Wednesday 23 December 2015

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas is coming and so is the end of 2015. Before that though let's share with the world something great you've also achieved this year, together with your Physics / Chemistry teacher, Nélia Matos. 2015 has been the International Year of Light and you produced a great video about light that can be heard in Portuguese but read in English. Shall we remember it?


Now, yes, it's time to wish you a very merry Christmas, everyone!
Hope you have a beautiful Christmas with love and understanding.
Christmas is a time of sharing, of giving not only presents but also affection. Hope you enjoy this ad (also a PSA) with a famous animal character.

Monday 16 November 2015

Sporting Race 2015

Last October 11th  there was the Sporting Race 2015.
About 6,200 people, divided into two groups of 4km and 10km, participated in one of the biggest races nationwide. I was also involved and, in my opinion, athletics is what is "fashionable " now, as more and more people worry about their health and well being. I love running and as I am from Sporting I could not have missed it.
Thank you, father, for your amazing company and support. 



Sunday 1 November 2015

European Quality Label

Well, further recognition for (y)our work and another award for your class. Pleased?
As I always say,
1. If you're going to do something, do it well, the best you can!
2. Those who work hard will, sooner or later, be recognised and rewarded for it.
We started at a national level and now we've reached out the European Quality Label :) End of the line???

Monday 12 October 2015

Just Do It




What's he yelling at? Why is he doing it?
In what way can it apply to YOU? What is his message?
Deadline: 19th October, 2015

Sunday 27 September 2015

This Summer...


This summer, I did many fun activities.

I drove Kart Race Track in Batalha and I enjoyed this experience in which I had a lot of fun and adrenaline. I also rode bike with my friends.
This holiday season I spent some time in the Algarve, too, and I had the opportunity to go canoeing in the sea. I also travelled by boat when I crossed the river Sado on my way back home.

I went to the adventure park in Figueira da Foz with my friends and it was so much fun, despite the huge physical effort... I remember that that day was very cold.
I sometimes went to the cinema with my friends and I watched "Pátio das Cantigas"  with my parents - I really enjoyed this movie! But my holidays were not only fun and rest: I also helped my grandparents in some agricultural tasks and mowed my garden lawn several times.
Anyway, the holidays are over and now I'm back to school. 
I wish you all a good school year.

Tuesday 22 September 2015

Quality Label

To kick off 2015 / 2016 nothing better than a national recognition for our great eTwinning work last school year.
In "Stone Culture Rolling Over Europe" we showed collaborative work between partner schools, students and teachers, involved the school community, integrated the curriculum and made appropriate and diversified use of ICT.
Another amazing achievement for (y)our class and our school for two years in a row - first with a Honour Position with this class blog and now with our eTwinning project!


Congratulations!

Saturday 19 September 2015

Welcome!

Welcome back to school!
Welcome to a 2015 / 2016 school year! May it be a fruitful and successful one for all of us and our readers, too.
Well, let's start off with good news also to bridge last school year with the beginning of a new one:
João Carecho and Verónica entered our school Honour Board after having achieved excellent results. I am very proud as they certainly are not to mention their families, who were at school yesterday for the ceremony Here are our hero and heroine:



 As we are all well aware, this is not going to be an easy or a common school year with three exams ahead of us... yes, ahead of me, too, as I get worried about you, your performances and results. I'm convinced you will be up to the challenge and hopefully 9ºA will surprise all with even better results than in 2014 /2015 and with more students in the school Honour Board.
Have a great school year, y'all!

Thursday 2 July 2015

Aristides de Sousa Mendes, by Joana

In the aftermath of WW2, heroic acts of bravery have been celebrated in the media - who hasn't heard of Irena Sendler, the Polish nurse who saved over 2500 children from the Holocaust? Who hasn't heard about and read Anne Frank's Diary and doesn't remember Miep Gies, the Dutch lady who hid Anne Frank and her family? Or who hasn't seen the movie and inspiring true story of "Schindler's List"? 

Well, it's about time we celebrated the best of Humankind, this time with a national hero even if only posthumously.
The (hi)story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, also known as “The Disobedient Consul”, has already been documented in a movie appropriately called “Disobedience”, in a book (http://sousamendesfoundation.org/books/), and now, our school also honours The Righteous Portuguese with an online publication we can all be proud of.

After last January’s commemoration of the 70 years of liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp, the class was invited to take part in a flipped activity that included the viewing of an excerpt of the movie “The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas”, reflected on the atrocities committed during WWII and one the students, Joana Cruz, was challenged to research and write a text on Aristides de Sousa Mendes – the Consul of Bordeaux who, just like other Lifesavers, for so long deserved  recognition for his altruistic deed, for a place in History after having saved over 30,000 people and being severely punished by António de Oliveira Salazar.

