Recently, all of Year 11 went on a trip to the Hexagon to attend Poetry Live, which as Mrs Munns described it, is the Poets’ Oscars!  We listened to a wide range of poets, some of which were from our specification and some of which were not - either way, it was fascinating to hear them.

We listened to Carol Ann Duffy talk about the ideas behind her poems ‘Valentine’, ‘War Photographer’ and ‘Before You Were Mine’. She talked about how significant the shape of a poem could be, which was a really illuminating view of looking at poetry which we hadn’t really thought about before.

This week is ‘Neurodiversity Celebration Week’, a global initiative that challenges stereotypes and misunderstandings surrounding neurological differences.  At Kendrick, we marked this week by viewing a presentation in form time.  Students have been sent this, along with a video, to look at in their own time, should they wish.  These are also attached below.

The Student Welfare Team also organised a neurodiversity badge making activity during one lunchtime, which proved to be hugely popular.   These are just a few examples of their wonderful creations for you to enjoy.

On Saturday 24th February, I had the opportunity to take part in a masterclass with Eleftheria Kotzia, a professional classical guitarist. Firstly, we talked about how we warm up before starting to play. We got into the right posture, and stretched our hands to improve blood flow and warm them up. Next, we discussed different ways to prepare before playing a piece, such as practising slurs, playing scales and arpeggios and practising technical work or studies. Then, each of us in the class got the chance to perform a piece for Eleftheria, and get her feedback on it.

I performed Kalamatianos, a traditional Greek dance which Eleftheria was familiar with, and she was able to give me lots of great advice on how to improve my playing by suggesting different fingerings for certain passages, as well as helping me change positions more smoothly.

On Thursday 14th March at lunchtime, the library had the pleasure of hosting the annual Holocaust Poetry Competition Presentation. This year, the theme of the competition was 'fragility of freedom', which clearly inspired many Kendrick poets. We had a wonderful range of poems submitted, which made the unenviable task of choosing the winners extremely difficult for our judges, Mr Dilley (Head of English) and Mrs Moseley (English & History teacher). Four students emerged as winners this year – Trisha and Inakshi from Year 12, Faith from Year 10 and a Year 8 student, Lara Maria.

On Monday 26th February, A-Level German, Spanish and French students went to Reading School to attend an event hosted by the Business Language Challenge on journalism and the influence of modern languages within the world of work. On arrival, we were welcomed with biscuits and then split into groups mixed with students from other schools, who studied the same language as us. After introducing ourselves to our team, everyone took part in a quiz in which we had to guess which news company belonged to which country.

Hello all! We are the Creative Writing Society, and we recently had a launch for our anthology, Winter Writings. We are a club with a wide age range, and an aim to develop and further improve our creative writing skills. That’s why we are excited to showcase our work in bound and printed form. Building on the knowledge from our first anthology (Time), we worked hard to match the high standard that our writers set last year. Originally, we planned to do a launch near the end of December, as it fitted well with the theme, but decided to move the date back, to give members time to really refine their stories.