In geography, after the big break we returned to our desks, starting a new topic! It all started with Ogallala the aquifer (underground pocket of fresh water) in the USA. Why were we studying this? Why does it matter? It all has to do with our planet’s natural resources – and how we are over using them. We talked about water before, right? Why is water these days so important? We don’t have enough clean and fresh water for everyone. 97% of Earth’s water is in the ocean – and it is salty so you cannot drink it. 3% of Earth’s water is fresh (not salty!) and 70% of this water is used on farming or irrigating crops. This problem NEEDS to be solved quickly. We continued studying fighting desertification in drylands and Oil as energy. First of all, what is a dryland? A dryland is a region that doesn’t get much rain, and rain that falls may evaporate quickly. Drylands are mainly in hot places such as Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Mali…. But what are the causes of desertification? With the natural causes there are also human causes that contribute to drylands and desertification. It is thanks to billions of tiny sea creatures because oil is made up of these creatures. Oil is a non-renewable source because to create it it takes so much time and the problem is that humans are overusing it! (14 billion litres a day!). We then moved to Alternative energy, a sustainable energy produced through the harnessing of renewable energy resources. Geothermal, Wave, Hydroelectric, Tidal, Solar, Wind and Biomass. All of these have different uses but they are all renewable sources. February is over! See you next time!
In history, we started studying why the population exploded during the 1750’s and the causes for this. We also did an essay on it. The population exploded due to many factors that helped Britain to become cleaner, healthier and safer. For example, doctors and nurses were the focal point of this explosion because they decreased the deaths from shock, pain and infection. They also started using anaesthetics and antiseptics to make operations cleaner and safer.
Another main point of this explosion is Jenner Jab’s. Edward Jenner discovered how to vaccinate a really bad and deadly disease, smallpox.
The last thing that we studied and still studying is the slave trade. The Slave Trade was a big business in the UK and this is how it worked: First of all, they loaded the ship with goods popular in Africa such as cloth, guns, iron pots and pans, cheap bracelets, sword, kettles, and alcohol. They set sail. Then they sailed the loaded ship to the African coast. The ship was loaded with the slaves (swapped with the goods taken from Britain) and they are taken on a two-month journey across the Atlantic Ocean, known as the “The Middle Passage”. Once the slaves arrive in North America, South America or the West Indies, they are cleaned up and sold to plantation owners. The loaded ship then completed the third part of its journey back to Europe, with goods that the slaves had produced. The whole journey might take six months. And the profits made by British slave traders, arguably, provided the funds for the expansive empire Britain went on to have.
In English, this year we are reading a masterpiece of English literature by George Orwell entitled 1984. This book was written in 1948 and was published in 1949. During the period of the cold war it was considered one of the most significant novels in dystopian writing, because the subject was tracked back to a merciless criticism of a Sovietic regime. In fact, it deals with a much broader theme, the power that controls and manipulates its subject. It is 1984 and planet Earth is divided into three great warring powers and ruled by three totalitarian regimes: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia who take advantage of their permanent state of war to control people. In Oceania, society is controlled by a regime that bases its power on the principles of Socing, an extreme socialism, whose supreme leader is Big Brother, a mysterious character whose true identity no one knows and who observes, spies and controls, the life of every citizen. The protagonist of the novel is Winston Smith, a member of the party whose job is to constantly update the news of newspapers and books, to make the party’s strategy infallible. Smith, who seems to support the party’s rules and his suffocating control over society, doesn’t really stand for this lack of freedom.
By Tomasso and Edoardo