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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Science, Nature and Tech

Lightning Never Strikes Twice

Continuing our Fact or Fable series, today we take a look at the saying ‘Lightning never strikes twice’, with our Science Editor Samantha Gouldson investigating.

Lightning forms when excess amounts of positive and negative electric charge build up in storm clouds. This causes sparks, kind of like static electricity. Sometimes the sparks jump between the clouds but often they jump between the clouds and the ground.

It’s not just thunderstorms that have lightning either; snow storms, sand storms and even the clouds produced by erupting volcanoes can all cause lightning.

volcano

The idea that lightning doesn’t strike twice is a popular saying but one that it’s easy to disprove.

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School & Career

A World at School – Education for Everyone

We are lucky in the western world. We are entitled to a free education until the age of 18. You might not always feel like going to school, but you are able to learn about loads of different topics, which will help you find a job when you are older. Not only that, but school can be great fun too – we bet you have a favourite subject, that you love to learn about.

A lot of children across the world don’t have this opportunity. Sometimes it is because the children are too poor to be able to afford to go to school, and there is no way they can pay for uniform, travel and schoolbooks. Sometimes it is because the government doesn’t provide free education where they live. Sometimes it is simply because they are girls. You might have seen the story of the girls in Nigeria who have been kidnapped, because they wanted to go to school – we are all hoping very much that they are soon home with their families. Now more than ever, it is vital to ensure children can go to school safely.

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Science, Nature and Tech

The leg bone’s connected to the….

Why didn’t the Skeleton go to the party? Cos he had nobody to dance with….
Get it?
Yes, ok… so not the most original joke, but the skeleton is truly an amazing structure. Much like the rest of the body.
So apart from making a great Halloween costume, what is a skeleton for? What do the various bits a pieces do?

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Art & History

POO-EE! Roman Toilet Seat Found Near Hadrian’s Wall

How would you like to root around in a 2000 year-old toilet?! The Romans created aqueducts, newspapers, and bound books… but did you know they helped create the toilets we have today?
Archaeologists at a Roman excavation site in Northumberland have recently uncovered a wooden toilet seat…that is 2000 years old! While it looks a bit more basic than the toilet seats we have today, it shows that they were very concerned with cleanliness.

 

Roman toilet seat

The Roman wooden toilet seat. Not looking bad to say it’s 2000 years old! (Source.)

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