SHOW'S OVER

Another one bites the dust

Say it isn't so! But it is.

One of the last real bargains in town will soon be a thing of the past, when the dollar movie house at Waterfront Plaza closes after Aug. 9.

About 40 employees, most of them part-time, will lose their jobs when the nine-screen discount theater at Restaurant Row shutters, due to a property deal with Pacific Office Properties Trust Inc. Not only do movie tickets cost just $1.25 to $1.50, depending on the time and day, but validated parking is free for 3 1/2 hours. Tough times get even tougher.

FEELING VERBOSE?

Words can't convey our pride

Today should mark an important milestone in the English language: its millionth word.

This is according to languagemonitor.com, which tracks English word usage around the world. Of course, what is and what isn't a word is still up for argument.

Some of the words which may turn the odometer include: octomom, recessionista and de-follow. The word most unlikely to make it into English is le courriel, French for e-mail.

SPEED READ

Chances for reading improvement drop after second grade

A federal study highlights the urgency of teaching kids to read by second grade, finding that four supplementary programs failed to help fifth-graders improve their reading comprehension. None of the four programs studied — Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real and Reading for Knowledge — was deemed effective, Education Week reported recently.

Catherine E. Snow, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, described how difficult it is to help students who are reading below grade-level after the primary grades. “;You do an intervention with a second-grader, you're changing direction on a speedboat, but when you do an intervention with a fifth-grader, you're changing direction on an oil tanker,”; she told the weekly.