Thinking On The Page

Take Charge of Your Writing--and Dazzle Your Instructors! It can be a challenge to achieve writing excellence, but it doesn't have to be mysterious, and it's definitely not impossible. To present powerful ideas effectively in your college essays, you need to break away from rigid rules and structures and start thinking on the page. With this book, you'll learn how to actively engage with a text, analyze it, draw informed conclusions, and then make solid claims about what you have observed. Thinking on the Page will also help you: • Think critically about what you're reading and draw questions and ideas directly from the text • Approach your essay as a story rather than a formula • Work through your ideas by graphing, listing, charting, and drawing • Incorporate relevant outside research • Edit your final essay and polish it to perfection Whether you're in college or high school, you need to communicate your ideas effectively through writing. Thinking on the Page provides innovative tools tailored to the way you learn and write, enabling you to produce thoughtful, analytical, and meaningful work, both in school and beyond.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

"We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life." Charlotte Mason ~~~~~~~ "Composition books and blank journals are readily available at every big box and corner store, available so inexpensively as to be common and ironic as we reach that digital dominion, the projected 'paperless culture.' Shall we despair the future of the notebook? Is the practice an anachronism in an age where one's thoughts and pictures, doings and strivings are so easily recorded on a smartphone or blog,and students in even the youngest classrooms are handed electronic tablets with textbooks loaded and worksheets at the ready? Or is there something indispensable in the keeping of notebooks without which human beings would be the poorer?" THE LIVING PAGE invites the reader to take a closer look in the timeless company of 19th century educator, Charlotte Mason.

This book describes some basic principles that allow developers of computer programs (computer scientists, software engineers, programmers) to clearly think about the artifacts they deal with in their daily work: data types, programming languages, programs written in these languages that compute from given inputs wanted outputs, and programs that describe continuously executing systems. The core message is that clear thinking about programs can be expressed in a single universal language, the formal language of logic. Apart from its universal elegance and expressiveness, this “logical” approach to the formal modeling of and reasoning about computer programs has another advantage: due to advances in computational logic (automated theorem proving, satisfiability solving, model checking), nowadays much of this process can be supported by software. This book therefore accompanies its theoretical elaborations by practical demonstrations of various systems and tools that are based on respectively make use of the presented logical underpinnings.

Do you want to learn a different way of thinking?Do you want to stretch your mind?Almost everyone is born with the capacity to be creative, but few realise it and such skills are often neglected or untapped. Lateral thinking is all about thinking 'outside the box', breaking out of familiar thought patterns and coming up with new possibilities. It is one of the keys to improving creativity.This book of brand new lateral puzzles aims to encourage you to think creatively. Whether at work, as part of an assessment or simply for fun, learning to think creatively can be hugely rewarding and make a real difference to your ability. By trying to find unusual or unexpected associations, patterns and connections, you can learn to keep an open mind and to look at everything in a different way.With plenty of questions and tips, this book provides an ideal opportunity for anyone to practice thinking laterally and improve their creativity.

This isn't the time to Blink. It's time to THINK! -- before it's too late. Outraged by the downward spiral of American intellect and culture, Michael R. LeGault offers the flip side of Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling phenomenon, Blink, which theorized that our best decision-making is done on impulse, without factual knowledge or critical analysis. If bestselling books are advising us to not think, LeGault argues, it comes as no surprise that sharp, incisive reasoning has become a lost art in the daily life of Americans. Somewhere along the line, the Age of Reason morphed into the Age of Emotion; this systemic erosion is costing time, money, jobs, and lives in the twenty-first century, leading to less fulfillment and growing dysfunction. LeGault provides a bold, controversial, and objective analysis of the causes and solutions for: • the erosion of growth and market share at many established American companies, big and small, which appear to have less chance of achieving the dynamic expansion of the past • permissive parenting and low standards that have caused an academic crisis among our children -- body weights rise while grades plummet • America's growing political polarization, which is a result of our reluctance to think outside our comfort zone • faulty planning and failure to act on information at all levels that has led to preventable disasters, such as the Hurricane Katrina meltdown • a culture of image and instant gratification, fed by reality shows and computer games, that has rendered curiosity of the mind and spirit all but obsolete • stress, aversion to taking risks, and therapy that are replacing the traditional American "can do" mind-set. Far from perpetuating the stereotype of the complacent American, LeGault's no-holds-barred analysis asks more of us than any other societal overview: America can fulfill its greatest potential starting today, and we need smart teachers, smart health care workers, smart sales representatives, smart students, smart mechanics, and smart leaders to make it happen. Now is the time to THINK! -- because a mind truly is a terrible thing to waste.

Incorporate writing instruction in your classroom as an essential element of literacy development while implementing best practices. Simplify the planning of writing instruction and become familiar with the Common Core State Standards of Writing.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.