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Your Proofness: Sarah Munir Master Storyteller: Nudrat Kamal Creativity Analysts: Jamal Khurshid, Essa Malik, Talha Ahmed Khan, Omer Asim and Umar Waqas
Tips for succeeding in xxxx PAGE 2-3 school PAGE 2-3
What is a ‘cliffhanger’? xxxx PAGE 4
Fairytale retellings xxx PAGE 6
Creating rainbow milk xxx PAGE 8
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
Hi light
2 School, much like everything else in life, can be both awesome and terrible. You get to make friends with all sorts of people, you have the opportunity to learn so many things about the fascinating universe we live in. But you also have to deal with bullies, or get taught by a less-than-awesome teacher. On top of that, there are exams to contend with. Cramming for tests and dealing with the pressure of getting good grades can be tough. But considering the fact that we’re supposed to go to school for almost two decades of our lives, it makes sense to equip yourself with tips and strategies to make the most of the learning experience and ace those tests.
When your teacher or professor is giving a lecture or explaining some area of the subject matter, it is worthwhile for you to take notes. One reason is that often the lecture material includes important information that is not in your textbook but will probably be in a test or exam. Another good reason is that note-taking will force you to pay attention to the material and not allow your mind to wander. Here are a few tips on taking notes in class: • When taking notes, don’t write down everything the teacher is saying. You can easily fall behind. Instead, write down key phrases and short sentences. • Look for clues in body language and vocal expressions to get an idea of what are really important items in the lesson. Often teachers will give hints on what will be in the upcoming test. • Review your notes shortly after class to add anything you missed and to refine them, while they are still fresh in your mind. Waiting too long to look at your notes may result in them not being very clear to you. • A different method of note-taking is using a graphical outline. This involves making mind-maps – putting important concepts in circles or ‘balloons’ and connecting related items with lines between the balloons. Comments can also be added to the connecting lines. This may not work for everyone or in every class, but it might be worth a try for those wanting a different approach to note-taking.
Doing well in school doesn’t just mean listening to the teachers’ lectures and studying from textbooks. You also have to use other tools of learning and explore different aspects of academics. Here are a few things you can try: SPEECH WRITING Most students hesitate going in front of the class and giving a speech in fear of being picked on as they aren’t confident enough to pull off a speech without fumbling. But stopping yourself from trying will do no good. To make things easier for yourself, pick a topic you feel passionate about or know a lot about. Preparing for your speech will help you improve your research skills, which is an important part of learning. USE THE INTERNET Gone are the days when to find out more about a topic, you had to go all the way to your local library and go through dozens of books. Now, the entire collective knowledge of humankind is just a click away. Use the internet to find out details about a topic that you wouldn’t necessarily get in a classroom. Just be careful about which information is genuine and which is made up. Go on reliable websites so that you aren’t duped. PARTICIPATE IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES School isn’t only about academics. You should be open to trying new things and exploring what you’re good at by taking part in different extracurricular activities. Taking part in an art competition might make you realise you want to be an artist, and participating in a debate might make you hone your thinking skills, which can come in handy in a classroom too.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
Hi light
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Being able to do well in tests is a special skill, distinct from simply being smart or knowing the subject matter. Problems that students have include improper preparation, test anxiety, and working too slow. You could be the smartest student in your class — leading discussions and doing well on your homework — but if you have problems taking tests, you simply will not get the grade you probably deserve. Many students have problems concerning test taking. They might have trouble properly preparing for the test, have test anxiety or work too slow to finish the test on time. Here are some things to keep in mind about taking tests: • Instead of trying to ‘cram’ everything, you should know specifically what to study. Taking notes in class and highlighting important parts of your textbook are useful methods. Also, look for clues from your teacher about what is important and may be in the test. • Don’t be lazy and leave all the preparation until the last minute. Doing so will prove to be counterproductive because knowing that you have no time left will leave you too stressed to take anything in. • When you take a test in school, you are usually working under the pressure of finishing the test within a certain time limit. Since this can be a pressure-packed situation, it is a good idea to practice taking tests or to practice working under such conditions, so that you become adept at it. One method is to practice doing homework exercises as if it was a test, setting a time limit and not using notes or your textbook to help you with the answers. • Have a good night’s sleep the night before the test and have a proper breakfast, so that you are well-rested and nourished. This will enable you to perform well. • Some students get so nervous before and during a test such that their minds seem to go blank and they can’t remember what they had learned. You must prepare yourself mentally or psychologically, so that you are confident and ready to perform.
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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
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Cool facts about music Listening to music while working out measurably improves physical performance.
How do elephants talk to each other long distance? On the elephone.
You don’t like the original version of a song because it’s better. You like it because it’s the one you heard first. Your favourite song is probably your favourite because you associate it with an emotional event in your life.
