How is a Kite Flying?

A kite is uses wind to make it fly because it is heavier than air. When wind travels over the surface of the kite, it is split into two streams of air. One stream of the air goes over the kite while the second stream goes under the kite.

A kite is an object which is made from a light material stretched over a frame. Due to its light material a kite will lift off the ground and fly when it is tilted into the wind.

The upper stream creates an area of low pressure above the kite. The lower stream hits the kite at a shallow angle and creates an area of high pressure.

The high pressure area has a pushing effect while the low pressure area has a pulling effect. The combination of push and pull can create enough force to lift the kite into the air.
Kites have been known for thousand of years. They are used for military or scientific purposes. Today kites are much used for leisure and competition.

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HEALTHY and FIT

If you want to be healthy and fit, you must eat a balanced food that gives you energy and nourishment. Your body need protein, which repair any damaged skin or bones, also help you to grow. Meat, fish, cheese, nuts, and crops such as peas, beans, and lentils contain protein. The carbohydrates found in starchy foods, such as breads potatoes, and rice that give you energy. Vitamins fight the disease, so you should eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as dairy products and fish oil your body also needs small amount of fats to keep warm and minerals such as iron to keep healthy. Iron comes from liver, spinach and several kinds of beans.

Everyone needs a nourishing diet, but what exactly food people eat depends on where they live some kinds of crops and mineral are suited to cooler climates and other to hooter places in developing and modern countries, people often buy in supermarkets, which sell food that comes from all over the world. In poorer countries, most people buy food at market selling local products. Some markets offer a wide range of foods, but in parts of Africa and Indian, when crops fail there may be little food available.

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THE HEN WITH THE SILVER EGGS

One day, in an Arabian city, a woman went to the market and bought a beautiful hen. A few days later to her surprise the hen she bought laid a silver egg. If the hen could only be persuaded to lay more than one egg each day, the woman was sure she would never have work again.

So the woman decided to make the hen eat more, so that it could lay more eggs

But the only result was that the hen died of indigestion and did not lay more eggs at all

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Is School Uniform necessary?

Within a few past weeks, there was an interesting topic discussed by many students in Indonesia that is the government plans to abandon the use of school uniform. I think school uniform is a must. There are some reasons why the school uniform must be implemented at school.

Firstly, school uniform is an identity. As in the army, we can differentiate between, army, navy, air force and police squad just from the uniform that they wear. The function of school uniform is also same like that. We can identify whether she or he is a kindergarten boy, an elementary school girls, or a group of junior and senior high school from their uniform.

Secondly, school uniform gives us such a feeling of togetherness. The students who come from rich families are not too different from the students who come from the poor ones. The uniform will erase the gab between the rich and the poor. So, the learning atmosphere will not be disturbed by inferiority feeling from the have not students because they can’t wear an expensive outfit.

I think the government should cancel the plan due to the social condition of our nations which is in collapse. School uniform is still badly needed to unify the students at school.

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PORTFOLIO

DEFINITION OF PORTFOLIO

A student portfolio is a systematic collection of student work and related material that depicts a student's activities, accomplishments, and achievements in one or more school subjects. The collection should include evidence of student reflection and self-evaluation, guidelines for selecting the portfolio contents, and criteria for judging the quality of the work. The goal is to help students assemble portfolios that illustrate their talents, represent their writing capabilities, and tell their stories of school achievement. 

The purposeful collection of student work or portfolio is that exhibits the student's efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas of the curriculum. The collection must include the following:

Student participation in selecting contents.

Criteria for selection.

Criteria for judging merits.

Evidence of a student's self-reflection.

It should represent a collection of students' best work or best efforts, student-selected samples of work experiences related to outcomes being assessed, and documents according growth and development toward mastering identified outcome.

According to Gottlieb (1995) there are six possible attributes of portfolio:

Collecting: Portfolios are an expression of student’s lives and identities. The appropriate freedom of students to choose what to include should be respected, but at the same time the purposes of portfolio need to be clearly specified.

Reflecting: Reflective practice through journals and self assessment checklist is and important ingredient of successful portfolio.

Assessing: Assessment seriously as they evaluate quality and development over time.

Documenting: Document in demonstrating students achievement and not just an insignificant adjunct to test and grades and other more traditional evaluation.

Linking: A portfolio can serve as an important link between student and teacher, parent, community, and peers; it is a tangible product, created with pride that identifies a student’s uniqueness.

