Want to try to make your own phylogenetic trees? When you use the following directions, you will be able to compare virtually any living organism to any other organisms and see their evolutionary relatedness. All DNA that is used in these trees has been loaded in by scientists that study that particular organism and is housed at NCBI (National Center of Biotechnology Information).
Differentiated Instructional Strategies for Writing in the Content Areas
“Filled with easy-to-implement ideas, clearly explained. This book helps teachers differentiate with confidence. I absolutely recommend it to ALL teachers.”
—Steve Knobl, Principal
Gulf High School, New Port Richey, FL
“Chapman and King have done it again. The new edition has so many new activities and strategies for teachers to help students become motivated to write and become better writers!”
—Linda Prichard, PreK/Fifth-Grade Instructional Specialist
Rutherford County Schools, Murfreesboro, TN
Use writing as a tool for helping students master content!
Every classroom is made up of students at different levels of proficiency in writing. This concise guide helps teachers work with each student′s unique skills and needs so that the student learns to apply information, demonstrate content mastery, think creatively and critically, and solve real-world problems through writing.
This updated edition of a best-selling book offers explicit strategies for differentiating writing instruction to help students learn content and develop as writers. The authors address how to create a climate for writing, use flexible groupings, differentiate instruction, and assess student writing. Offering new strategies and activities for effective writing instruction, this second edition:
- Covers informational text writing and critical thinking skills
- Includes guidance for working with English language learners
- Discusses current research about writing and learning
- Offers expanded coverage of assessment methods and tools
Differentiated Instructional Strategies for Writing in the Content Areas provides educators with the tools they need to address students′ writing and learning needs across different grade levels, developmental stages, and learning styles.
What Is A Fibonacci Sequence?
Patterns are found all over the natural world. From the grasping tendrils of a plant to the dew-laden web of a spider, we can see repeated sequences as a product of living systems. One pattern we will focus on in this resource is the Fibonacci sequence. The result of the sequence creates stunning swirls and grasping hands. As you watch the following video to observe its beauty and mathematical importance, think about these two questions:
- Can you describe the pattern that was discussed in the video?
- Dr. John Edmark talked about the golden ratio appearing in nature. Where did he say that it appears? Can you think of other places where it might appear?
The pattern described in the video is called the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician who wrote about the pattern in his journals as he observed how rabbits reproduce.
The Fibonacci sequence works like this.
Let’s say you have two segments of a specific length, A and B, where A is bigger than B.
If these two segments are in a Fibonacci sequence, the bigger piece divided by the smaller piece will be approximately 1.618.
Also, if you take A’s length and add it to B’s length, then divide by A’s length, you will get the same number: 1.618. This ratio is called the golden ratio.
For example, the following numbers are a Fibonacci sequence: 3, 5, 8,13, 21, 34, 55, etc. When we divide 5 by 3 we get about 1.6. Divide 8 by 5 you also get about 1.6. 13 divided by 8? About 1.6 again!
To determine the next number in the sequence, you simply sum together the previous two numbers. You can repeat this process to generate an infinitely long Fibonacci sequence. For example:
If you select any three numbers in a row from a Fibonacci sequence, you’ll find the same pattern. Let’s define Fn as any number in the sequence, and then define (n-1) as the number positioned just before Fn, and (n-2) as the number two positions before Fn in the sequence. For any Fibonacci sequence, Fn will always be equal to (n-1) + (n-2).
For example, let’s look at a Fibonacci sequence starting with 75, 120, 195. To find the next number in this sequence (Fn), you can add 120 (that’s the n-2) to the 195 (the n-1) to get 315 (the Fn). So the sequence is now is 75, 120, 195, 315. You now have a Fibonacci sequence!
The ratio of the bigger number divided by the smaller number, that always equals 1.6, is denoted by the Greek letter Phi (Φ) and is called the Golden Ratio. You can find Phi in the above Fibonacci example: 315 / 195 = 1.615.
If you put rigid pieces of wood, measured in lengths of several successive Fibonacci sequence numbers together end to end in this pattern, you will see the additive effect observed in the video where Dr. Edmark’s structures curl beautifully in on themselves.
