Congratulations to Rhys in Y7 who not only won the Drama Bake Off creating his fantastic cake replica of the Globe Theatre, but also got to show it off on The Great British Bake Off / Extra Slice last week. A great achievement Rhys. 

If you would like your child to feature in the student spotlight, please email a short article and any photographs you would like to include to melissa.holian@sandringham.herts.sch.uk

Last weekend 132 year 11 students successfully completed their Bronze expeditions which had to be postponed from the summer. Due to COVID restrictions, we couldn’t carry out our expeditions in the usual format. Maximum group size was reduced to 6 and the students were unable to camp out, completing two day walks instead.

In spite of these changes, the students rose to the challenge and completed the two days successfully. The weather was dry but a bit chilly and most of the mud from the downpours the weekend before had started to dry up. We still had some damp feet following some slips on the stepping stones near Redbournbury Mill and a few temporary misplacements of groups who must have decided the planned route wasn’t long enough and added a few kilometres by going the wrong way! All the groups also cooked on the camping stoves when they returned to school with the DofE staples of pasta and noodles making an appearance. There were some less successful attempts at pancakes and the cooking of sausages and bacon resulted in some very dirty pans which were then scrubbed till they shone, under the vigilant supervision of staff who know my standards when it comes to shiny pans!

As always we were impressed by the attitude of our students and it was lovely to see them enjoying themselves with their friends. A massive thank you is due to the 24 staff and volunteers who gave up their precious weekend time to support the students.

The expedition section will be signed off on eDofE accounts over half term and I would like to take this opportunity to remind students to get assessor reports uploaded for their other 3 sections. We will be launching Silver with year 11 after half term and we would like Bronze Awards to be completed before students move on to the next level.

Photos from the weekend on the Bronze Google Classroom

Austen House take the lead with the House Cup this week. Their grand total of 4378 points includes house point totals from planners, total school reward points (inc. HTCs, postcards etc) extra-curricular club attendance, the Big House Quiz and Y7 Interhouse Football and Netball on Tuesday (More in the PE section of the Sandprint.) Elgar and Fawcett are not far behind.

Tutor (Group) of the week =  Miss Wills Well done to 7H who again performed well on last week’s Nelson Mandela House Quiz, but also won the Y7 Inter house Football, finished 4th in the Netball and were the 3rd highest scoring tutor group in the Big House Quiz on Wednesday.

Year group of the week = Year 7 Congratulations Miss Davies and the Y7 team on a superb week who had the highest total year score on Wednesday’s Big House Quiz by a long way, as well as the greatest number of House Points in total this half term. They also showed fantastic participation and attitude at Tuesday’s Interhouse Sports event.

House of the week = Elgar Well done to Elgar who had the biggest points increase since last week with 18 points more than Austen across the week to move them up a place overall from 3rd to 2nd.

This week’s special mention goes to Fawcett, Austen and Turing for their contributions to extra-curricular clubs across the whole school. Your students have attended more clubs than any other houses this half term. 

BIG HOUSE QUIZ RESULTS

Well done to Fawcett again for their win on the Big House Quiz. This was predominantly a result of 8F and the Fawcett staff entries.

Y7 Winner – Eilon Kaplan 7H,

Y8 Winner – Charlee Hall 8F,

Y9 Winner – Roslin McGregor 9T,

Y10 Winner – Salam Rajab 10J

Y11 Winner – Flynn Law 11F

Y12 Winner – Louis Vaile 12N

Y13 Winner – Andre Raath 13A

The D&T department have had a busy half term. This week we feature one of their A-level students who has combined their work from @adskFusion360 with the AR function on @tinkercad to model his concept ideas for his development stage. A fantastic piece of design! We look forward to seeing more new creations from students next half term. 

Find out more about existing vacancies here:

https://sandringham.herts.sch.uk/vacancies/

Families are reminded that children should not be congregating in large groups over the half term break. The police have asked that schools publicise this message ahead of Halloween. Thank you in advance for your active support with this matter.

We have come to the end of a very successful first half term. The new Year 12 students have worked really hard to make a great start to their courses and reacclimatise to school after the lockdown period. They are already making a great contribution to school life, with 64 Senior Prefects appointed and 18 students appointed to run the Student Leadership Groups. Their attitude and enthusiasm has been really impressive.

