Stop Smoking!      Too many people die from smoking. It builds up tar in your lungs. 40 out of 4,000 chemicals found in a cigarette are known to cause cancer. You can also die by breathing the air of people who smoke. Every 8 seconds someone dies because of second-hand smoking or smoking!     You get cancer from smoking. Tar will build up in your lungs. You can get emphysema or chronic bronchitis. It will clog up your bloodstream. Smoking will do this by bad blood cells. Bad blood cells will replace your good blood cells. They also have poisons. Poisons will give you cancer.     What is second-hand smoking? Second-hand smoking is the same thing as passive smoking. It is where you breathe the smoke that comes off then end of people's cigarettes. It is also the smoke that people exhale when they're smoking. You don't have to smoke to have cancer. Even non-smokers die of lung cancer! The Independent Scientists Committee on Smoking and Health estimated that passive smoking causes death to several hundred people each year in the United Kingdom . Smoking affects everyone around you.     When women smoke while pregnant, their babies are born early. Say that they're due October, they might be born in September! Another birth defect is clefs or splits. A clef lip is an opening between the nose and the roof of the baby's mouth. Some defects don't appear when the baby is born but may develop as the baby gets older. The child may score 6 percent lower on tests than children whose parents didn't smoke.     Smoking can cause cancer. But, you don't have to smoke to get cancer, you just have to be around people who smoke. Women who smoke while pregnant give birth to babies with disabilities. So, do you cant to smoke now? - I'm Tar'd of it	Healthier Food      I want to make the food healthier at Oak Park school because we have unhealthy food. I will make the food healthier by hiring a chef. I will stop using canned food. A chef will make healthier and tastier food. We should buy fresh food, not frozen food.      The school should have healthy food because we have unhealthy food. The school doesn't have healthy food because we have canned and frozen food. If I were in charge I would help the lunch people. Sometimes the grapes are brown. The bananas and apples have bruises on the. The salad bar is always mixed together.      The governor should hire a chef for us because we need a professional chef to make tasty food. The chef will make healthy food by putting everything in the right order. If the food is mixed together it will be unhealthy. The chef will make fancy food. He will make the school nice because he will give extra food to kids who clean up.      A chef will make better food when a class goes to a fieldtrip. He wouldn't make disgusting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He wouldn't serve yucky bean burritos or burnt macaroni and cheese. Everything will be better if we had a chef. I want to have food like Hometown buffet with 2 servings. I want stuff like Francis Parker, but you have to pay for your food.      The food at Oak Park is bad for your stomach. You can gain weight if you eat too much grease. You can have cavities. You can have bad breath. You shouldn't eat unhealthy food because it's unhealthy for your stomach. I wish the food at school was not unhealthy. I want this to be the best elementary school in San Diego . If we have better food then a lot of kids will want to come to this school and pay for their lunch. I think it will be better to help our school. Maybe the teachers will get a raise. -UR What U Eat
Save Water      Water, without it nothing or nobody would be alive. To be alive we have to drink it. We have to wash our dishes with it after using it for our food. Last but not least we use water to water our plants. In the last three paragraphs I will be talking about: how water is worth saving, how people destroy water, and people saving it.      Water is worth saving because it helps plants, animals, and humans live. All three things have to drink water. If we don't have water for three days we will die. Water is also worth saving because t gives sea animals a place to live. If there were no more water, sea animals would be flopping around the world. Water is worth saving because it helps us make food such as pasta, noodles, and spaghetti. Water helps because we have to boil water to make those foods. People destroy water by pouring oil and other things into the water. People should not put oil in the ocean because it blackens the sea. Also a fish might not be able to swim or see and might get eaten. Also if it gets on the animals they wouldn't be able to swim and they would die. People also destroy water by putting dirt into the ocean. If someone caught a fish it would be dirty. Also if someone were surfing they would probably get stuck in the mud. The same thing with fish, they could get stuck in the mud and get eaten at the same time. People destroy water also by putting trash in the ocean. They should no to do this because sea animals can eat it choke and then die. Some animals or humans could not be able to eat fish because they would all be dead.      