Moving to Secondary School – Written By You
Some of you will be moving to secondary school this year, and you might be a bit worried about it. We spoke to 12 year old Josie about how she felt when taking this big step, and what advice she’d give to younger kids.
Do You Hate School Uniform? – Written By You
My name is Daisy, I’m eleven years old and although I am English, I have lived in Germany nearly all my life! I speak German and English and can read and write both too. I enjoy writing and listening to music and am the middle child of three. My mother is an author.
Does your school have a school uniform? Having to wear those scratchy skirts? Tight stockings? With our normal clothes, you can show what kind of person you are! You can send a message out to the world with how you dress, what makeup you were and how you have your hair done!
School uniforms are stopping all this. Not being allowed to choose what to wear seems so unfair! Wouldn’t it be fair if we could choose if we wanted uniforms or not? People are debating on school uniforms and deciding if they should stay!
The Great Vowel Shift
If you have learnt a foreign language, or if you are bilingual in another European language, you may have noticed that there are a number of words that are similar to words in English. Perhaps you may even have been told that some of them are derived from Latin or Greek, or that they have Germanic roots. But why is the pronunciation so often so different in English?
CURIOUS CREATURES 2 – The Stag Beetle
The strangest creatures are, to me,
The ones I love the best.
The creepy, crawly and the odd
Are cooler than the rest…
These magnificent beasties are the armoured vehicles of the insect population and the largest terrestrial-dwelling beetles in the UK. Their common name is a reference – unsurprisingly – to their antler-shaped “mandibles” or jaws, which they use to fight over territory, but not, perhaps surprisingly, to win the respect of female Stag Beetles..!
These Curious Creatures have intrigued me ever since I found an expired female stag beetle (see below ) in a south-west France many years ago. I drew it next to a blackbird’s feather, captivated by the different tones of black, the textural contrasts and inky depths of colour. I found it – and still find them all as a species – fascinating and beautiful, particularly the males, with their extraordinary maroon-red mandibles.