What kind of a key opens a banana? A monkey.
Your heartbeat changes and mimics the music you listen to. If a person listens to rock or techno, their heartbeat will involuntarily speed up. The opposite is true if someone listens to more calming or instrumental music. The type of music you listen to affects the way you perceive the world.
Why was the clown sad? She broke her funny bone.
A song that gets stuck in your head is called an ‘earworm’. Listening to music is helpful for patients with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, stroke victims, and people with anxiety and depression.
What happened when the magician got mad? She pulled her hare out.
Why did the girl wear glasses during math class? Because it improves di-vison.
Learning to play a musical instrument makes you smarter. When you play an instrument, you train your body to learn many new actions. This increases brain activity, and the music itself can boost your IQ. Surgeons operate better while listening to music. Music lowers stress levels and so allows surgeons to perform tasks more effectively, with one catch — the surgeons must choose the tunes themselves. If someone else chooses the music, it can actually have a detrimental effect on a surgeon’s performance.
Did you know? Where did the term ‘cliffhanger’ come from? You know when you are watching an episode of your favourite TV show and towards the end of the episode the main character receives shocking news that will change everything? Or the main character is being chased by bad guys and then there’s a gunshot and the screen fades to black? These frustrating moments are examples of ‘cliffhangers’ — a plot device in fiction which features the main character in a precarious or difficult situation, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialised fiction. A cliffhanger is mostly used for shock value and to make sure readers or viewers come back to find out what happened next week. Although it seems like this plot device might be the invention of the modern television era, the cliffhanger actually goes back centuries. Back when novels were just starting to become popular, they were published in magazines in chapters or in a serialised form. To make sure that readers were interested enough in the story that they would buy the next issue, authors of these stories would often end one chapter at a very suspenseful moment. One author, Thomas Hardy, ended one of the chapters of his novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, with the main character literally dangling off a cliff, thus giving birth to the term ‘cliffhanger’. Another really famous example of the cliffhanger occurs in one of the most famous pieces of literature produced in our part of the world — One Thousand and One Nights. This is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories written in Arabic. The main story is about an evil king who marries a new woman every day and executes her the following morning. To stop this madness, a woman named Sheherzad marries the king and every night tells him a story but leaves it at a cliffhanger, thus forcing the king to postpone her execution to hear the rest of the tale. The cliffhanger device here works so well that by the time all the stories are finished, the king realises the error of his ways and redeems himself.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny news from across the globe!
3D-printed wheelchair Sixteen-year-old Mohammad Sayed, a student at Cambridge’s experimental high school NuVu, who uses a wheelchair himself, initially wanted to make a wheelchair that flies and goes under water for a class project. “But [my teacher] said we need to start small and then go big,” he explains. So instead, Sayed and a team of NuVu students used a 3D printer to add a canopy and laptop to the wheelchair, and rebuilt the chair itself so that Sayed can alternate between a pushing and rowing motion to avoid repetitive stress injuries. The teens say each part of the wheelchair only cost $2-$3 to print, and the modified design’s non-printable bar can be purchased at a hardware store. A 3D printer is basically a machine that can build any 3D objects from digital blueprints, usually by layering plastic or other materials. Sayed explains that for someone in a wheelchair like him, it is important that the mechanism allows different types of movement, so that their muscles don’t start to atrophy from disuse. Sayed’s success demonstrates the life-changing potential of having access to a 3D printer. THEMARYSUE.COM
Prehistoric monster Scotland has its very own prehistoric marine reptile — and, no, we’re not talking about Nessie, the mythic Loch Ness monster. Scientists have announced the discovery of the fossil remains of a dolphin-like seagoing reptile on Scotland’s Isle of Skye that lived about 170 million years ago and was about 14 feet long. The creature, named Dearcmhara shawcrossi, is a member of a group called ichthyosaurs that were among the dominant marine reptiles when dinosaurs ruled the land. Ichthyosaurs, some of which reached monstrous proportions rivaling all but the largest of today’s whales, thrived for more than 150 million years until disappearing about 95 million years ago. Dearcmhara, a moderate-sized ichthyosaur, swam in warm, shallow seas during the Jurassic Period, and ate fish and squid. Its remains are incomplete but the shape of a bone in its front flippers suggests it may have been an especially strong or fast swimmer, the researchers said. “It is from Scotland, and is the first uniquely Scottish marine reptile ever discovered and studied,” said University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte. HUFFINGTONPOST.COM
World wide weird
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Self-lacing sneakers
