Last week we celebrated Mental Health Awareness Week, rounding off the week with the Wellbeing Festival on Friday, which was a lovely event.
The weather was on our side; the sun was shining, and there were many happy faces all around the front lawn.
On Friday 10th May, Sithmi in Year 8 was awarded 2nd place at the finals of the British Arts Awards finals in the Intermediate Singing / Musical Theatre category. It was her first time competing at the British Arts Awards, and she sang 'My House' from the play 'Mathilda'.
The British Arts Awards is an annual Dance, Singing and Drama competition where students from dance schools around the country compete for a place in the finals. Preliminary rounds are judged at a national standard and entrants with Honours marks go through to the regional semi-finals.
In March this year, seven semi-finals were held around the country and those who scored over 85 were awarded Merit Certificates. After all the semi-finals were completed, the 4 highest scorers in each category were invited to compete in the finals in London.
On Thursday 9th May, Mrs Cooper and Mrs Nicholson took four very talented sixth form students to Churchend Primary School to do some music outreach work with their Year 5 students. They were introduced to music of a range of styles, including Disney, film music and jazz, on instruments such as the piano, clarinet and flute, as well as vocal pieces.
Heather had students doing vocal and physical warm-ups before singing some snippets from musical theatre and opera. She also accompanied Jodie, who sang the famous ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen.
As a school, we are fortunate that a good deal of our 147-year history can be traced through the archives we hold in school. Including previous copies of the school magazine, uniforms and photographs, the archive allows us glimpses into the lives of the Kendrick Girls’ from the past. We have recently been able to support local research by providing archival materials. Research being conducted into Reading Old Cemetery by Professor Yota Dimitriadi of the University of Reading led to the realisation that a former Kendrick Head Girl is buried there.
On April 20th, we represented Kendrick School in the 2024 National Schools Badminton Championships. Our team triumphed in both age categories, with all eight of us securing gold medals.
Returning after a five-year hiatus, the National Schools Championships saw a massive participation of 700 teams from 38 counties across the four events. Sponsored by Babolat, the final took place at the National Badminton Centre from April 20th to 21st, with 32 teams fighting for gold.
At this time of year, we celebrate the achievements of our most senior students and offer some the opportunity to perform as a soloist accompanied by one of our senior ensembles. 
First up came Petra, who performed an outstanding and stylistic saxophone solo as part of Jazz Band's rendition of 'I Got You (I Feel Good)' by James Brown. They really engaged with the audience and showed how much they'd grown in confidence since their time in Year 7.
On 18th April, I, along with 30 other students at Kendrick, took part in the Garsington Opera Workshop. At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew we would be learning about the opera ‘Marriage of Figaro’ that we would be seeing in July.
It started off fun and engaging; the people running the workshop were very friendly and made everyone feel included and involved. We did a few warm-up exercises which helped us get to know each other. We were encouraged to interact and stand next to people in different Year groups. Throughout the workshop, we listened to songs from the opera being played on piano and translated into English in order to help us understand the opera in more detail, which was very helpful. We also heard sections of the opera being performed by the workers, who were also opera singers, and it was fascinating to watch and learn more.
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Recently, Year 12 students participated in the Geography Innovation Challenge with Reading School. It was a close competition, but our two teams came out at the top, being awarded 1st and 2nd place. The task was to find an innovative solution to the prevalent microplastic problem in our oceans.
The competition was between four groups of Year 12 students from Reading School and Kendrick School. Each team created and did a fifteen-minute presentation, that included research into microplastic sources and challenges, our chosen solution, and considerations of scalability and funding for the solution. This was followed by fifteen minutes of answering challenging questions.