Macmillan Dictionary Launch

Are you interested in winning a balloon ride across Oxford?
Macmillan publishers are holding a competition to launch their new dictionary in May. The launch will take place in Radcliffe Square in Oxford (the square where the Radcliffe Camera and Bodleian Library are)on Thursday May 12th at 5.30 pm and a group from school will go down together. At the launch hundreds of balloons will be launched, and if you want to enter the competition your name can be attached to one of them. The name on the balloon that travels the furthest will win a ride in a hot air balloon over Oxford. The launch will take place on the same day in Sao Paolo, Beijing, Bucharest and Madrid, and the balloon that travels furthest of all of these races will win a round-the-world air ticket!! Great prizes eh? The competition is free: all you have to do is give your name to Jackie and then turn up for the balloon race on the day. Everyone who goes down will also get a bag of goodies from the publisher for free. There will be some posters up around school soon, but if you want to know more just come and ask me.

Final update on Red Nose day

In case you're interested, we raised just over £150 from the lunch and the raffle. Add to this the money that went to buy the noses and it makes almost £200. Congratulations to all of you and thank you again for helping to make it such a big success.
Have a look at the pictures of Yazid before and after he shaved off his beard. I can't see any difference - do you think he was just pretending to shave?

Red Nose Day

We had a great day yesterday for Red Nose Day.
Red Nose Day happens every 2 years, and is a day organised by the charity Comic Relief to raise money for poor people in Africa and also in the UK. The first Red Nose Day was in 1985 at the height of the famine in Ethiopia. All over Britain people have parties and events to raise money, and in the evening BBC have a huge comedy programme and people are encouraged to phone in and promise money.
At Eckersley we organised a pasta lunch. The Italian group leaders from the Lavello group cooked an enormous amount of pasta with a delicious tomato sauce. Students paid £1 to get a bowl of this pasta. We had decorated the room earlier with red balloons and some posters, and put out long tables all around the students' room. For a few days beforehand, Jackie had been going around classes selling raffle tickets and we drew the winners. There were lots of different prizes. Some beautiful glass ear-rings from Chile, donated by Nicole, were chosen first. Sean's name was pulled out but he wasn't there so Tariq chose a 40-minute English lesson for him. Somebody said that this was really a punishment and not a prize!! But Mizuki was very happy with her lesson, and chose Luke as the teacher to give it. Afterwards she said that this was really good value - she bought a ticket for only £1 and got a one-to-one lesson. The other thing we did to raise money was that Yazid decided to shave off his beard and moustache. He got people to sponsor him to do it, and we took photos of before and after!At the end of the day everybody helped with washing up and with putting all the chairs back in the classrooms. Thank you all for helping to make it such a good day.
Overall I'm not sure how much money we raised - I was too tired yesterday to count it all. I'll let you know!

Red Nose Day - March 16th

Have you heard of Comic Relief? You may have seen something on TV.
Comic Relief is a charity set up by British comedians to raise money for people in need in Britain and overseas, especially in Africa. The money is raised in many ways, but every 2 years there is a red nose day, when people all over the country wear red noses and do stupid things to raise money. This year, red nose day is on March 16th.
At Eckersley, we will be doing some different things to raise money.
We'll be having a pasta lunch. Instead of giving it you for free, this time you will have to pay £1 for your plate of pasta, but remember the money is going to a good cause. We would also like you to bring in cakes and sweets etc. to sell to each other, again with the money going to charity. Drinks will be provided by the school, but we'll have a collection if you want to pay something towards them.
We'll also be selling red noses. Staff will come to school in red noses, and red clothes or BIG clothes (the theme of red nose day this year is The Big One). We'll be selling red noses in school, or you can get them from lots of local shops. We'll also have a raffle. You can buy a ticket, and then you ight win one of several fantastic prizes!!
Ask you teacher if you want to know more about red nose day and comic relief. Or if you have any questions why not post them up to the blog?

Thank You

Hi, thank you for the school to give us this blog and I hope it will be useful for us.

TAREQ