Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
Thankfully we came out of Storm Ciara unscathed save a few knocked over bins……and this week things have been a bit calmer (just waiting for storm Dennis at the weekend!) as we hurtle towards the end of another half term already!
We had a busy week last week. The maths department rounded off their week of enrichment with a chocolate tombola in the hall. Students had to pull out a ticket and work out the answer to the question. If their answer ended in a certain number, they won a prize! Mr Green and the maths prefects did a great job manning the stall. The prefects raised £50 for the NSPCC as part of their national number day!
Pictured below are some students from Mrs Connor’s making curved lines with string session……I also attended a session on algebraic construction led by Mr Robinson which definitely challenged me!.
Thanks to the maths team for a great week of fun!
The geography department also ran their annual House event for Years 8, 9 and 10. This year, in teams they had to memorize, bit by bit, the map of Iceland – along with as many town and city names as they could and then replicate it on A3 paper. This was very entertaining and the end results were really quite good! Mr Marrison, Head of Geography judged the entries! The winners were as follows:
Year 8 – first place Lacemakers, then Goldsmiths and then Spinners
Year 9- first place Spinners, then Goldsmiths and then Weavers
Year 10- first place Tanners, then Goldsmiths and then Lacemakers
Well done to all those who took part and thanks to Miss McNally for organising this event.
On Thursday, half of our Year 7 students took part in the Wokingham walking tour as part of their Philosophy of Religion curriculum and the other half of the year go out this Thursday. Thanks Mrs Barker for organising this annual half day out and thanks to our friends at Soulscape along with other staff who accompanied them.
Then, on Thursday evening we had our Year 9 parents’ evening. It was good to see so many of you and I enjoyed talking to you about options and the excitement of “taster day” the next day which went really smoothly. Every Year 9 student will now have a meeting with a member of SLT to discuss their options before they hit “send” on the Sims app. The deadline is March 3rd!
Over the weekend, the school opened its doors for a full rehearsal of our show Beauty and the Beast. Mr Gray and Miss Edwards were delighted with how things went and had the chance to iron out the odd hitch or two! The cast were in great form and we can’t wait for show time.
Here are the students in action.
Tickets are now on sale and can be bought using the following link:
Also over the weekend, Mrs Dearing took our team of Year 8 computing whizzes to the semifinals of the NCSC Cyber First girls’ competition. This was held at NATS in Southampton.
We didn’t get through to the finals but we did really well to progress this far in the competition. Over 2,960 schools took part in all, of which we were one of 156 to get through to the semifinals. In our heat on Saturday only one of the 25 teams there was going to be taken through to the final, sadly it was not us, our students did so well. Well done to Niha, Sanjana, Priya and Olivia …………thanks also to the parents for the chauffeur service there and back and lastly thanks to Mrs Dearing for organising our team. Great job!
Well, it has been a relatively short half term at only 6 weeks, but nevertheless, I think everyone is exhausted and ready for a half term break. That February half term week really makes a difference; we come back to school and it’s suddenly daylight in the mornings and after school again!
We wish our skiers a fabulous week in Italy and all of you a lovely half term when it comes.
Katie Pearce
Co-Headteacher