Nike will release this year a line of Marty McFly’s self-lacing, light-up sneakers from Back to the Future II, a 1989 sci-fi film in which characters time travelled to 2015. Tinker Hatfield, the Nike designer who created McFly’s shoes for the film, confirmed at a conference last week that the Nike team is planning to release the sneakers sometime this year, though they don’t have an exact date yet. The new footwear will feature ‘power laces’, in which motorised rollers in the shoe’s sole sense weight and tighten the laces when someone steps into the shoes. You won’t have to go to the trouble of lacing your shoes anymore — they will automatically be laced once you wear them. This year also marks the 30 year anniversary of the original Back to the Future movie. A hoverboard, which is a skateboard that hovers above the ground, and which was also featured in the Back to the Future franchise, has already been developed in real life. Looks like the future Marty McFly travelled to is here already. TIME.COM
Space delivery The International Space Station received a shipment of late Christmas gifts and groceries. A company called SpaceX sent the supply ship, called Dragon. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully boosted the cargo ship into space on Saturday. It reached the orbiting lab two days later. “Hurrah! A #Dragon is coming to visit bringing gifts,” Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti tweeted while in orbit. Station commander Butch Wilmore used a robot arm to grab the capsule, which contained 5,000 pounds of important cargo. The space station’s six astronauts were getting a little low on supplies. That’s because the previous supply ship, owned by another company, was destroyed in a launch explosion in October. NASA scrambled to get replacements aboard Dragon, which was delayed a month by rocket problems. It should have been at the space station well before Christmas. But all’s well that ends well. “We’re excited to have it on board,” Wilmore said. “We’ll be digging in soon.” He’s especially eager to get more mustard. The station’s condiment cabinet is empty. TIMEFORKIDS.COM
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
Reading corner
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Choco Balls
Materials: • Plain biscuits 2 large packets
By Zainab Fawad
• Chocolate 2 big bars (equal to 2 ½ cups)
Instructions:
• Cream 1/2 cup
1. Put the biscuits in the bag and crush them with a rolling pin.
• Sugar 1 ½ tablespoon (if you are using dark chocolate)
2. Melt the chocolate and cream together in the microwave or on the stove.
• Vanilla essence 1 teaspoon
3. Add the crushed biscuits to the chocolate and cream mixture. 4. Make balls of medium size and put them in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Fairytale retellings There is something universally appealing about fairytales. These tales are full of evil monsters and daring princesses, of adventure and danger and intrigue. And the stories all explore ideas of good and evil, of what it means to be brave and of how to be the best person you can be. These are themes that are always fascinating, which is why classic fairytales have been retold again and again with clever twists, creative reinterpretations and exciting new angles. By retelling fairytales, we can keep enjoying them in new ways and learning new things from them. Here are some fairytale retellings worth checking out: The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards In The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards, 13-year-old Zardi loves to hear stories about fantastical beings, long banned from the kingdom of Arribitha. When her own beloved sister is captured by the evil ruler, Zardi sets out to rescue her. Along with her best friend, Ridhan, and a crew of sailors led by Captain Sinbad, Zardi ventures forth into strange and wondrous territory with a seemingly impossible mission: to bring magic back to Arribitha and defeat the sultan once and for all. The book is based on the classic Arabian fairytale One Thousand and One Nights, in which Princess Sheherzad tells tales of magic to the evil king to save the girls of the kingdom. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine The story of Cinderella is one of the most famous fairytales out there. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, is its retelling. It follows Ella, a girl who lives with her evil stepmother and stepsisters who want to kill her. But there’s a twist: Ella was cursed at birth with the ‘gift’ of obedience. Anything anyone tells her to do, Ella must obey. Instead of letting the curse make her weak, she turns into a rebel. She sets out on a quest for freedom and self-discovery as she tries to track down the fairy who cursed her to undo it. On the way, she fends off ogres, befriends elves, and even falls in love with a prince.
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu Hazel and Jack had been best friends since they were six, until one day Jack just stopped talking to Hazel. Hazel knows something is not right with her friend and she’s right: Jack’s heart had been frozen, and he was taken into the woods by a woman dressed in white to live in a palace made of ice. Now, it’s up to Hazel to venture into the woods after him. Or even the same Hazel. Will she be able to save Jack? Read Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu which is inspired by the fairytale The Snow Queen written by Hans Christian Anderson, in which two friends are torn apart when an evil icy-hearted queen freezes one friend’s heart.
The Princess Bride Technically, the film The Princess Bride (1987) is not a retelling of a particular fairytale. But it has everything a good fairytale has: swordplay, giants, an evil prince and a brave princess. It even has pirates. The story is a classic tale of love and adventure as the beautiful Buttercup, engaged to the odious Prince Humperdinck, is kidnapped and held against her will in order to start a war. It is up to Westley (her childhood beau, now returned as the Dread Pirate Roberts) to save her. Full of swashbuckling adventure and lots of laughs, The Princess Bride is a must-watch.