Year 13 have also been working very hard, with a lot of coursework now in full swing and the recommended internal UCAS deadline today. Again, they have settled very well back into full-time school and have taken all of the disruption in their stride.  

After half-term, we will start to look ahead to launching the Year 11 into 12 admission process for September 2021, with the virtual BeauSandVer consortium information evening taking place via our website on 5th November at 7.00pm. 

There is no doubt that all students need a break over half term and we hope that they can find some fun and relaxing activities to refresh them for an equally busy half term ahead!

B12, in the D&T Block, is named after the chef Joel Robuchon who we believe showed Initiative for his constant innovation and distinctive cookery style.

Joel Robuchon was born in April 1945 and dreamed of being a priest, enrolling in a seminary at the age of 12. It was whilst working using the ovens that he realised his true calling, and at the age of 15 he became a pastry chef at the Relais du Poitiers Hotel. 

From there Joel went from success to success: running the kitchen at Hotel Concorde La Fayette by the age of 29, winning The Meilleur Ouvrier de France at the age of 31, gaining his first Michelin star on the opening year of his restaurant Jamin at the age of 36, and being named the Gault et Millau "Chef of the Century" in 1990.

Robuchon was famous for recasting French cuisine in a personal style that emphasised intense flavours and precise techniques and starting a dining revolution with his "Atelier" business model (small, intimate restaurants where diners sat at a counter surrounding the kitchen.) He was also famous for using extraordinary amounts of butter in his mashed potato, once throwing a plate at Gordon Ramsay and the fact that no one in Michelin history has received more stars than his restaurants (a record 32 in 2016.)

"Cooking is creating emotion" 

FRENCH:    Le mot de la semaine          une transition       

SPANISH:   La palabra de la semana     la transición

GERMAN:   Das Wort der Woche            werden (added to the end of a noun)

Thinking questions:

The French, Spanish and English are all very similar, why could this be?

What do we call it when two nouns are combined to make a new noun?

What does the German verb ‘werden’ mean?

As part of our annual Remembrance reflections, we are organising a very special project for all of our KS3 artists which we hope will inspire them to consider the process of reflection and why it is important for us to collectively remember our serving and fallen heroes. In order to support us with this activity, please could all of our KS3 artists come to their first lesson back with a button which ideally would be approximately 25mm or larger in size and can be any colour.  This will be used for an activity which we hope will allow them to creatively respond and appreciate the Make do and Mend spirit which existed during the first and second world wars.

We would like to thank Mrs Button for organising this wonderful opportunity for our students and look forward to working creatively with all of our artists when we return after half term.

https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/

We are so proud of how well all of our artists have settled back into their creative practice and it has been wonderful to see how carefully they have worked in the studios to create outstanding work whilst  maintaining social distancing and completing new routines with their art equipment to ensure a safe working environment.

We are delighted to be offering a range of exciting extra- curricular opportunities which are listed below. Our provision regularly updates to ensure that our opportunities allow students to engage with national and community projects so please do check in and sign up through SOCs to ensure a place.

We are a Creative Hub for University of Arts London. UAL are top 2 in the world for Art and Design (QS World University Rankings 2020) and there are many upcoming after school courses, weekend courses, holiday courses and online courses so please do sign up to the UAL Future Creatives newsletter to ensure you are updated for these fantastic opportunities offered in our centre https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/EC041384F92EFE9C

Please do remember to follow us on Twitter Sandringham Visual Arts@SandringhamArt and Instagram: visualartssandringhamschool which are regularly updated with student artwork and up and coming opportunities for all of our visual artists.

Extra-Curricular Opportunities:

Year 10 Making your Mark Club, Year 10 Open Studios Lunch, Year 11 Coursework Cafe, Year 11 Open Studios Lunch       

Year 12 ARTiculation Prize, Year 12 Open Studios, Year 12 UAL Drawing, Year 13 Open Studios, Year 13 Open Studios Lunch                                                       

Year 7 Space to Create Club, Year 8 Space to Create Club, Year 9 Memory Project Club

We are hoping that all families are able to stay safe and well to enjoy a restful half term. Should any family experience symptoms or end up with a positive case in their household, we would ask that you keep the school updated via admin@sandringham.herts.sch.uk.

