Wednesday,+October+29th,+2013

Welcome again! If you have been absent, we miss you! If you've been present, we appreciate your discussions!

Do you still want to read the rest of the story? Here is it..... **That’s the Entertainment?**

“Ooooh!” cries the audience as the orcas leap from the water in perfect formation. “Aaaaah!” they shout as the trainer rides across the pool on the nose of one of the giants.

For years, dolphins, orcas, and other sea mammals have been **making audience say** ooooh and aaaah at water parks like Sea World. But how do trainers **get nine-ton whales to do** acrobatic trick with a human or **make them “dance”**?

It is not easy. Traditional animal trainers controlled animals with collars and leashes and **made them perform** by using cruel punishments. Then, in the 1940c, parks wanted to **have dolphins do tricks**. The first trainers faced big problems. You can’t **get a dolphin to wear** a collar. And you can’t punish a dolphin –it will just swim away from you! This challenge **made the trainers develop** a kinder, more human method to teach animals.

This method, positive reinforcement, uses rewards rather than punishments for training. To begin teaching, a trainer lets **an animal act** freely. When the trainer sees the “correct” behavior, he or she immediately rewards the animal, usually with food. The animal quickly learns that a reward follows a behavior.

For complicated acts, the trainer breaks the act into many smaller parts and **has the animal learn**each part separately.

Positive reinforcement has revolutionized our treatment of animals in zoos. Elephants, for example, need a lot of physical care. However, traditional trainers used force to **make elephants “behave”**.

Elephant sometimes rebelled and hurt or even killed their keepers. Through positive reinforcement, elephants at modern zoos have learned to stand at the bars of their cage and let keepers draw blood for tests and take care of their feet. Trainers even get primates (monkeys and apes) to bring their own bedding to the keepers for washing. Gary Priest, a former orca trainer, helped the keepers train the elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Do the elephants like the new system? “They love it! They’ll do anything we ask. They’d fly for us if they could,” Priest said.

Unfortunately, not all trainers use positive reinforcement. Animal rights organizations have found abuses of animal actors by circuses and other entertainment companies. And the question remains: Even with kind treatment, should we keep animals captive and **have them perform** just for our entertainment? In the wild, orcas may travel 100 miles a day. Is it really kind to **make them live** in small pools of chemically treated water? Today, more and more people say the only real kindness is to **let these animals live** natural lives.

Yesterday we finished up the unit of using the words help, make, get, have, and let. We also had a fun lesson on count and non count nouns. Let's review a little bit from Focus on Grammar.

Today we will practice keeping our gerunds and infinitives parallel in a sentence.

Check out two favorite websites to practice your grammar lessons for this week! www.cambridge.org/venturesarcade www.roadtogrammar.com

Also, go to CANVAS and look for the Discussion entitled: Halloween Celebration! Reply to the discussion. Read other students' replies and write back to them. Happy Halloween!