During Earth Week, a very popular event was the seed bomb workshop where many students from different year groups had an opportunity to make seed bombs to plant in their own gardens. The event took place in the Art rooms where students worked on their seed bombs in their own bubbles.
A very popular event that took place during Earth Week was the Meat Free Meal Day on Friday 25th June. Everyone had the option to use phones to take pictures of their meal in order to upload it onto EcoSpot, to help us to reach our target for meat free meals, which we have now reached. There were a number of meat free choices ranging from burgers, cheese and onion pasty, pizza and more. This is a new scheme that we would love to put into place from the beginning of the next academic year, called Monthly Meat-Free Mondays. It allows students to eat delicious, healthy meals while helping the environment.
Early in the summer term, the English department organised Shakespeare competitions and activities in honour of his birth and death day.
The first competition was a quiz, with knowledge about Shakespeare’s life and works; there were very high scores from every entrant! Our joint winners, who both got full marks and then even gavethe same response to the tie-break, are Daisy, year 7 and Mme Pilia-Jones – well done to both.
On Friday 25th June, three beautiful pamper hampers were created as the final task undertaken by the group of students who have now completed their volunteering part of the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award.
Sophia, Isabelle, Mahi, Emma and Zunairah have been helping with various activities around the school during their three month volunteering period.
Bushcraft was a very good experience in many ways, we learnt new skills that will benefit us in the future; learnt how to survive in the wild; how to deal with bugs; but most importantly, we met new people, had fun, and enjoyed being outside, admiring nature we are so lucky to have!
The Wilderness Personal Development activity day was a really fun event that I very much enjoyed. As well as being nice because it was a break from normal lessons, everyone learnt a lot more about themselves, as well as other people.
On Tuesday the 18th May, all the Year 7s went head to head in the annual Wheelie Challenge, to design a board to pitch their business ideas.
Here’s the catch: you had to involve up to six wheels in your business idea.
Whilst some of us used double-decker buses, others came up with the idea of mini robots gliding around shops.
In the last week before half-term, Year 9 had the opportunity to try new challenges to help improve team building and team work within the year group. We worked with the Wilderness Group, a workshop in which we got to put our leadership, problem-solving skills and teamwork to the test. We researched missions to Mars and recreated and solved some challenges they would have had to face.
During Activities Week at the end of last term, we had the opportunity to take part in some wilderness team building activities. These were based around the voyage of the explorer Ernest Shackleton, who led a team of men to the Antarctic. His experience was a great example to us of important leadership skills and also how all members of a team can contribute in different ways.
On Tuesday, the Poets’ Society were delighted to meet poet Kate Clanchy (via a Zoom call projected onto the whiteboard!) in a poetry masterclass to inspire us into getting thoughts onto paper and writing poetry. Kate Clanchy has written poetry, short stories, articles, books on teaching, memoirs, and radio plays, and has received many awards for her prose and poetry. She has an MBE for her services to literature, and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from such an established poet!
Across this academic year, the English Department are celebrating significant literary figures with activities and competitions related to their lives and works. At the end of last term, we marked Jane Austen’s birthday, and students were invited to write creatively using Austen’s famous opening ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’; Xuan in Year 10 wrote the winning piece.
On Holocaust Memorial Day we remember all those who died during the Holocaust and other genocides. This year, Angela Strach who used to be the Head of Drama at Kendrick school, was invited to speak about her family's experiences of the Holocaust. She has created and shared recordings of her story, links as below.