There has been a whole school focus on sustainability this week, with the theme set as ‘The Global Climate Emergency’. This theme has been highlighted in the ‘Thought for the week’ activities, and the whole school assembly. Both presentations ended with the idea to look at small individual actions to make a difference in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We have 1600 students here, with thousands of family members also connected to the school. Between us, we can make a real difference through small changes! Central to our input has been the form group pledge, with groups deciding upon one or more individual actions which they can undertake to reduce their carbon footprint. We would also really like to involve the wider school community and families in this idea, and so we have a family pledge form here:

https://forms.gle/aXRAaBCXQfaoRrJSA

If your family would like to make a difference and try to take some small steps to commit to help solve the global climate crisis, we would love to hear your ideas.

Here are some suggestions to make a difference:

• Commit to having one or two meat-free days per week.

• Substitute one or more short car journeys each week with walking or cycling

• Reduce food waste by meal planning and freezing food.

• Think about energy use in the home - switch off lights and reduce heating when it isn’t needed.

• Choose local or British grown food.

There are other ideas here: https://climatecare.org/50-ideas-shrinking-carbon-footprint/ and I am sure that you can come up with many others. We look forward to hearing about the actions being taken!

In other areas this week, we have recruited our lead Year 12 students for the SLT Ecology and Sustainability group and we have started to think through ideas within the Eco-schools programme. The Year 7 Science club looked at sustainability and will be thinking about how to use the school garden and pond area to improve habitats and biodiversity. And the Year  13 senior team and Mr Gray have been looking at the location and strategy for the planting of over 400 trees which will arrive from The Woodland Trust in November. 

Congratulations to Year 11 and 13 Drama students for completing their Devised Performances. You should all be incredibly proud of yourselves, especially given how resilient you've had to be in the lead up to your final exam. Well done!

Last week we printed the winner of the English department's National Poetry Day competition for KS3 and this week it is the turn of one of the runner's up, Peter F in 7A. We hope you enjoy reading it and that you continue to encourage students to keep up their amazing creative writing. 

The New Normal

The world has faced many fears,

Bubonic plague and Spanish flu

But coronavirus is above its peers,

And in this new normal we need you!

So, wear your mask, two metres apart

Sanitise your hands, no high fives

And stay indoors, it’s a start

Fight the virus and save our lives!

This is the new normal, this is our new life,

But if we fight it, this won't last long.

I’ll say it once that in order to strive,

We must beat it, we are strong!

Please note that individual school photographs for Year 11 will be taking place on Monday 2nd November (the first day back after half term.) Year 11 students should come to school in full uniform as per usual, and parents will receive a form within a few weeks to order photographs if they should wish. 

Year 8-10 photographs will be taken on Wednesday 18th November. All students will need to come in school uniform (NOT PE KIT) on this day. Please bring PE kit in a separate bag to change in to. Changing Rooms will be available. Further reminders will follow regarding this. 

This week, the students had an extremely informative assembly from Mrs Mouncey that outlined the seriousness of the global climate emergency. The UN Climate change conference would have been held in the coming weeks but has unfortunately been cancelled due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions. Consequently, it is more important than ever that we as a school discuss the negative impact that climate change is having on the planet and what we can do to prevent this. All form groups made a pledge to either walk more, eat less meat or use more renewable energy. The SLT ecology and sustainability group will be working hard throughout this year to examine what more we can do as a school to support this cause. More details can be found in the Sustainability article this week. 

It feels surreal that Year 7 have completed their first half term here at Sandringham School. At this point in the school year, it seems a very pertinent time to reflect; not just on the recent weeks and events but the past few months and the transition to Secondary School. We’ve all come a really long way together since starting in September and you’ve grown and flourished into wonderful members of our school community during this still very uncertain time. 

Some highlights so far include the fantastic Induction Day and Evening to prepare you for this beginning, and then to finally meet your amazing form tutor and the rest of the Year 7 team. We are very proud of your ability to adapt, sometimes on a daily basis, to the changes around the school - a big pat on the back for every one of you! 

