The school is definitely less crowded with some of our big Year 7’s away on their residential trip to France however we are certainly just as busy!!  The remaining Year 7’s have had an exciting and varied curriculum.  Assemblies this week came from S6 on why to avoid being a couch potato and A6 on changes.

The main focus of the week has been our Year 8’s working with Anthony Glenn on dramatising the work they have been doing in English on Romeo and Juliet, culminating in an amazing performance on Thursday evening.  They really are a talented bunch of students and I consider it a real privilege to have got to know them.  It was wonderful to see the confidence, from not necessarily children you would always expect, to go up on stage.

In sport the girls have been busiest, district tournaments for the Year 8 and 7 girls were played; whilst the Year 6 girls won the High Five netball tournament, amassing a 25-0 cumulative score over their matches.  The Year 6 boys who represent the district team had another thumping victory on Monday which stands the team in good stead for the County Cup Quarter-Final competition next week.  Special congratulations must go to Olivia D. from Year 8 who came second in the Hertfordshire Schools’ County Golf competition, Tiny Woods as I like to call her played superbly scoring 43 stapleford points.

Next week is the final week of term but there is no let up in activity – the Sport Relief Mile’s will be taking place for each year group; there is the Great Ralph Sadleir Bake-Off; an Easter egg raffle; and of course, the children’s favourite – end of term assessments!!

I will leave you with a quote from Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It, ‘Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like a snail, Unwillingly to school.’

If only he’d gone to Ralph Sadleir!!!!!!!!!!! Have a great weekend.

Somewhat strangely I’m going to start this week’s Blog by going back to last week, my first Stars – an incredibly memorable evening for soo many reasons!! I was truly astounded by the sheer number of talented pupils and the quality of their performances.  A lot of thanks must also go to the hard work behind the scenes from the staff to put on such a wonderful evening.  Off the back of this one of our Year 8 enterprise groups will be recording, producing and selling some compilation albums of our children performing, more details coming soon.

Continuing on a performance theme, the school choir ably led by Miss Mason will be singing at the Royal Albert Hall this Sunday and if the singing I have heard coming from the Music Room every lunchtime this week is anything to go by then the audience are in for a massive treat.  There will be a review in next week’s Blog.

Monday was a Cross-Curricular Day, with a focus on healthy living – lots of activities based around helping the children realise that a healthy lifestyle in-corporates a good diet, positive mindset and regular exercise.

The Year 5’s continued their work on Ancient Egypt with an entire themed day where they a did pharaoh’ld amount of work – maths, science, English (hieroglyphics) and art.

Finally with a spell of decent weather we are having a glut of sports fixtures – Year 8 girls played really well against St Edmund’s College in two netball matches; The Year 8 boys came second in their group at district football; The Year 7 boys progressed through to the next round of the cup with a 1-0 win over Helena Romanes, Mayomikun E. scoring the only goal.  As well as school matches we have had some Year 6 boys – Noah P, Archie G, Luke C, Dominic G and Austen G – playing for the District U11 team. So far they have played 2 matches, losing to Potter’s Bar and beating Stevenage, with both Luke and Dominic scoring.  It is a big honour to be selected to represent the District and we are very proud of the boys!! We also had two Year 8 boys – Zach H and George B – go to trials for the U13 County Rugby team, both enjoyed the experience and learned a lot by training with the best boys from across the county.

Speaking of big honours, hopefully you all received the parent mail about the Parents’ House Football event after Easter, it is a great opportunity to get involved in the school community and help your children’s house point totals.  Please let me know either via email or through your children.

Another way to get involved will be by entering the School Council’s: Great Ralph Sadleir Bake Off in support of Sport Relief.  This will be a competition run (And judged by) the School Council – prizes for both child and adult entries will be given.  All the cake that’s left over from the (Very eager) judging panel will be then sold and all proceeds will go towards our Sport Relief fund.

