Following on from the 11th grade's discussions of teenage social problems in the last couple of weeks, this week the 11th grade have completed group presentations. These presentations focused on the polices and campaigns that the students would introduce, if they were in government, in order to reduce the number of young people that smoke in Palestine.

The class was split into four groups and here are their views on the policies and campaigns that they would introduce to reduce the number of young Palestinian smokers:

Group 1's Views

Group 2's Views

Group 3's Views

 Group 4's Views

Puppets Lunch Time

We did achieve some puppets, the children were happy for that and we had a conversation asking them to prepare for the last show to write a story or play.

Acland Burghley lunch-club :)

Invitation for Arabic classes

Ehab is teaching ( how we start an Arabic conversation)

Students from different levels are interested to learn Arabic conversation 

With 15 students we've just started our Arabic classes by Ehab Bader, A student at Al-Quds University.

How 9th Grade Students in The Arab Institute Celebrated Eid

Over the last couple of weeks the 9^th grade at The Arab Institute have been working on a paragraph to send to students at Acland Burghley describing how they celebrated the Eid holiday at the end of October. The students got up to a variety of activities including praying at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and visiting their relatives in various cities and towns across the West Bank. Here are a couple of examples below:

My name is Murad Waleed.  I am 14 years old and I am from Jerusalem . I go to school at the Arab Institute.

On the first day of eid , I woke up then went to pray . After that I visited my family and my neighbours.

On the second day my family and I started picking the olive trees .We have 16 olive trees so it took us three days to finish picking them.

My name is Mo'ayad Srour, I am 14 years old, and I am in the 9^th  grade. I am from eastern Jerusalem in a town called Sawaherha. I study in the Arab Institute school. On the Eid holiday I did so many interesting things. First I woke up early, second I wore my Eid's clothes, then I went to the Eid prayers. After that I got back to home, I played with my cousins and friends, and we sacrificed a sheep which is a ritual action in Islam to get closer to Allah. The Eid was very beautiful and I did very interesting things during it.

Mo'ayad Ameen Mohammad Srour.   

We are sending the rest to Ehab, who is a CADFA volunteer at The Arab Institute, so that the 9^th grade’s work can be shared with students at Acland Burghley school.

We are now helping each of the students to write about their home town which includes places like Abu Dis, Azaria and Sheikh Sar. The students have already been working hard on writing about their home town so that students can learn a little bit more about the towns that students at The Arab Institute come from and they are hoping to be able to send them over to you soon. 

Over the last couple of weeks the English conversation lessons that we have been having with the 11^th grade have focused on the reasons why young people may smoke, drink or take drugs in the UK and Palestine. The discussions have been very interesting and the students in the 11^th grade have given diverse responses to why they think that young people may smoke, drink or take drugs in the UK and Palestine.

In the pictures above the answers written in black highlight the students’ opinions on why young people in Palestine may smoke, drink or take drugs. The answers written in red highlight the students’ opinions on why young people in the UK may smoke drink or take drugs.

 To students involved in the Palestine club at Acland Burghley, do you agree with the opinions shared by the 11^th grade students at The Arab Institute? 

Here is a very powerful image painted by one of the teachers at The Arab Institute. We thought that it would be nice to share with you at Acland Burghley so that you can have an insight into the sort of art work that is being produced at the school.

This week we have been working with the 9^th and 11^th grades in The Arab Institute. With the 9^th grade we have been giving them more information about the twinning project. We also found out a bit more about how they celebrated their Eid weekend.

We are working with them this week so that each student in the 9^th grade can write a paragraph to the students of Acland Burghley telling them how they celebrated Eid. Look out for that.

With the 11^th grade, we have had two lessons where we have talked about voting systems and elections in the UK and Palestine. 

11th Grade in The Arab Institute

We introduced them to two types of voting systems and asked them which one they preferred:

-         First passed the post (FPTP) which is used in the general elections

-         The Alternative Voting System (AV) which is used in the local elections

We discussed also discussed two types of elections with them:

-         Local elections

-         National elections

After these discussions the 11^th grade were split into two groups and had a class debate about the advantages and disadvantages of voting in Palestine. They came up with some interesting arguments:

Voting	Not Voting
Helps people say what the government should do	All of the parties want to be in power and do not care about what the people really want
Voting is good and fair to everyone	No parties can make changes because of the occupation
Lets parties show their ideas	There is internal division in Palestine (Hamas in Gaza and Fateh in West Bank) so first the parties need to unite before voting
Parties have chance to explain their policies so people can vote for the one they agree with the most	Voting should be carried out at the same time all over Palestine
Improves social life	Voting should be counted properly with no corruption or cheating
Coalitions can be formed which is good when more than one party is popular	Even though 1.5 million people can vote, only 500,000 registered to vote but only 250,000 actually voted so the results do not show popular opinion
The party that the majority vote for is in power

Do the students at Acland Burghley think that the same arguments can be made about voting in England?