Evaluating: Evaluation of portfolio requires a time consuming but fulfilling process of generating accountability.

Portfolio includes materials such as:

Journals, diaries, and other personal reflection.

Reports, project outlines.

Essay and compositions in draft and final forms.

Notes on lecture.

Audio and video recording of presentations, demonstration.

Poetry and creative propose

Etc.

WHY USE A PORTFOLIO?

In this new era of performance assessment related to the monitoring of students' mastery of a core curriculum, portfolios can enhance the assessment process by revealing a range of skills and understandings one students' parts; support instructional goals; reflect change and growth over a period of time; encourage student, teacher, and parent reflection; and provide for continuity in education from one year to the next. Instructors can use them for a variety of specific purposes, including:

Encouraging self-directed learning.

Enlarging the view of what is learned.

Fostering learning about learning.

Demonstrating progress toward identified outcomes.

Creating an intersection for instruction and assessment.

Providing a way for students to value themselves as learners.

Offering opportunities for peer-supported growth.

TYPES OF PORTFOLIO

While portfolios have broad potential and can be useful for the assessments of students' performance for a variety of purposes in core curriculum areas, the contents and criteria used to assess portfolios must be designed to serve those purposes. For example, showcase portfolios exhibit the best of student performance, while working portfolios may contain drafts that students and teachers use to reflect on process. Progress portfolios contain multiple examples of the same type of work done over time and are used to assess progress. If cognitive processes are intended for assessment, content and rubrics must be designed to capture those processes.

Portfolio assessments can provide both formative and summative opportunities for monitoring progress toward reaching identified outcomes. By setting criteria for content and outcomes, portfolios can communicate concrete information about what is expected of students in terms of the content and quality of performance in specific curriculum areas, while also providing a way of assessing their progress along the way. Depending on content and criteria, portfolios can provide teachers and researchers with information relevant to the cognitive processes that students use to achieve academic outcomes.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PORTFOLIO

Advantages of Portfolio Assessment

Promoting student self-evaluation, reflection, and critical thinking.

Measuring performance based on genuine samples of student work.

Providing flexibility in measuring how students accomplish their learning goals.

Enabling teachers and students to share the responsibility for setting learning goals and for evaluating progress toward meeting those goals.

Giving students the opportunity to have extensive input into the learning process.

Facilitating cooperative learning activities, including peer evaluation and tutoring, cooperative learning groups, and peer conferencing.

Providing a process for structuring learning in stages.

Providing opportunities for students and teachers to discuss learning goals and the progress toward those goals in structured and unstructured conferences.

Enabling measurement of multiple dimensions of student progress by including different types of data and materials. 

Disadvantages of Portfolio Assessment

Requiring extra time to plan an assessment system and conduct the assessment.

Gathering all of the necessary data and work samples can make portfolios bulky and difficult to manage.

Developing a systematic and deliberate management system is difficult, but this step is necessary in order to make portfolios more than a random collection of student work.

Scoring portfolios involves the extensive use of subjective evaluation procedures such as rating scales and professional judgment, and this limits reliability.

Scheduling individual portfolio conferences is difficulty and the length of each conference may interfere with other instructional activities.

GUIDELINES OR STEPS IN PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT PROCESS

First, the teacher and the student need to clearly identify the portfolio contents, which are samples of student work, reflections, teacher observations, and conference records. Second, the teacher should develop evaluation procedures for keeping track of the portfolio contents and for grading the portfolio... Third, the teacher needs a plan for holding portfolio conferences, which are formal and informal meetings in which students review their work and discuss their progress. Because they encourage reflective teaching and learning, these conferences are an essential part of the portfolio assessment process.

REFLECTION

There are some alternatives assessments to assess the students; portfolio is one of the alternatives assessments. I think the application of portfolio assessment are the effectiveness and best one in the class because the students collect their own work by themselves and it can increase the student’s responsibility to their work then a portfolio is the simple one to apply in the class because it just collects the student’s work that represents the performance of the students so, they must responsible with their own work but it is really time consuming so, the teacher must make the brilliant planning in applying portfolio assessment.

For this alternative assessment, the teachers are able to know the progress or achievement from each student and take score from that portfolio. Teacher also can give the feedback for the students by the way of giving conference which is face to face between teacher and student or journal form that the teachers write down the feedbacks on the portfolio itself so, from the portfolio process can make a close interaction between teacher and students.

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