Scary movies... NO Thank you!

• Amenabar's latest film "Regression" to open San Sebastian Film Festival
• San Sebastian, Spain, Aug 14 (EFE) .- The world premiere of "Regression," the latest film by Spanish-Chilean director Alejandro Amenabar, will open the 63rd annual San Sebastian Film Festival.
  "Alejandro Amenabar's latest film, 'Regression,' will open the coming edition of the San Sebastian Festival. The world premiere of the film, presented in the Official Selection out of competition, will take place on Sept. 18 in the Kursaal Auditorium," the festival's official website announced on Friday
  Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis and David Dencik star in psychological thriller, following in the path he forged with favorites such as "The Others" (2001) and "Open Your Eyes" (1997).
  The story focuses on a detective, played by Hawke, who is investigating the claims of a young woman, Watson, who has accused her father, played by Dencik, of a crime that he has no recollection of committing.
  When the father unexpectedly admits his guilt, a renowned psychologist, David Thewlis, is brought in to help the father rediscover his apparently repressed memories.
  "Regression" is an English-language film shot in Canada, and will hit select cinemas just a few weeks after its screening in the coastal Basque city.
  "Regression will open in Spain on Oct. 2 followed by key territories, including Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, China and Korea later this fall. The remaining worldwide releases will take place in the months to follow," the announcement added.
• 
  

I am 16 and the education system is destroying my health

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The strings that hold you together are loosening. You feel what’s going on in your body without being able to control it. Your breathing speeds up. Every sense heightened, your entire body shakes. Pins and needles are running marathons up and down your limbs. It hurts. Everything is too close. Too loud. And then you shut down. 

You’re having a panic attack.

This isn’t an article about why more awareness is needed about mental health issues or how an amazing technique waved my anxiety away. Those articles and books exist, and they express those topics better than I ever could.

This is an article about how our education system is ruining young people’s lives. Nobody is listening to the teachers who say it, so perhaps someone will listen to me.

My name is Orli and I’m almost 16. When I was younger and I loved to play grown-ups, I dreamed of being 16 – of going to bed when I wanted and having my own money to spend on fairy wings (it hit me hard when I realised that nobody dressed up as princess fairies when they got older).

I never dreamed I would be like this. It was a shock when I got to secondary school and learned the implications of the marking scheme: you succeed – and you fit in – or you fail. Suddenly, the creativity I’d brought to all my school projects wasn’t accepted anymore. Instead I had to memorise facts and statistics. That was when I realised that my future would be based on a set of criteria created by exam boards – and that was when I started having panic attacks. The terror brought on by the idea of failing left me unable to sit practically all of my GCSE mock exams.

Our education system is flawed. It is causing young people to feel the kind of pressure that shouldn’t be imposed on anyone, of any age. In a 2007 Unicef study rating children’s wellbeing in 21 developed countries, Britain came out last.

The system is teaching people that your best isn’t good enough, that you must constantly try harder and that one bad result makes you a failure. Success is measured by how well you remember the criteria on a given day. How can we justify putting the health of children on the line for an exam board’s definition of achievement? The most important achievement a person should aim for is being comfortable in their skin, safe in the knowledge they can live their life and define success on their own terms.

How pupil power makes schools more open about mental health issues

Next year the government’s new GCSEs and A-levels take effect and the grading switch from letters to numbers is not the only thing that will change. The introduction of one final exam in place of multiple modules means students will now only have one chance. One set of answers will mark the difference between success and failure.

How can it make sense for us to be deemed responsible enough, at 16, to make decisions that shape the rest of our lives when we’re not responsible enough to vote for the people making these decisions?

The way to make sure the next generation is educated as best it can be is not to shove exam papers in their faces, it’s to let them breathe, to create a relaxed and 

enriching environment for learning. Our education system is creating a generation of broken young adults, wound up by a key in the back and dropped once they are deemed unfit. It is creating a generation of fearful young people who will never be bold enough to take initiative and discover new things because they’ve been taught that success is a destination that only has one route.

When I look back on my panic attacks, I want to shake myself – I’ve let a group of politicians with a rigid definition of success do this to me. Nothing is so important that it’s worth risking your health over, not even the piece of paper you get, age 16, to tell you whether or not you’re good enough.

Secret student: six things I'd never dare tell my teacher

If you’re a young person who can empathise with this article, I want to tell you that there are a great many of us, and it will get better. To the politicians, my message is simply this: if you want the nation’s future generations to be free of the crippling anxieties and fear of failure entrenched by the current system, you have the power to change it.

Ultimately I have three words that’ll make me sound like the whiny five-year-old I wish I still was: this isn’t fair.

Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach. Join the Guardian Teacher Network for lesson resources, comment and job opportunities, direct to your inbox.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE ARTICLE WE READ ABOUT THE SLEEPING SICKNESS? iT SEEMS TO BE SOLVED!

Mystery of Kazakhstan sleeping sickness solved, says government

More than 140 people in two tiny villages were hit by the illness, with sufferers drifting off for up to six days – now scientists appear to have discovered the cause

 A flock of birds at night in northern Kazakhstan, where two villages are being evacuated after people began falling asleep at random, even while walking. Photograph: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

Alec Luhn in Moscow

Friday 17 July 201517.09 BSTLast modified on Saturday 18 July 201500.02 BST

Scientists have discovered the cause of a strange sleeping sickness affecting residents of two villages in northern Kazakhstan, the government has said.

