BookBuzz is a reading programme from BookTrust that aims to help schools inspire a love of reading in 11 to 13-year-olds.  Participating schools give their students the opportunity to choose their own book to take home and keep from a list of 17 titles. They are all carefully selected by a panel of experts to ensure quality, suitability and to encourage reading for pleasure. Every year at Kendrick the Kendrick Parents Society (KPS) supports this scheme and allows every one of our Year 7 students to choose a book to take home to keep.

‘What if you had to defend a murderer?’ This is often one of the first questions posed to prospective Law students who often do not have an answer. Isn’t Law about justice and using the judiciary to ensure innocent people are defended whilst the perpetrators are locked up? On Wednesday 28th September, Lady Justice Andrews gave a talk on her journey into Law whilst answering some of these questions.

On Tuesday 4th October 2022, Year 12 students attended the Wokingham Waterside Centre as part of their Personal Development and Integration into the Sixth Form. The focus was on working as a team to complete the course and the tasks. Students were enabled to mix together and develop new friendships.

This year we celebrate an incredible 145 years of Kendrick, 145 years of girls’ education!  

Kendrick School, came into existence in 1877. It is named after its founder, John Kendrick, whose painting is in this Hall.  John Kendrick was a 17th century merchant and clothier who left a bequest, a sum of money – some £12,000 to the towns of Reading and Newbury to provide employment and education for girls and boys. So started Kendrick Girls’ School and Kendrick Boys’ School. The boys’ school eventually merged with Reading school, leaving Kendrick Girls’ School, which became Kendrick School.

Yesterday we heard the very sad news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral. This is clearly an historic moment for the country and the world as people everywhere acknowledge the tremendous contribution and service the Queen gave to the country, the Commonwealth and all the charities and organisations she supported and interacted with in the 70 years of her reign. As Head of State, the death of the Queen is a hugely significant event in the history of the constitution and political system of the country as the death of one monarch leads to the succession of the next.

One of the events of the Creative Arts Festival was a Poetry Pentathlon, which was held at lunchtime on Wednesday 13th July.  Students were challenged to do any or all of a selection of five mini-poetry ‘events’ (see below). 

The idea was to compose poetry at speed, letting the inspirations provided prompt a spontaneous response in the moment.   This method of composing, which entails getting fleeting ideas down on paper, can be surprisingly fruitful.  Some ideas produced are surreal and bizarre, others are cleverly and succinctly meaningful.  I’m sure you will agree that our winners certainly produced work that was indeed poetic, surprising and even thought-provoking.