9C and their English teacher, Mr Dilley, were overjoyed to discover that they were this year's winners of the UK Literacy Association's Our Class Loves This Book award for their work on Manjeet Mann's The Crossing. This prize is awarded jointly to a class and their teacher, and Kendrick School is the first ever secondary school to have won this national competition.  

Readathon Club, which includes over 20 students from Year 7 all the way through to Year 12 along with several keen staff members, has just finished making its way through its second classic novel, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. In Terms 3 & 4 we enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, but after all the violence and bloodshed of revolutionary France, it was a relief to switch to something more civilised and genteel. Austen’s first published novel follows the sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as they grow up and fall in love.

On our MFL German trip, we explored many different, lesser known parts of Germany, and we all learnt more about German culture through this experience. We strengthened our language skills and understanding of German culture, while having fun as a group through all the varied activities we did, many of which we had never tried before. 

The trip was split into two groups on our arrival: one stayed in Sankt Goar, the other in Kaub, two towns along the Rhine river. We all completed the same activities, but on different days for the first three days.  

On Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th June, we were delighted to welcome the award-winning poet Luke Wright to inspire many of our poets. Luke is the author of twelve books and travels the country performing his work – after Reading (where he was also performing with John Cooper Clarke at Reading Town Hall), his next stop was Glastonbury Festival!  

On Wednesday 12th June, ten teams of three students each competed in the annual Royal Society of Chemistry Analyst Competition 2024.  This Chemistry challenge aims to provide some tasks which are relatively familiar to students, such as titrations and others that are likely to be unfamiliar, such as chromatographic separations and molecular spectroscopy.  The competition allows Year 12 students to demonstrate and expand on their existing knowledge of Chemistry, skills and aptitude for analytical science through practical analytical experiments based on relevant societal or industrial problems. 

Eco-committee students participated in the Reading Climate Festival on 13^th June this year. Ex-Kendrick student Natalie Penney, founder of Nature-Nurture, organised the event ‘Create a Buzz’ with other volunteers. It started with an audiovisual experience in a human-sized bee-hive, after which students drew their own favourite bee out of the 200+ varieties presented to them.