People can save water by pouring oil into the dirt, not the ocean. They can also use oil for squeaky chairs and other squeaky things. You can also put it into a sink or in a cup of water and treat it. People can save water by putting dirt into local trashcans nearby. They can also use dirt to help plant flowers instead of sabotaging the ocean and putting it in there. Last but not least we can put dirt in the dump. People can save water if they just don't throw trash in the ocean. Sometimes if they catch you throwing trash in the ocean. There are consequences sometimes you would have to pick up trash by the freeway for eight hours.      I wrote this persuasive essay because people really need to save water. Without it everybody on earth would be dead. Also that would be a very, very bad thing to happen on earth. -Nead H. Tuo	Cut That Out!     Why does the government cut off school budgets? It should be stopped. Before we had enough money to pay for the things we need. That's why schools need more money.      Before our school budgets were cut, we had enough money to pay the workers that come here to fix our school. We had everything in good condition. Our bathrooms were clean, the electricity worked, and the kids didn't have to worry about the conditions. They could concentrate more on their work. We also could have more field trips and new textbooks.      Now when the budgets are cut off, we are in bad condition. We can't buy new textbooks, children have to bring their own materials and kids have to raise their own money to go to the field trips. It's bad to have kids have to bring their own materials. Sometimes other children will steal other student's materials. It's also not good for kids to have to waste their time raising money for fieldtrips, car washing and selling candy. That is because this is wasting educational time and it is very hard work.      If the government continues to cut school's budgets, teachers get fired, kids still have to go to school, and this could affect the future. Teachers get fired because there isn't much money to pay the teachers to teach. When teachers get fired kids still have to go to school. The classrooms will get more crowded. Usually there will be 20 kids in a class. Every time a teacher gets fired a class may have to double the amount of students. It won't just stop at 40 students. It may keep on doubling when a teacher gets fired. The class will be like a jungle; it will be noisy and the students won't listen to the teacher. There will be too many students for the teacher to keep track of. This will affect the future and everyone because more teachers will get fired. And future students won't be educated. If the government takes away school form people, they won't get the job they would have gotten if they were in school.      Just think about it. Think about what happened to our school before, what is happening now, and how if affects us in the future. What do you think about it? I think the government should stop cutting school budgets. -Ed U. Cate
Trees      Many many years ago there were many forests all around the world. But today, thanks to us humans, many of those forests are being destroyed. It is very important to keep forests around for many reasons, and there are many ways that we can save them.      There are many good reasons to keep forests around; one of them is because they give off oxygen for us humans to breathe. Without plants we would probably be dead. Another reason to save them is because they make many homes for animals. Millions of animals stay without homes each year because their homes are cut down. If this happens the animals will probably become extinct. In addition trees are very decorative to keep around because they are beautiful living things that make shade.      People cut down trees for many reasons. One of them is because they want wood to make houses and other things. Instead they could make homes out of cement and clay. They also cut them down for fuel, paper, and for warmth, like in bonfires where you need to burn wood. They should only do that in emergencies. All people need paper, but we waste too much paper. Like we write a little dot or something and we are not satisfied and throw it away. One of the most important reasons people cut them is because they want fruit. Instead they could climb the trees and pick the fruit. That way the trees will be able to stay standing, and so it can grow more fruit.      There are many ways to save trees and they are very easy and simple. One is for people to stop cutting so many trees, because the less trees the less oxygen there is in the world. The second way to save trees is by recycling more paper items. By recycling more we would have more used paper to use than to get new paper. The third way is to plant more trees; this is a very fun activity to do with your friends or children. By having fun this way you are helping the world have more trees.      In conclusion, it is very important to save trees because we need oxygen, shelter for animals, and we need some decorations in this world. People need to make an effort to save trees because our future depends on it. - Friend of the Flora	Field Trips      School teaches you many things like reading, math, and writing, but did you ever think about how important fieldtrips are for a student's learning? Fieldtrips are good for learning on the outside of school, but there is a problem: there are not enough field trips in a school year! I believe we need more fieldtrips and there are many reasons why.     