The First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition was a fantastic experience for all those who took part. Congratulations to the team (Nikitha, Jessica, Tisha , Emily, Pihu, Ishika, Bidisha, Shriya, Jasmine, Aditi, Eva, Shruthi, Samragee, Aniya and Nina) who won the award for best Robot Design. The judges commended the design and documentation, saying that it, ‘really stood out’ and was done at a ‘professional level’.
One key event this week and an important occasion in our calendar was the Presentation of A Level Certificates to our students who left in the summer. Their achievements were once again excellent and many of them are now at university on courses they chose over a year ago. Some have taken a gap year or a deferment and some are in employment and on training courses. LINK to Destinations. Our guest speaker this year was Jennifer Brace, a former student and now a lawyer at an international firm in Bristol. Her biography is here. Like previous speakers Jennifer spoke about her experiences since leaving Kendrick and then gave the students some advice. Below are some extracts from of her speech.
On Saturday the library welcomed a very special guest for the first time….
On Friday lunchtime the library hosted the Book Club’s annual Christmas celebration. The turnout was good considering the germs that have been wiping out students in recent weeks!
The Christmas Concert last evening was a wonderful evening of traditional and modern Christmas music, performed by the various ensembles, orchestras, with beautiful singing from the choirs and the whole of Year 7. The staff band, 'No Direction' once again entertained the audience with a performance of ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’.
While world leaders have been meeting in Madrid, Spain to discuss climate change and the urgent need for action, fifteen Year 12 Geography took part in a mock UN Climate Change Conference organised by InterClimate Network on the afternoon of Friday 6th December. The event took place in Reading’s Council Chamber.
Ms Stacey led an assembly this morning to the Sixth Form titled “The Joy of Being Perfectly Imperfect”. Students heard that if ‘perfection’ is the ultimate goal, there is an emotional consequence of heightened stress. However if ‘good enough’ is the ultimate goal, the emotional consequence will be much more positive – better self-esteem, increased self-worth and resilience.
Every two years Kendrick School hosts a prestigious Career Fair, assisted by ‘Learning to Work’. This popular and well-attended event forms one of the key elements of our CEIAG (Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance) programme. On 7th November 2019, we had 65 exhibitors attend who enjoyed the positive interaction with our students who were recognised to be ‘mature’, ‘interested’, ‘inquisitive’ and ‘engaged with the career-finding’ process.
Alumna, Eleanor Reeves, invited 5 of our would-be lawyers to attend a prestigious event to commemorate ‘100 years of Women in Law’. At Kendrick School we are very keen to inform our students of opportunities like this as part of our active CEIAG (careers) programme. The high-profile evening was hosted by the central London Ashurst Law firm, where Eleanor works, on Thursday 14th November 2019.
On Tuesday 19th November, Autumn Profiling Day, all the Year 9s had an exciting opportunity to learn more about different careers we may not have even heard of before, using books and websites on the computers from the school’s Careers Library. The Librarians created a fun quiz which allowed us to research and find out some different careers that we hadn’t looked into before.
The Arkwright Engineering Scholarships programme is the most prestigious scholarship scheme of its type in the UK with over 5,000 Scholarships awarded to date. The aim is to identify, inspire and nurture school-age students to be the country’s future leaders in engineering, computing and technical design.
On Wednesday 20th November, Amnesty Society attended the annual UK Youth Conference hosted in the Amnesty HQ. This year, the theme was the rights of the child as Amnesty were celebrating the UN Convention of the rights of the child.