected for equal use by all students for the lessons objective is not a remediation activity or a modification.   Prepare vocabulary In designing any lesson, a teacher must select the vocabulary that is necessary for all students to meet the goal for the lessons objective rather than attempt to try to fill in all the gaps in prior knowledge or ability. For example, if the objective of a lesson is to have all students understand that a rivers location is important developing a settlement, then all students will need to become familiar with content specific terms such as port, mouth, and bank. As each of these words has multiple meanings, a teacher can  develop pre-reading activities to familiarize all students before reading. Activities can be developed for vocabulary such as these three different definitions for  bank: The land alongside or sloping down to a river or lakeAn institution for receiving, lendingTo  tip  or  incline  an  airplane Another literacy strategy comes from the research that suggests that older struggling readers can be more successful if high-frequency words are combined in phrases rather than isolated words.  The struggling readers  can practice words from Frys high-frequency words if they are purposefully placed for meaning placed into the phrases, such as a hundred ships  pulled  (from Frys 4th 100-word  list). Such phrases can be read aloud for accuracy and fluency as part of a vocabulary activity that is based in a disciplines content. In addition, a literacy strategy for struggling readers comes from Suzy Pepper Rollins book Learning in the Fast Lane.  She introduces the idea of TIP charts, used to introduce a lessons vocabulary. Students may have access to these charts that are set up in three columns: Terms (T) Information (I) and Pictures (P). Students can use these TIP charts to increase their ability to engage in accountable talk in expressing their understanding or summarizing the reading. Such talk can help develop the speaking and listening  skills of struggling readers.   Read aloud A text can be read aloud to students at any grade level. The sound of a human voice reading a text may be one of the best ways to help struggling readers develop an ear for language. Reading aloud is modeling, and students can make meaning from someones phrasing and intonation when reading a text. Modeling good reading helps all students while it provides access to the text being used. Reading aloud to students should also include think-aloud or interactive elements. Teachers should focus intentionally on the meaning â€Å"within the text,† â€Å"about the text,† and â€Å"beyond the text†   as they read. This kind of interactive read aloud means stopping to ask questions to check for understanding and allowing students to discuss meaning with partners. After listening to a read aloud, struggling readers can contribute the same as their peers in a read-aloud.   Illustrate understanding When possible, all students should have the opportunity to draw their understanding. Teachers can ask all students to summarize the lessons â€Å"big idea† or major concept can be summarized. Struggling students can share and explain their image with a partner, in a small group, or in a gallery walk.They may draw in different ways: To add to a pictureTo create an original pictureTo draw and label a pictureTo draw and to annotate a picture Literacy strategy matches objective Strategies used to support struggling readers should be tied to the lessons objective. If the lesson objective making inferences from a fiction text, then a repeated read aloud  of the text or selection of the text can help struggling readers to determine the best evidence to support their understanding. If the lesson objective is explaining the impact of rivers on developing a  settlement, then vocabulary strategies will provide struggling readers with the terms needed to explain their understanding.   Rather than try to address all of the needs of a struggling reader through modification of remediation, teachers can be purposeful in lesson design and selective in their choice of strategy,   using them individually or in a sequence:   starter activity, vocabulary prep, read-aloud, illustrate. Teachers can plan  each content lesson to offer access to a common text for all students. When struggling readers are given the chance to participate, their engagement and their motivation will increase, perhaps even more than when traditional remediation is used.