My first reason is because students would want to work harder and go to school more. I know because students want to go to educational places like zoos, science fairs, and parks. Students will take the fieldtrip as a reward but, there is one of many consequences if they don't try hard in school: leave them out of the fieldtrip. Also the students won't get bored of the same routine everyday without fieldtrips. When students go to school, they will take school more seriously because they'll remember the consequence of no fieldtrip if they don't try.      Secondly, students will also like hands-on adventures. Instead of books students will be able to really see the animals in real life. Hands-on learning is educational because the students get to touch the item or see the animals and they have almost any item you want to learn about.      My third reason is that there are guides that teach you more than learning at school. At Sea world the guides teach you about marine animals and they are experts on them. If we get taught about marine animals in school by teachers the teacher will know less. I know this because teachers teach us math, reading, and other things. If you noticed the guides know more because they only study about one thing. There are different guides like computer guides that are set up in museums and zoos. They can store more information than a book and they can teach us about technology, animals, history, art, etc. There will be some guides in museums and zoo's. In museums they sometimes put people that are researchers or lab workers that spend their whole lives working or doing researching. The guides in the zoos sometimes work with the animals in the zoo and they train the animals and bond with them. The people are experts in animals because the guide's part-time job is to work with the animals and learn about them.      What kids need are chances for more field trips. Kids will learn more, they will like the hands-on adventures, and there will be more places outside of school. So please give kids an opportunity for more field trips! -Show me!
Saving Polar Bears    Polar bears have been alive for many years. They are cute animals that are in danger of becoming extinct. We should protect polar bears because they get hunted by helicopters and snowmobiles just for their thick and warm fur. People also drop oil into the Arctic and it pollutes the food that they eat and when they eat it they get poisoned. Polar bears are the largest bears in the bear family. They are also the largest carnivores in the world that live on land.    We should stop unregulated hunting because it can kill a lot of polar bears. Unregulated hunting is kind of like illegal hunting. We should also stop legal hunting because it has killed more than 500 polar bears. Although in the past polar bears have only killed about ten people and it doesn't give people the right to kill them.    The oil exploration in the Arctic has harmed all of the polar bears. The oil spills poison the food that the polar bears eat. Pollution is a threat to the polar bears because it blocks some of the land that they live on. The ice may be melting because scientists say that the earth is getting hotter. The air from other places carries pollutions to the Arctic .    Thousands of years ago there were more polar bears than there are today. In 1972 there were about 8,500 polar bears left. Polar bears were becoming nearly extinct. The good thing about today is that there are 24,000 polar bears. It is really important to protect the polar bears in the future.    Now there are twenty-four thousand and about half of them are endangered. The oil exploration pollutes the food that the polar bears eat and harms them. If we don't protect polar bears they will become extinct. -Frigid Future	Saving Bats     Long ago there were 6.3 million Gray Bats now there are about one million Gray Bats because people hunt them and their environment is being destroyed because of people. We should not kill Gray Bats because if we don't stop hunting them they are going to be extinct.    The first reason why people should not kill Gray Bats because Gray Bats help us with flies, mosquitoes, moths, and especially mayflies. Gray bats find their prey using echolocation. Gray Bats eat 600 mosquitoes in one hour and billions of flies in a week. Without Gray Bats people will get bitten by mosquitoes and bothered by flies. Farmers use poison to kill insects. If bats eat any of the poisoned insects they may get poisoned too. Gray Bats use echolocation to find their prey because they have little eyes.    Gray Bats leave their caves and fly through the trees to get the water to feed themselves. The path they take is called their travel corridor. If a travel corridor is cut down the bat colony may die. When bats are disturbed by people they drop their babies on the floor and fly away. The baby dies from cold. Bat poo can be used as an effective fertilizer due to its high levels of nitrogen. -Save The Guano!