12 February 2021
It seems like such a long time ago when we were getting ready on the 4 January to open the school for the start of this half-term, only to receive the Government announcement about lockdown and school closures that evening. Despite the challenges this half-term has presented us all, the resilience, courage and enthusiasm on display from our pupils has been incredible and I want to thank all our pupils and parents for embracing these challenges. Your children have done an amazing job over the last six weeks and I hope enjoy a well-deserved rest and time away from screens.
Martha’s HUGG and our next charity focus
This morning in assembly, we heard about one of our Year 3 pupil’s HUGG. For those of you that may remember, a HUGG is a ‘Huge, Unbelievably, Great, Goal’ and Martha shared with the school her HUGG, which is a desire to end homelessness. She presented her ideas about how to do this and what she has done so far to support a local homeless charity. We have decided to get behind Martha’s HUGG as a school and support Crisis in Oxford for our next half-term fundraising activity. We have asked pupils to get their thinking caps on and come up with some ideas to feed into form tutors after the half-term break. We look forward to hearing what inventive ways we can go about raising funds for such an important cause!
Teaching and Learning this week
We love hearing about what pupils have been getting up to in different sections of the school and this week has been no less busy! I have just left our Nursery children as they wrap up warm and head out to discover the joys of Forest School, learning all about weather, winter and nature! As you may have read earlier this week, in Reception the children have been finding out all about the Chinese New Year celebrations, listening to and retelling the story of the zodiac animals, making beautiful Chinese lanterns, building and measuring their own versions of the Great wall of China and making dragon masks ready to join in with a dragon dance this afternoon! It true celebratory style, I have it on good assurance that this will be a very loud and colourful celebration!
As part of their Tudor topic, Year 5 have been looking at Tudor portraits - this week they turned themselves into Tudor royals using selfies of their heads, which were quite simply brilliant! Meanwhile, Year 6 pupils have been making pancakes this morning ready for pancake day – I wonder what toppings they selected!
In Senior School, our Year 10 Pupils have been recording some amazing speeches for their GCSE Spoken Endorsements. They have shown confident presentation skills and outstandingly articulate expression, while tackling some very challenging topics, including: the impact of social media, the global pandemic; celebrities on adolescent mental health; the impact of feminism and racism on women's lives; the ethics and morality of euthanasia, the death penalty and illegal dog breeding, selling and smuggling....and so much more!
Future Dates and Events We will be asking pupils to dress up for World Book Day on 4 March, so strongly encourage pupils to start thinking about favourite characters and costumes!
Half-term challenges
Don’t forget there are a whole host of wonderful challenges for pupils to partake in over the half-term break if they wish. These are posted in the relevant channel on teams.
Have a lovely half-term break.
James Raymond
Headmaster