Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
At The Holt we value our traditions and the links we have with the past. This was seen on Saturday when The Holt Association held their biannual reunion lunch party. As always, the event was very well attended and an opportunity for past Holt students to reminisce about their fond memories of the school and reignite old friendships. The Holt Association has a very modern purpose as well – since 1991 it has raised over £40,000 for the school which has been spent on a range of things from sound and lighting equipment to water coolers! If you want to join the Association, then there are full details on the website.
Another Holt tradition is of course our House system – the first 3 Houses were established in 1932 and since 2018 we have had 8 Houses. The Inter house competitive spirit is thriving, with numerous House competitions throughout the year, many of which are written about in this blog.
This week the Heads of House are holding their house assemblies and whilst the tradition of Houses remains, the purpose has moved on from competition in ’speech, sport and tennis’ to incorporating charity and community awareness, fundraising and leadership skills. Students will be hearing about their house charity and, they are encouraged to work together to run charity events to raise funds – these take on many guises from the traditional and very popular cake sales to ‘masked teacher’ singing competitions! House prefects in Year 13 and Form Prefects in Year 11 learn communication skills by supporting these events, they also write and lead the assemblies giving them opportunities to develop leadership and public speaking skills.
Another tradition is our Harvest contributions and assemblies, I am sure you will hear more about this in future blogs, however, the tradition of the whole school contributing vast amounts of food stuffs and Year 11 students taking the food contributions to elderly people in the community has been going on for over 25 years. Again, this has evolved to meet the challenges of modern times – the theme for the assembly and harvest displays this year is Water Aid a charity that is helping people across the world to access clean water, something that is becoming even harder due to climate change. Similarly in response to challenges facing many people today at least half of our Harvest contributions go to Wokingham Food bank. The photographs show Mrs Sawyer and Mrs White introducing the harvest theme.
As we are now well onto our third week of term, clubs and extracurricular activities are in full swing. We encourage as many students as possible to take part in at least one club – and the majority do just that and more! Sports clubs have been particularly popular, Mrs Ebden tells us more below –
‘There are fantastic attendance levels at PE clubs so far from 100 students at Year 7 netball club to 60 students at cross country club and over 30 at Year 7 football! The students love playing sport during their lunch and continue to develop their learning outside the classroom. Any student is welcome at any of our sports clubs, they can just turn up on the day!
We have also had a great start to our fixture seasons. Our A team netballers from Year 8-11 have started their journey in competing in the National Netball Shield with the Year 8 team winning their game 15-6 on Monday night. The Year 10s started their Wokingham Netball league where they had a very successful week along with some friendly badminton fixtures. We have so many upcoming fixtures to look forward to in football, cross country, hockey, basketball, netball, handball, badminton! Keep your eyes peeled out for results on our PE social media pages on Instagram (@HoltPE) & Facebook (The Holt School PE Department).
There is something for everyone so whether students are interested in crochet, creative writing, debating or singing – they will find a club. It is a great opportunity to make new friends and do something they enjoy. The timetable for this year is on our website https://www.holtschool.co.uk/school-life/extra-curricular-activities/
On Monday we held the first of seven ‘Morning Tours’ for Year 6 students and their parents. This is their opportunity to listen to a talk from the Co Headteachers then have a tour of the school escorted by the Year 11 prefects. The prefects are the best at answering questions and it is a great opportunity for potential students and parents to visit the school and see it in action!
Yvonne Smith
Assistant Headteacher