Our year group assembly this week highlighted the many successes over the first half term; in just 8 weeks Year 7 have earned almost 5000 house points and over 1500 rewards. This goes to show how hard you have been working and that’s a credit to you all. Year 7 also had their first Inter- House sports competition with over half of the year group attending and representing their individual houses- congratulations again to Hepworth and Newton for a fantastic performance! We also have amongst our year group; Gold and Platinum House point certificates, Bake Off champions, National Poetry Day runners-up, over 300 entries for clubs each week, and much more. Be proud Year 7 - we certainly are!

A few changes will be taking place after half term from Monday 2nd November. Session 3 will now be returning to the usually ending time of 12.10pm, meaning lunchtime will now be 12.10pm-12.50pm (with session 4 starting at 12.55pm). It will most likely be the case that the field will be out of bounds at break and lunchtimes after half term. We will do our best to make sure whenever possible to allow students outside for some fresh air. Year 7 so far have coped very well with this and have been bringing in card games (my knowledge of card games has significantly improved!) and magnetic chess boards to socialise in their groups of 6. 

We know you’ll continue to do us proud and adapt to whatever changes may come our way. Until then take care and have a restful half term break (you’ve earned it!).

T is for… Transition (noun)

Definition: A change from one state or condition to another

Example: We need a transition to a sustainable future

Synonyms: Conversion, Shift, Transformation

Antonyms: Decline, Decrease, Stagnation

Etymology: From the Latin word ‘transire’ meaning to go across

This week saw our Y7s involved in their Inter House Football and Netball competitions. It was a brilliant afternoon of sport with 194 Y7 students involved in both sports, which is astounding. Hepworth took victory in the football, whilst Newton won the Netball, with Johnson 2nd and Fawcett 3rd. Well done to everyone who participated and enjoyed a superb afternoon of sport, played with spirit throughout.

Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella is a thrilling and evocative love story set in London during the Second World War. The internationally acclaimed choreographer’s interpretation of the classic fairy tale has, at its heart, a true war-time romance. A chance meeting results in a magical night for Cinderella and her dashing young RAF pilot, together for just long enough to fall in love before being parted by the horrors of the Blitz. Matthew Bourne’s vivid story telling has never been more heart-stopping and touching and will take the audience into the heart of Prokofiev’s magnificent score. 

This highly engaging film takes us on a journey through the life of one of the most prevalent female icons: Frida Kahlo. She was a prolific self-portraitist, using the canvas as a mirror through all stages of her turbulent and, at times, tragic life. Guided with interview, commentary, and Frida’s own words, EXHIBITION ON SCREEN uncovers that this, however, was not a life defined by tragedy. Tickets £7/£5

Following its critically acclaimed opening in London earlier this year, Uncle Vanya was abruptly halted as the world went into lockdown. Uncle Vanya’s exquisite ensemble overcome the considerable challenges of working in a global pandemic, returning to the Harold Pinter Theatre to film the ‘perfect’ production, which is currently nominated for four Oliver Awards. Full of tumultuous frustration and hidden passions, but brimming with hope and optimism for the future, Uncle Vanya is a must-see event for our times.  Tickets £16/£13

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake comes to cinemas with a fresh look for the 21st century and is “as bold and beautiful as ever”. This thrilling, audacious and witty production is perhaps still best known for replacing the female corps-de-ballet with a menacing male ensemble, which shattered convention, turned tradition upside down and took the dance world by storm. Collecting over thirty international accolades including an Oliver Award and three Tony’s on Broadway, Matthew Bourne’s powerful interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s beloved tale is still original and still unmissable.  Tickets £13.50/£10

We hope everyone is keeping well. Through October, November, and December we have lots of exciting screenings coming to The SandPit. Including, Frida Kahlo, Uncle Vanya, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella. We look forward to opening our doors again safely and to see you all again.         

Following Government guidelines, you must wear a face covering while attending The SandPit Theatre unless you are exempt as stated in these guidelines. If you do not wear a mask you will be refused entry and your ticket will be forfeited. Our café will be during these screenings for drinks and snacks but please note we will only be accepting card payments.

The box office is open from 11.30am – 3.30pm Monday to Friday. Alternatively, you can call us on 01727 799565 or visit www.sandpittheatre.co.uk