Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
As this academic year draws a close, I am delighted to offer you another “photofest” of a blog to celebrate all the lovely events we have been able to hold in the last week despite the current Coronavirus restrictions in place. If there is one thing that the pandemic taught us, it is the importance of remaining agile and not looking at what we cannot do, but looking at how we can adapt what we do in order to keep our annual traditions going for our students.
As a result, we had not one, but four sports day- and, they were all on one day! The PE department did an excellent job as usual of organising the students into their Year group bubbles. Each bubble had its own opening ceremony, track events, staff/student race, and winners’ presentations. Our regular DJ Richard was also there for each sports day to keep the crowds dancing with the classics Macarena, The Cha-Cha slide and of course, this years’ new classic Sweet Caroline!
A great time was had by all, as students came to school in their House colours to cheer on their class mates.
This year, we really went for the festival vibe and as well as a DJ set, we were also entertained by live performances. Well done to all our performers who really belted out their numbers to the enjoyment of the crowd.
We also had our usual House stands selling everything from strawberry kebabs to fizzy drinks and sweets! Addtionally, we had a Friends of The Holt stall selling ice cream to raise money for the school. Thank you to our lovely parent volunteers for manning that stand all day!
And here is Mr Mirams our new Head of Spinners proudly displaying his well stocked cake stall.
Our sports day would not be sports day at The Holt without our famous “Colour run!” Of course this year, there were four colour runs …. not one! The Year 12 students did a great job in charge of throwing the powder……and whilst most of it went over the colour runners……it’s fair to say that some of it went over each other!
Of course sports still remains the main theme of sports day, and I am delighted the winners are:
Year 7 – Spinners
Year 8 – Spinners
Year 9 – Tanners
Year 10 – Weavers
The banner competition results are as follows:
1ST – L, 2ND – G, 3RD – C, 4TH – W, 5TH – S, 6TH – H, 7TH – T and 8TH – B
And particular mentions must go to Alice in 8G, for the discus. Alice threw 23.75m and smashed the previous school record that has stood for 20 years by 3 metres! Also to Lily in 9G who broke The Holt long jump record which has stood for 11 years at 4.5m with her incredible jump of 4.55m!
Finally, congratulations to Chloe and Tomi for earning places at the English Schools competition, well done and good luck!
Thank you to the PE department for an amazing day and thank you to Mrs Simmons our deputy business manager and The Friends of The Holt, for another successful colour run. An incredible 591 tickets were sold making a profit of £3,845. All this money goes directly to the school and for the benefit of our students, so thanks to you as well for supporting this event. Thanks also to all the staff involved, for either looking after the crowds, competing in a race or MC-ing the event and managing the live music!
Meanwhile, elswhere and continuing the festival vibe, the drama department and the Year 7 and 8 drama club, hot on the success of their two evening performances of Peter Pan, donned their costumes again to give two more live “bubble” performances to the rest of Year 7 and Year 8.
Thank you Miss Edwards for working so hard for many weeks to prepare and rehearse the students so well for this performance. They were incredible.
Whilst each “bubble” had their sports day or perfomance of Peter Pan to watch, others were in lessons. The maths department did not want their students to feel they were missing any fun, so enagaged their classes with “it’s coming home, football transformations” …….well it might not have come home…….but the students enjoyed this task! Thanks Mr Green, our resident “mathmagician”
This week, the English deparment ran their two annual events; the Year 7 public speaking competition and the Year 8 poetry recital. Whilst they were live streamed into classrooms this time round rather than live in the hall, once again the performances were all incredibly strong. I am so proud of our confident and passionate students and it was so hard to pick the winners……
For the Year 7 competition, 3rd place went to Uvaanthiga in 7B, 2nd place went to Neve in 7T and the winner was Samantha in 7W who spoke about bullying.
A very well done to all 8 of our speakers who all won a book voucher. There are future leaders in that group!
Our last event of the year was the Year 8 poetry recital competion. The theme this year was “Our diversity, our identity”. There were eight performers, all of whom had won their class based heat to compete in the final yesterday. The standards were incredibly high as they all spoke with passion, drama and understanding of the words. Some of the students wrote their own poems. It was very hard to pick the top three as they were all so strong, but in third place was Alolika, second place went to Ava and the overall winner was Amber Moir. Well done to all the participants and thanks again to Ms Mirza for organising this competetion and Miss Barnett for presenting the event!
Today, to mark the end of this year, we all came together for a virtual whole school assembly led by our student leadership team.
On behalf of Mrs Kennedy and myself, I would like to wish you all a fantasic summer and we are looking forward to seeing you in September!
Mrs Pearce
Co-Headteacher