Christmas holidays are upon us and with it the end of a very long, convoluted year. Over the past few weeks students have been able to appreciate how hard it is to work at one’s dreams, and hopefully, make them come true.
Christmas Movie
It’s a wrap! Filming is over and we are recording the last voiceovers. We can’t wait to share with you our extraordinary interpretation of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’.
English
When you have a dream you must often fight for it. All students participated in the ‘Write for Rights’ initiative, sending letters to activists to encourage their efforts or to governments asking to right wrongs. We talked about the risks that come with freedom of expression and how to voice encouragement and frustration appropriately.
Trees
What better way to work for our dream planet than by planting trees? Our housepoint winners were hard at work this week replanting the forest.
Business
Is globalisation more or less likely to make one’s dreams come true? We studied some implications of globalisation for small and large businesses.
History
On 11th November in 1918, dreams came true for millions of people as the end of the First World War finally ended. This week we learnt how this happened.
Forest Day
On Thursday the 17th we enjoyed a fantastic Forest Day outside school. Stephen, a professional Forest Leader, began by telling us how to read the maps and how we could orient ourselves using the compass to follow a route. Then we traced the route and it was the students who acted as guides to get almost to the top of the Creu de Canet. Once established in our base area on top of the mountain, Stephen’s proposal was a challenge to realize some of our students’ dreams: students had to build a shelter to spend the night in the mountain. The shelter was to be built with materials found in the forest and was to allow a person to lie down and spend the night. And obviously, it had to be waterproof. It was a pleasure to see our students working together, making decisions and collaborating with each other. With an hour of work the results were a success, a dream come true!
Maths
Year 7 and 8
Year 7 and 8 are clearly dreaming very hard about the January sales and what deals they can get. With their incredible percentage and fraction skills they certainly won´t miss any bargains.
Year 9
This week year 9 dreamt about pies and pizzas for weeks. How can they cut a pizza to an exact degree that will make it fair to the rest of the class? They were able to construct pie charts and analyse data that would help them at pizza parties in the future.
Science
Year 7 and 8
This week year 7/8 transformed the classroom into a water treatment plant. They collected undrinkable water from the sea with salt, sand and rocks in it. First, they used filter paper to filter the suspension (salty water and sand) and then they went home and dreamt about how they could retrieve the water from the salt. They all knew evaporation would leave us with the salt and the water would turn into water vapour in the air, but how could we get that water vapour gas back into a liquid state. Ah! That´s right, condensation! So, the clever students came back into class the next day and set up our very own distillery right here in the science lab, and were able to retrieve drinkable water!
Year 9
This week year 9 dreamed of an eco-friendly environment, they thought of the effects and causes of damage to our planet and discussed ways that we can prevent such travesties. We discussed in detail the powerful effect recycling has, from clearing the unsightly build up on landfill sites to preventing soot and acid rain effects on our beautiful architecture.
Year 10
This week year 10 followed the scientist, Alessando Volta, and created complete online circuits to calculate voltage and current going through a bulb and motor. With this information they can calculate the resistance in the bulb and power and charge in the cell.