Once Upon a Time What if fairytales were real and fairytale characters were living among us? That is the basic premise of the TV show Once Upon a Time. For Emma Swan, life has been anything but a happy ending. But when she’s reunited with Henry — the son she gave up for adoption 10 years ago — everything changes. Henry has a book of fairytales and he believes that Emma is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, and that fairy tale characters are residing in his hometown of Storybrooke due to a evil by the Evil Queen. All the classic fairytale characters we know are living there with no memory of their true selves, and Emma must help break the curse they are under.
Do you have a favourite book or movie you would like us to review? Write to us at hifive@tribune.com.pk and tell us all about it.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
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Artwork
Tehreem Zubair Uniba Khan Winner
Tuba Raoof Ahmed Khan
Haiqa Nadeem Winner
Ayesha Shahid
Hajra Zia
Sumiyah Raoof Ahmed Khan
Notable Entries for the Liberty Books Cards
Competition
Aleena Usman
Maryam Wasif
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 18, 2015
By Wishaal Khalid
Salman and Noman had spent the previous week convincing their parents to adopt a pet. They had gone to a pet show that Sunday and came back aglow and excited: they wanted a friendly pet too! “Please, please mama! A dog is loyal. They say dogs are a man’s best friend!” said Salman beseechingly. “Yes, mama,” added Noman, quite respectfully, as he was the older sibling, “Dogs can be trained to protect their owners, they can be really useful to us.” “I agree with you both, I also wanted an adorable looking puppy when I was your age. I’ll speak to your father when he comes home.” Their dad also agreed after much pleading and all of them decided to go together to the pet shop on Sunday. The previous night, as they were all sitting around the dinner table, they all put forward their suggestions as to which dog they should buy. “A huge German shepherd is what I want,” said Salman excitedly. “His barks can scare away anybody! I’ll train him myself.” “No way! We’ll get a golden retriever. They’re so shiny and beautiful and they’re always so happy, mama!” exclaimed Noman. “I’ve always wanted a poodle, you know. I would name her Dodo and take her for long walks. Poodles are very loving towards their owners,” their mama said wistfully. They began bickering back and forth, each adamant to have their kind of dog in the house. They just couldn’t agree on what to get! They argued and argued, each person mentioning the advantages of having their kind of dog. A pet is a lifelong commitment after all, they wanted to make the perfect choice. “Alright alright!” said Dad, “we’ll decide that in the morning. It’s past bed time!” On Sunday morning, they still hadn’t decided what to get. The poodle had been ruled out by No-
You will need: • Whole milk • Shallow dish man and Salman but the competition was strong between the German shepherd and the golden retriever. An hour later, they were both sitting in the back seat of their car, not talking to each other out of anger, each boy looking away from the other. Throughout the trip to the pet store they kept quiet and sullen. When they arrived at the pet shop, it was not a place full of cages as they had expected but a huge garden where all the dogs had been left alone to play. It seemed like they were well trained. The boys looked at them with stars in their eyes, following the small happy puppies and the large dogs around the field. As they moved closer to the edge, they saw an adorable brown puppy in the corner. It wasn’t running around like the others but just sitting in the corner quietly. As Noman and Salman got closer, they figured out that the puppy had one leg missing! “Yes, that little puppy was born with a deformity. His brothers and sisters have all gone to different houses but nobody has come for him.” The puppy looked so sad and lonely, it looked like he missed his family very much. It looked like he needed some new friends to play with. The boys looked at each other with tears in their eyes. They brought their mama and dad to see this puppy who loved him immediately and got all the adoption paperwork signed. Salman and Noman carried their new pet in their arms to their car, with happiness on their faces, all arguments forgotten.
• Food colouring or liquid watercolours • Liquid dish soap • Q-tips (ear buds)
What to do: 1. Pour a thin layer of the whole milk in a shallow dish. 2. Squeeze droplets of food colouring on the surface of the milk. You can use one colour or several colours. 3. Next, dip a Q-tip in the dish soap and then in the milk, preferably in the centre of a spot of food colouring. 4. Watch the colours explode all over as the detergent interacts with the fat molecules in the whole milk!
What is happening: Milk is mostly water but it also contains vitamins, minerals, proteins and tiny droplets of fat suspended in solution. Fats and proteins are sensitive to changes in the surrounding solution (the milk). The secret of the bursting colours is the chemistry of that tiny drop of soap. Dish soap weakens the chemical bonds that hold the proteins and fats in solution. The soap’s polar, or hydrophilic (water-loving) end dissolves in water and its hydrophobic (water-fearing) end attaches to a fat globule in the milk. This is when the fun begins. The molecules of fat bend, roll, twist, and contort in all directions as the soap molecules race around to join up with the fat molecules. During all of this fat molecule gymnastics, the food colouring molecules are bumped and shoved everywhere, providing an easy way to observe all the invisible activity. As the soap becomes evenly mixed with the milk, the action slows down and eventually stops. ARTFULPARENT.COM
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