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The Fibonacci pattern can be found all over in nature, like in the formation of a nautilus shell, the swirl of a hurricane, and the petal distribution of a flower. It can also be found in your very own hand.
Look at your hand. Each of your fingers has three bones in it called phalanges (phalanx for singular). When you measure the length of the phalanges in order from the wrist to the tip of each finger, you will find that the sequence of lengths is pretty close to a Fibonacci sequence. Is it possible that this arrangement of phalanges is helpful or adaptive in some way for gripping objects?
Activity 1: Build A Grasping Hand Model
You are going to figure out the optimal phalange arrangement needed to grasp a variety of different shaped objects by modeling a grasping hand with different phalanx lengths. Given a set of pre-determined phalanx lengths, you will create a “finger” and evaluate how effectively that finger grasps different objects. You will create multiple models of only the index finger of a hand and determine which formation allows for the maximum surface area contact with the most of the given objects. Use this printable handout to model the grasping hand.
Be sure to graph the data of your final model. You will use this graph as you move onto the next section.
Setup Octopus Deploy
As shown in an earlier screenshot, you should set up a jump box that sits between Octopus Deploy and your Oracle Database. This machine needs to have Redgate’s Oracle Tool-belt, SQL*Plus, and the standard tnsnames.ora file installed. The tnsnames.ora file needs to contain all the hosts (database servers) you need to connect to from this jump box.
Due to a quirk in the Redgate’s Oracle Tool-belt, you need to run the Tentacle as an account rather than as the local system account; otherwise, you will get errors saying the tool isn’t activated, even though it is. Please follow these instructions to set that up.
I have added two new step-templates to the community library. Redgate – Create Oracle Release and Run Oracle SQLPlus Script. Please download and install them on your Octopus Deploy instance.
The process I have put together is very simple. The first step generates a report and a delta script, in pre-prod and prod a DBA approves the changes, and then the delta script is run against the database.
I intentionally made this step only generate a delta script and a report file. It is possible to make Redgate’s Oracle tools do the deployment for you by including the /deploy command line switch. I omitted that command line switch because I feel it is important to build trust in the process first and have a human approve the changes. The community library is open source. You are free to clone that step and adjust it to meet your needs:
There are a few options to complete in the first step. I’ve tried to include as much help text as possible. If something isn’t clear, please let us know by emailing [email protected], and we will get that fixed up.
At the end of the step, you are asked to provide the source schema and the destination schema. This is due to a setting Redgate’s tooling. The step-template wraps the command-line, and it offers the schema name as an option, so the step template has to offer it as an option as well:
The second step template will take any script and run it against an Oracle database using SQL*Plus. This step only requires the path of the script to run and the necessary credentials to access the Oracle database.
Please note, the Redgate – Create Oracle Release step will generate a file in the export directory called Delta.sql. I wanted to make this script as generic as possible, which is why you have to supply the full path:
One thing I like about the Oracle tools is the report it generates to show the delta between the scripts stored in the package and the destination database. The Redgate – Create Oracle Release will make this an artifact for you to download and review:
In addition, it also makes the delta script an artifact to download:
Running the first deployment
Octopus is now configured and ready to go, and it’s time for the first test run. I’m only going to deploy to dev.
Let’s check the database to make sure. Yup, everything is there.
Conclusion
The days of manually writing deployment scripts for each environment are rapidly drawing to a close. In this article, we created an entire CI/CD pipeline for an Oracle database. It still lacks a couple of key features, such as handling any sort of initialization data as well as static data, but it’s a good start. I encourage you to take this basic process and start adding on to it.
Until next time, happy deployments!
Posts in the database deployment automation series:
- Why consider automated database deployment
- Database deployment automation approaches
- Database deployment automation using state-based Redgate SQL Change Automation
- Using ad-hoc scripts in your automated database deployment pipeline
- Database deployment automation using Octopus and Redgate Deployment Suite for Oracle
- Database deployment automation using Jenkins and Octopus Deploy post deployment scripts for Oracle
- Using DbUp and Octopus workers for database deployment automation
- Automatic approvals for your database deployment automation
