Private School News

Four Howell’s Students in top ten in UK Anne Frank letter writing Competition

The letter writing competition was run by the Anne Frank Foundation and Puffin books. The competitors were given the task of writing a letter.
The theme was: If you were to write to Anne Frank, what would you tell her about your world compared to the world in the 1930s/40s?

There was one national winner and prizes for the top ten national runners up who each received sets of ten books relating to WW11 and a DVD of the recently televised Diary of Anne Frank. The four girls from years 7, 8 and 9 were delighted to be in the top ten in the UK. Here are some of their comments about the competition.

Kristy-Ann Wilson (12) from Pentyrch entered the competition because “Anne Frank has an inspirational story. She managed to find something useful to do with her time when she was in the annexe, so I decided that I would like to her and tell her about life today. I was really happy that I won! I received ten books and a DVD of the televised Diary of Anne Frank”

Chloe Brind (13) from Radyr
“I entered the competition because I had received a copy of Anne Frank’s Diary last Christmas and after reading it, I was very interested in her. I was very excited when I heard I was in the top ten winners.”

Libby Raybould (13) Pencoedre, Barry
“We entered the competition in our class. When I was told I had made the top ten I was shocked and delighted. I am so glad to have been considered in the top ten for the whole of the UK.”

Maha Naeem (14) Cyncoed
“I particularly wanted to enter the competition because I have always been interested in Anne Frank. I was very pleased to be a top ten winner and I have enjoyed working on Anne Frank in school as she changed the world immensely.”

Maha’s letter to Anne Frank

Dear Anne,
I am writing to you from the 21st century. A lot has changed since you were here. In case you didn’t know, you’re extremely famous for the diary you wrote from the age of thirteen to fifteen. It’s been published and is one of the world’s most widely read books and you have been acknowledged for the quality of your writing.

First I will tell you a little bit about what’s going on in the world these days. Almost six months after you died world war two ended. After the war ended in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world’s superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict.

Although certain things have improved, for example America, the world’s biggest power, has the first black president, Barack Obama. But on the other hand there are countries making nuclear weapons, a lot of terrorism and even more violence in the name of anti-terrorism.

Science and technology has come a long way, we have mobile phones, which we use to call and send messages to others, without any wires, wherever you may be. We have computers and laptops which we use for all sorts of things like work and communication.

The world economy once bloomed and has very recently come plummeting down. Prices have dropped and many people have lost their jobs. The first world countries are still going steady, but even in this day and age there are many countries where people are still struggling through hunger and poverty.

I will tell you now a little about myself and the country I live in. I am fourteen so I have to go to school. I am in high school right now. We learn a range of subjects from maths, science, English and other foreign languages to art, drama and music.

I live in the U.K. Gordon Brown is the prime minister. There is a big worry that we are going to run out of fossil fuels and going to have to rely on renewable energy, which is a bit of problem because we haven’t perfected it yet. There is also the problem of global warming and the ice caps melting.

There is a world pandemic going on of swine flu. Everyone is very concerned because the virus is spreading extremely fast and it is deadly. Swine flu originated from pigs but has mutated itself to affect humans as well.

We the children of this era feel that what we know from history makes us a very privileged generation and we have learnt a lot from the past to make a better future

Take care

Maha

Photo:from left back : Chloe Brind, Kristy-Ann Wilson,
left bottom: Libby Raybould and Maha Naeem.