Art & History

Great Women You Should Know: Betty Skelton

In our series of Great Women You Should Know … here comes daredevil and adventurer Betty Skelton

When she was eight, Betty fell in love with aeroplanes. She watched them flying over her house every day, she devoured books about them, and she begged her parents to take her to airfields where she would persuade pilots to take her on rides above the clouds.

Betty must have been a very persuasive person, because she also talked a young Navy pilot into giving the whole family flying lessons. And when I say whole family, I mean it: Betty flew her first plane solo when she was just twelve years old. She might have been a tiny daredevil, but she was so scared her mother would scold her for doing it that she kept it a secret for a week!

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School & Career

What is The Point of Learning English?

learning english

Have you ever sat in a Maths class wondering why you will ever need to be able to do long division without a calculator? Or silently cursed your Geography teacher while learning about the formation of oxbow lakes? And History? That’s all in the past and irrelevant, isn’t it?
In this series of articles, we will look at some of the subjects we learn at school, and try and answer the question: What’s the point in learning this?

Last time we looked at uses of Maths, both in day-to-day life, and for your future career. Today we will focus on learning English. Once we have learned how to read, write and spell, what is the point? Will we ever need to quote Shakespearian sonnets? And who, other than writers, needs to be able to write stories and poems?

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Written By You

The Adventures of Cha Cha the Dragon – Part 2

Following on from Iona’s wonderful story of Cha Cha the Dragon, here is Part 2

 

Once upon a time, in deepest China, there lived a man named Li-Wang. Li- Wang was getting on in years. His wife and son had both died in childbirth, and he had only his beautiful daughter to comfort him and to keep him company. It was widely said that the daughter of Li-Wang could be no mortal being, but was an angel, sent straight from the Gods as a token of their grace and kindness. However, Li-Wang, poor man rarely ever got to see his beautiful daughter, for Li-Wang was a builder, and his latest line of employment was on The Great Wall of China Teapots.

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