Hooray! Hooray!

It's a happy happy holiday!!!!

Wake Me Up When September Ends

See ya!

This is it.

Time to go.

No, we're not on holidays - yet!

We'll be attending boring meetings,

we'll be watching

YOU

during those endless examinations,

we'll be around...

So,

have fun,

enjoy yourself and your friends,

have great laughs,

read,

listen to music,

take care!

We'll be back

in September

and so will you, hopefully...

Tony Holmes posted a comment on knife crimes here :)

Britain is facing a crisis of child-on-child violence and the prevailing attitude appears to be one of incoherent fire-fighting. Hard-hitting viral campaigns, metal detectors in schools, and tougher punishments for carrying weapons, are all good strategies which will hopefully have an immediate impact on violent youth behaviour, but they are simply prescriptive, stop-gap solutions.Whilst we welcome these new measures to protect young people, we are acutely aware that they do not address the root causes of conflict and violent behaviours. Young people are using violence, fear and exclusion to intimidate and threaten others. It is bullying in its most extreme form. When bullying goes unchecked in our schools and communities, the breeding ground for gang culture prospers.There have been 28 teenagers stabbed to death already this year. We also know that this year at least 20 young people will take their own lives because they are being bullied. Whether killed by another youth, or dying at their own hands, too many young people are being bullied to death.What we need is a comprehensive, joined up, coherent strategy to educate our young people in conflict resolution, anti-violence and anti-bullying behaviour. Intervene early against bullying and we can affect the growing culture of knife crime and gang related behaviour. We know that poor inter-faith and inter-community relations, truancy, and violent behaviour are all linked to bullying. As a result, fully-inclusive anti-conflict and bullying prevention work is essential if we are to significantly address this dystopia in which our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours, are being murdered and terrorised by someone else’s children.Beatbullying realises that this is not a problem that can be solved in months, so where is the comprehensive five-year strategy from any of our political parties? The problem bridges all areas of society, so we need a cross-departmental response from Government. At the moment, despite the promises and the prescriptive acts, the lack of a long-term, joined up response based on education and prevention, is beyond belief. We need leadership and a strong Government must stand up for our youth now.Education is the key, but the responsibility cannot lie solely at the feet of the teacher. Beatbullying and a coalition of expert organisations, can deliver proven conflict resolution, anti-violence and anti-bullying programmes into every school, intervening early to prevent the escalation into the youth crimes and murders we are witnessing on our streets every week. Beatbullying has calculated that it will cost £45million over five years, to deliver this work into schools and youth groups across the UK, reaching every child in this country.The viral campaign launched yesterday will cost £3million, in the hope that it will shock youngsters into stop carrying knives. Who knows how many it will reach, or how effective it will be. It’s time to look beyond trying to patch up a problem with disjointed, prescriptive acts, and deliver a preventative solution to benefit every young person, and society as a whole, over the next five years.

Tony Holmes

Volunteer

"We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give."
Sir Winston Churchill

A volunteer is a youngster or adult who, because of his/her personal interests and civic spirit, dedicates part of his/her time, without getting paid, to different forms of activities, organized or not, aiming at the welfare of the society, in many areas.
We would like to do voluntary work in a near future. The bottlenose dolphin fascinates us. It has its own particular style, its bottle shaped nose, and that’s what we like about it. So, we would not mind to save them. In order to do that, we would go to the Amvrakikos Gulf, in Greece, because there are many good volunteer programmes to save the amazing bottlenose dolphins. The most important difficulty we would have to overcome would be the language, we can’t speak Greek, but we would survive speaking English.
In our opinion, a volunteer must have good communication skills, be able to speak different languages, but the most important one is the English. He/she should also be good with the public speaking and be well prepared to deal with the technologies related to the job he would perform.

Diogo Tavares, 901

Filipe Carvalho, 901

João Dias, 901

Rui Alves, 901

Text Production - 701

Reducing, Reusing and Recycling

Reducing, Reusing and Recycling. For some people, these are just words but to the environment they are some of the most important things that we can do to save it.
Reducing is an important help that we can give to the environment. In fact, it’s good for us, too. To save some money is, of course, an easy thing to do. So, if we reduce, we are saving the environment, and, at the same time, we are also contributing for our finances.
Reusing things can be not only good to environment, but also funny art projects. And finally recycling: taking plastic, glass, paper and others to recycling points is something that helps the environment.
As you can see, protecting the environment is awesome!

André Pedrosa, 701

The 3 R’s

The 3 R’s are reusing, reducing and recycling. You have to help to save the world! It’s easy if you try!
Reducing the amount of waste you produce in your house is the best way to help our planet. Try to do it!
Reusing, for example plastic bags. When you go to the shopping, when you go to the supermarket… you bring with you many plastic or paper bags!... You can take your cloth bags and reusing them more times. You can use them again and again!
Recycling is very easy! You can separate paper, plastic and glass! Then, you take it in the recycling point.
Look! Isn’t it easy?! Help to save the earth! Start now!

Sara Carvalho, 701