Challenge accepted, the text was finally submitted, is now published in http://myhero.com/ and can be viewed and read at the following URL:


 Thank you!


Sunday 7 June 2015

Unique Holy Spirit Celebrations

                                                      
                                               Feast of the Holy Spirit
  About two kilometers from my village, there is a village called Espírito Santo (Holy Spirit), in which there is a celebration with a unique tradition in the country. This festival has a whole litter made in pine nuts called "branch".
   It's a party that needs a lot of hand labour throughout the year. The party is of religious content, during the time of Pentecost ("Pentecost" is the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles who were gathered for the first time, waiting for the Holy Spirit, inspiring all of their work in the Church), usually in the month April or May, depending on Easter day. It's a party like any other, with Mass followed by procession, folklore evening, the streets with the tents of fritters, snacks and drinks, street vendors, artists (Portuguese singers), pipers, music band, fireworks and dances. But what attracts the visitors is undoubtedly the traditional "branch" that is made of pine nuts and integrates the procession. It is the pride of the people of the Holy Spirit. No one knows for certain the age or the origin of the branch but it surely is more than two hundred years old.
   On all Saints Day, November 1, a group of people starts looking for pine nuts in the area of pine forests. As pine trees are scarce in the county of Soure, people widen the search to Condeixa and Penela area where there are a lot of pine trees. For three or four weeks, people move through the respective tractors with trailers, equipped with ladders and with some agility they climb the pine trees and harvest the pine cones. Normally this operation is carried out on Sundays as it is a day of rest for most people. It takes about three tons of pine cones, then they are stored in a shed protected from moisture so that they can dry up to Christmas. On the day of the Kings (6th January) another stage is initiated – they open the cones to remove the pine nuts.
   In threshing they extend pine leaves layers with another layer of cones, and so on. They set it on the fire so that the cones can open with heat to remove the sprockets. Sometimes even then some cones are not open, so it is necessary to put them on top of a stump, give a blow with the wooden mallet to open them. The next task involves joining all cones and having a lot of people (friends and relatives of party-goers) to "cascabulhar", ie removing the nuts of pine cones, and putting the nuts in the "tarara" to separate the pine nuts (tarara is an agricultural implement to separate the seeds, corn or olive leaves), which is a time consuming job. To prepare the "branch" people need around forty "bushels" of pine nuts, which is equivalent to four liters
    Bushel is an old measure of capacity used especially for cereals. After a deserved stop a new task begins in February. Men armed with hammers start to break pine nuts, and women separate the brown film that surrounds it. It is a painstaking job that leaves pretty clean pine nuts, another group armed with needles and thread and a good vision and great care should be carried out to "threading", ie drill the pine nut by the edges to thread with about 1.20 meters topped with a knot at each end containing 1.00 meters. On average for every Sunday afternoon people make 100 pitches in a total of 900 needed to decorate the branch.
    Each thread takes about 300 pine nuts, and the whole operation takes twelve Sundays. There are several people who know how to prepare the branch but tradition dictates only one person preparing the litter without any help. We are only missing the horseshoe-shaped cakes baked in wood stove. In celebration of the end pine nuts are divided by the population that contributes to the party. The story goes that when there is no one to grab the "branch" it is buried in the cemetery and this tradition ends, which to this day never happened.

                                                    Festival programme



The branch leaves the house of the butlers




                                                               Branch in church
                                                                            
                                                                          Pine nuts



Monday 1 June 2015

My bro

Hello friends,
I want to introduce you to my brother who was born on 22.05.2015.
His name is Mohamed Cissé (I know it's a strange name for you), and now we are four siblings plus my father and my mother.
Mohamed sometimes cries and doesn't sleep and now I can not be a long time out of the house or play the ball because I have to help my mother to take care of him every day. Here's my family:
only black haha!
The problem is that he will have to learn to speak Portuguese, French and my African language so that when he grows up and goes back to my own country, he will not have problems communicating with others. He will also get to know my family in Africa haha.
I wanted to have a brother so much ... my mother has lost two sons .. finally Mohamed is here with us and I am very happy.
I love you all <3 <3 <3 <3 <3












Sunday 31 May 2015

World No Tobacco Day

World No Tobacco Day is celebrated on May 31 and was established by the UN. This day is intended to call people's attention to the dangers of smoking and raise awareness of the need to protect themselves. Each year about 6 million people die from diseases related to tobacco, which, in average, is responsible for killing one in 10 adults. This day also serves to remind smokers that after eight hours without smoking the level of oxygen in the blood normalizes, and with only two days without smoking their smell and tast can improve, and after three weeks breathing and circulation can also improve. Furthermore, without inhalation of the tobacco smoke and similar, the risk of stroke decreases considerably.