Since March 2013, the mysterious illness has affected more than 140 people in Kalachi and Krasnogorsk, dusty settlements in the huge Kazakh steppe, with a total population of 810 people, mostly ethnic Russians and Germans. Villagers would fall asleep suddenly, even while walking, and wake up with memory loss, grogginess, weakness and headaches. Some fell victim more than half a dozen times, with sufferers sleeping for up to six days at a time.

“The sick person appears to be conscious and can even walk. But all the same he then falls into a deep sleep and snores, and when they wake him up … the person remembers absolutely nothing,” the newspaperKomsomolskaya Pravda reported after a 2014 investigation.

The sickness would affect both old and young, with children dropping off at school. Some reported nightmarish hallucinations: local children Rudolf Boyarinos and Misha Plyukhin told Komsomolskaya Pravda they had seen winged horses, snakes in their beds and worms eating their hands.

Even pets were not immune. Kalachi resident Yelena Zhavoronkova told the newspaper Vremya that her cat Marquis suddenly “went stupid” on a Friday night and began meowing and attacking walls, furniture and the family dog.

“He fell asleep toward morning and snored like a human until lunchtime on Saturday. He didn’t react to anything, not even cat food,” Zhavoronkova said.

Doctors tested Marquis and other sufferers, but the mysterious illness defied all explanation. At first they thought the patients were suffering the after-effects of counterfeit vodka, but as the epidemic grew they began diagnosing people with “encephalopathy of an unknown origin”, a generic term for brain illnesses, Interfax reported.

Many suspected the nearby uranium mines that were closed after the fall of the Soviet Union, leaving Krasnogorsk a ghost town with only 130 of its former 6,500 residents. Kazakhstan’s health ministry tested more than 7,000 nearby homes but didn’t find significantly high levels of radiation or of heavy metals and their salts. It detected raised radium levels in some homes, but it was not enough to explain the phenomenon.

Even sleep disorder experts could not find a cause. One somnologist told Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2014 that the two isolated villages were most likely suffering from a case of mass psychosis similar to the “Bin Laden itch”, a psychosomatic rash that afflicted children in the US as fears of terrorist attacks peaked in 2002.

Now the mystery has at last been solved and the cause does indeed lie in the uranium mines, said Kazakhstan’s deputy PM, Berdibek Saparbaev. After analysing the results of medical examinations of all the residents, researchers concluded that it was caused by heightened levels of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons in the air.

“The uranium mines were closed at some point, and at times a concentration of carbon monoxide occurs there,” Saparbaev said. “The oxygen in the air is reduced accordingly, which is the real reason for the sleeping sickness in these villages.”

Evacuation of the two villages has begun, with authorities reportedly relocating 68 of 223 families so far.

SOME STUDENTS FROM 1st ESO B

SO SWEET! BUT..... IT IS ENGLISH! CHECK THAT SPELLING...

A GOOD TEAM!

Angel? What is he doing there?

3º ESO BILINGUAL SECTION SHOWING THEIR DIPLOMAS FOR THE GREAT JOB AT THE BIG CHALLENGE COMPETITION 2015

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

PARTICIPANTS IN THE BIG CHALLENGE 2015 (1st, 2nd, 4th ESO

YOU ARE FANTASTIC!!!

Great adventurers

A friend of mine mentioned his son  was working for Shakleton  agency. I had a look at their webpage and from there I went on reading about the adventurer Shackleton. I found it very interesting and also the story of 6 men who wanted to emulate Shakleton's adventure in the Antarctica two years ago.
 Find below  two links from different newpapers. Can you see any difference between the way the articles are written?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/shackleton-journey-adventures-left

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/following-sir-ernest-shackletons-footsteps-2474323

GAMES 1º ESO

LOTS OF GAMES   

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/word-games/hangman/abc-zoo

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/word-games/fill-the-gap/nessie

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/tricky-words/chocolate-chips-lunch

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/play-with-friends/word-hurdles

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/word-games/make-the-sentences/describing-people

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/word-games/find-the-pairs/animal-house

Is it so difficult to help others? Sometimes it's not that hard.

Read the article. Do you find it inspiring? Would you do something like that?

http://blogs.elpais.com/trans-iberian/2015/05/i-dont-want-them-to-feel-alone.html

Maya Angelou "Still I'll rise"

Last week, and talking about heroes I showed you a short but extremely moving video in which MAYA ANGELOU was paying a tribute to NELSON MANDELA, soon after he passed away.  I am posting one of her most famous poems.

She had a tough life but she rose once and again. 

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. 

Maya Angelou

Heroes

Talking about heroes...

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

http://www.thebetterindia.com/topics/heroes/

AT A RESTAURANT 4º D

ARE YOUR PLANNING TO WORK AT A RESTAURANT NEXT SUMMER? ARE YOU PLANNING TO TRAVEL ABROAD? 

VOCABULARY YOU WILL NEED AT A RESTAURANT

http://www.esolcourses.com/content/topics/food/eating-out/at-the-restaurant.html

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/12/learn-latin-american-spanish-restaurant

And you can also hear the conversation. Great to improve your pronunciation.

http://www.elllo.org/english/0501/512-Akane-Restaurant.html

And now your will have to write and roleplay your own dialogue.

Grammar in Songs: Modal Verbs

3 ESO C

We are no longer paid what we are worth – just look at dog walkers

Peter Fleming