Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, which takes place annually, is a week-long celebration of engineering designed to highlight to young people that engineering is a creative, problem-solving, exciting career that improves the world around us.

Last term two Kendrick students, Sarah and Dhitha took part in Tomorrow’s Engineers Week when it celebrated its 10th year with a new recorded broadcast - Future Minds Live. Around 50 young people were chosen to attend Future Minds Live, where they discussed their ideas for the future of engineering in four key sectors: Entertainment, Sport, Technology and Environment.

In the first week of December, a group of students studying German from Years 11, 12 and 13 took part in the German Christmas Market trip, travelling over 700 miles in total. 

Day 1 - Thursday 1st December

At 5 o’clock in the evening, we gathered in the school hall to get checked in and make sure we had a list of our groups. We said goodbye to our parents and got onto the coach, leaving at around 6pm. The coach was full of chatty students; all of us were so excited for what was to come! After three hours on the coach, we reached the Port of Dover, went through customs and got onto the ferry. Many of us were very tired, but still enjoyed the ferry ride! We arrived at the Port de Calais, and continued our 12-hour journey to Cologne. 

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Meredith Willson, arr. A Level Music Students 2022-23

This Christmas classic was originally composed by Meredith Willson (known for the hit Broadway musical The Music Man) and brought to popularity by Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres & His Orchestra in 1951. Reaching No.8 on the US Billboard Holiday 100, it has since been recorded by the likes of Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, Pentatonix, Meghan Trainor, and of course the quintessential Michael Bublé, whose version continues to top the charts regularly over the Christmas period, 11 years after its release.

As we are all aware, this winter is going to be a difficult one for many families across the country, especially with the rising cost of living.

To do our bit to help locally in the Reading area, we organised a 'Food Drive Week' collecting food items such as breakfast cereals, UHT milk, eggs, loo rolls, washing up liquid, washing powder, tea, coffee, biscuits, cooking oil, pasta/rice, tinned food such as sweetcorn / fruit / soup / tuna, spreads like honey and jam, toiletries such as shower gel, shampoo, toothbrushes and toothbrushes for the Whitley Community Food Cupboard.  

I am very grateful for having had the opportunity to organise such an incredible event by inviting Dr. Harwin as our guest speaker on Friday the 9th of December.  Dr. Harwin is an Instrument Development Scientist at RAL Space.  Years 11,12, and 13 had the privilege of listening to Dr. Harwin, give a Space Talk.  We learnt about her journey into the space sector, and towards the end of the talk, she shared some career advice, and reassured students that there are numerous routes into the space sector such as data science and space law - not only aerospace engineering and astrophysics.