I believe all the people who really want to quit smoking, will be successful! Strong will and determination are key factors in the process.

Saturday 30 May 2015

Say NO to Bullying

Hello! 

Well, I know this subject isn’t new: bullying/cyberbullying.
I have suffered from bullying and cyberbullying, and still can’t understand why people mistreated me… after all, I had never done anything wrong – at least in what concerns them!
So, I'll start from the beginning:
In fifth grade, there were people who didn’t like me and mocked me. One day I I tried to defend myself...but in vain. Suddenly I realised I already had two hands on my neck, and the person only left me alone when I begged to. That done, I made a complaint explaining what happened, but nothing was done.            
In sixth grade, things improved, but I kept hearing bad things about me.
In seventh grade, I thought they had stopped, but an older girl started calling me horrible names. At this point, I went to visit some friends who had failed: I loved them and they were my real friends – or so I thought…
However, after a year, when they moved to my school, they became distant, perhaps feeling they were too good to be my friends. They all said I was ugly, fat etc.
My wish in all this?
To die.
Yes, die.
It seemed like a good solution. Every night, I thought about how nice it would be to die. MY suffering would end, but then I remembered all the people who loved me, and the suffering that I would cause them.
I was in a downward spiral.
Every step I took, it looked like things were getting worse.
And I ended up failing in the eighth year.
The day I found out I too had failed the school year, I cried a lot. I saw my life going backwards.
And desperate, I thought, "I am not worth anything. Why was I born? I deserve absolutely nothing."
I wanted to die again ... My parents didn’t deserve a daughter like me.
They did not deserve to suffer either...
I knew I made them suffer ... but I had to create a protective cover to protect me from the evil of people. So, still in the seventh year, I began to misbehave and to be expelled from school, to be respected by others.
My parents did not understand why the change in my behavior, and I also would not explain why once, deep down, I felt terribly ashamed of myself.
A few days after becoming aware that I had failed, I was feeling better already, because I had my parents to support me, but I had a relapse and accessed ask.fm, and saw what other people had written down: "I saw that you failed!!! Poor girl, can’t even pass the year. "

Again there was mockery here not just because of having failed, but also because of my weight…
When the new school year started, everything was going well ... I was in the class I wanted and had been welcomed with open arms. But then again, my former friends and a guy five years older were haunting me…
My former friends stopped tormenting me shortly after the beginning of this school year. But the other guy, he stalked me, he managed to put me down in such a way that I had never felt such an urge to die.
Three months later, he apologized to me and became one of the people I trusted most. That didn’t last long, though… he betrayed my trust the worst way possible. And suddenly, it was all over between us…incredible as it may seem, I felt horrible, stupid, useless...
In this, I found support in my new friends, in this amazing class, because I was ashamed to tell it all to my family. So if I'm here today, I have to thank them for the support.
How often did I fake a smile? Too often.
How often did I think of suicide? Several times.
In how many ways did I plan my death? Many.
But today, I'm here because I´ve found a reason to live: to help people who are in the situation where I WAS – but that’s all over now!
So if you suffer from bullying / cyberbullying, remember I've been in your situation, I’ve been through a lot and put up with everything you're going through. You’ll overcome it the same way I did: being strong!!!
Bullies are no one to judge you, because they have as many faults as any of us or even more.
Everyone is perfect in their own way.



Before I leave you, here are some links to related songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2WWrupMBAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZly12eGpNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj_VidtyaOc

Saturday 23 May 2015

Condeixa Rally

On 16th and 17th May, the 3rd rally of Condeixa Firefighters was held.
This event is considered one of the strictest in the central region and it is part of the Regional Centre Trophy Rally.
The race is composed of four special classifications and it had its beginning on Saturday night (with the super special on asphalt in the municipality of Condeixa) and its end on Sunday with triple passing through the Ega-Belide section. The section was 10 km long on a gravel road.
40 cars participated in the rally, but only 18 managed to finish the race due to accidents and mechanical issues.
As I am a fan of rally (not sure if it is because my father is a mechanic or because of something else) I went to see the night race and also the daytime race.



Night Section
Day Section











 Accidents



Mechanical issues