And so another week comes to an end, we had a lively assembly introducing National Science Week by Mrs Bingham and a very special guest.  There were some excellent presentations on: our famous, teaching group named scientists, who will you vote for as the most influential?; on scientific discoveries like the MRI scanner; and on what the future holds – my personal favourite was flying cars.  As part of the planned activities, a group of Year 5 children (Florence S, Callum B, Oliver K, Emilia H) went to the Haileybury Science Challenge with Mrs Charlton, who said ‘ the children completed three different challenges throughout the day, one biology one physics and one chemistry. They had to work as a team to complete the tasks. They were quite difficult tasks but they worked well, read the instructions carefully and completed each task successfully! The tasks included making an electromagnet, testing urine and making oxygen.’  A huge thank you to Mrs Charlton for supporting the children through out the day, she told me how proud she was of their conduct and performance.

Remember…the roots of education might be bitter but the fruit is sweet!!

As Jimmy Durante famously said ‘You gotta start each day with a song…’ and we certainly did that today with the help of the wonderful brass musicians from Freman entertained us in assembly.

This week my curricular focus has been on History: The Year 8’s have been looking at Women through the ages as they move onto their main focus of the Suffragettes; Year 7 have been looking at life in Britain in the 16th century; the Year 6’s are moving forward from the Second World War and seeing how life changed post war; and the Year 5’s have been continuing their topic on Ancient Egypt by researching facts about the Pharaoh’s ready to write a report.

Next week’s focus will be ICT and Mr Palman had spent a lot of time on Safer Internet Day before half-term and hopes that you found the leaflets useful.

Sportingwise we had football and netball matches this week: Year 7 boys played Edwinstree; Year 7 girls played two matches against St Edmund’s, narrowly losing each.  The Year 7 girls then went to a District Football tournament where they came second.  The Year 8 girls rounded off the week with a very spirited, but soggy, second round of matches in the House Leagues whilst the boys honed their crab football skills.  All parents who like football, keep your eyes posted for details of an ‘exciting’ new school tournament  – for all those who ‘had trials when they were younger’ or could have made it if it wasn’t for an ‘injury’.

Finally as ‘Stars’ is only a week away now, the air is thick with excitement and all available space is being used to practice – and that is just in the Staff Room!! I am certain it will be a wonderful evening, tickets are still available from the School Office – but hurry as they are running out fast!!

I shall leave you with a quote from Albert Einstein – Everybody is a genius, but if you judged a fish by its ability to climb, then it would go through life thinking it was stupid.  Have a good weekend.

Water-way to end the week!!!

Today has been one of those days that all children and staff remember: the struggle to get in; the joy at the thought of school closing only to have your hopes crushed when you find it’s open (Pupils NOT staff); the teamwork; the togetherness; and finally the relief when it is all back to normal!! However in times of adversity, legends are born – one such legend is now the ‘Lady of the Welly’ – Alena F in Year 6.  She saved all the boys from the depths of despair today by rescuing their footballs from the ‘lake’ in the playground.

The rest of the week has been relatively drama free – except for the children who have been continuing their lessons with Mr Mikelsons.  Year 8 continue to prepare for Anthony Glenn with their work on Romeo and Juliet; Year 7 have been exploring extreme characters in an alien world; Year 6 have been looking at communication and presentation by giving pitches; whilst Year 5 have learned the difference between pretending and acting.

Monday saw the first full day of trading in the Year 8 break food market – plenty of calories were purchased and orders for brownies were being placed for next week (I have to protect the names of my staff here).  Then the enterprise companies were given a lesson from the taxman (Me) in the need to keep better sales records.  They are working tremendously hard and will hopefully raise enough funds for a truly fitting Leaver’s Thing – so called because they haven’t decided what they want to do yet.

Year 6 have been doing their Mock SAT’s this week and everyone has pulled together and supported them by being quiet in the corridors.  Some of our Year 8’s had a really motivating talk from author Paula Rawsthorne at Freman College.

Mr Nicol has been hard at work too – living in a fantasy world – running both the Fantasy Football competition and now his own Fantasy Geography one too.  Congratulations to Nicole B 7(MSN) on her amazing geographical knowledge.

In between the rain storms we have managed to fit in some sports fixtures, the Year 8 boys narrowly losing football against Edwinstree and Year 7 girls drew both matches against Hockerill.  Inter-house rowing is likely to replace football/netball this week coming!!!!!!!!!!!

One more week until Half-Term, where has the time gone? It is hard to believe that I am nearly halfway through my first year here.  Well the old saying is true…time flies when you are having fun.