Ex-Headteacher and St Albans resident Martin Brown is raising money for YouthTalk  (a service which provides free, confidential counselling for young people in St Albans) through his Virtual Tour of St Albans. Titled "A Tale of Two Cities: strange and shocking tales of St Albans and its links to London,” this virtual tour starts in the King Harry pub at 18:00 on Friday 21st March, drops into the White Hart and finishes in the Blacksmiths’ Arms at around 18:30. 

All money raised goes to YouthTalk, offering support to help the significant mental health issues faced by our young people. If you would like to join this fun virtual tour and help to raise vital funds you can do so via https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MartinBrown75 and I will send you a Zoom meeting invitation to “A Tale of Two Cities”

We have the above vacancies at Sandringham School. For more details please go to 

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

Gabz F (11S) is a patient at GOSH and is very actively involved in fundraising for them. The GOSH charity approached her to record a sea shanty for a new fundraising initiative taking place on TIKTOK, with the game ‘Sea of Thieves’.  Gabz was sent the lyrics but devised the filming and harmonies herself and produced the fabulous rendition here which has already had over 11,000 views.  

Wonderful work as always Gabz! We hope that you enjoy watching and that it helps to raise a lot of money for a fantastic charity.

Instrumental and Vocal lessons

A reminder that dates and times for instrumental lessons are now displayed on the notice boards in the music faculty. Please check the times carefully and make sure you know if your lesson is taking place face to face with your teacher or via the online Music Tutors system.

Extra-Curricular Music

Our music ensembles, clubs and rehearsals will not resume until after the Easter break. We are really looking forward to getting back to singing and playing together as soon as we can.

Written by Melanie B 7N

On Friday 19th March 2021, at Sandringham School, we will be celebrating a very well-known and special event - Red Nose Day. Red Nose Day is a campaign with a clear mission to end child poverty by funding programmes that keep children safe, healthy, and educated.

As a school, we are aiming to raise as much money as we can for this fund. All of the grant money will go towards children living in hardship and will create a very big difference in these children’s lives. 

Raising life-changing cash for the children that need it the most is very important which is why we will do what we can to support this worthy cause.

Friday 19th March will be a non-school uniform day, please pay £1 via parentpay. No red noses please! but we would like for you to wear something ‘red’ as a theme for the day to show your support for the cause.

Thanks to all families who have supported the in school testing over the past week, particularly with regard to the first tests that took place prior to the return to school of each year group. The team of staff and community volunteers have worked incredibly hard and we are now over half way through the process.

The schedule for the final week of tests has been amended slightly and is outlined below.

Monday 15th March: Year 8 and 12

Tuesday 16th March: Year 7 and 13

Wednesday 17th March: Year 11 and 10

Thursday 18th March: Year 8 and Year 9 B half

Friday 19th March: Year 7 and Year 9 A half

With the completion of the in-school testing programme, families are being asked to manage home testing. We will be distributing these kits to students at the end of next week. Further details will follow in next week’s newsletter.

As mentioned in a separate article, Keerthana Appandairaj was recently given an honourable mention in the World Class Schools essay writing competition. The results will be announced next Friday 18th March and we believe that Keerthana displays some of the characteristics recognised as a World Class Student including challenging the status quo. In her essay about the education system she concludes:

"The best way to help students is to offer them more choice in the variety of  subjects they choose, provide less homework to allow them to enjoy their youth, take the focus away  from the exams and towards learning the content, allowing for the use of the best psychological  techniques in the current education system, such as active recall and spaced repetition, integrating  the use of EdTech to enhance the learning of the students and working collaboratively to learn  together as a society and promote collaboration to adjust to this rapidly changing modern world.  Finally, as a point to note, the suggestions I have made here are what would be the ideal education  system currently, but unlike previous decades, we must understand the cruciality of making changes  to the education system to adapt to the changing time because after all, the only thing that is  constant in life is change, and it is time to be bold."

Well done to Keerthana for a brilliant essay and we wish you the best of luck for Friday 18th March. 

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels consisting of Northern Lights (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). 

It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, aged 12 when we first meet them, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. They are strong characters and in their quest for understanding and justice, they challenge the established order, come up against authority, discover who they are as individuals but also, importantly, what it means to be human.

The stories can be read on different levels: you can enjoy them as incredibly exciting adventures through multiple parallel worlds - there is intrigue, warfare, double-crossing and a huge mystery to be solved. But it can also be read as an allegory for political corruption, the power of authority to suppress challenge, and the dangers of organised religion. Readers can take what they want from it!

As the main protagonists are teenagers, His Dark Materials is generally considered to be ‘young adult fiction’ but its themes are challenging, complex and thought-provoking, including physics, philosophy and theology. The trilogy has also been considered highly controversial too.  - why not read to share in Lyra and Will’s experiences as they move from ; childhood and innocence to maturity and knowledge. Find out more here: http://www.philip-pullman.com/hdm

Years 10-13 Careers Guidance: Morrisby Online Profile

As part of Sandringham Careers Education, students in Years 10-13 have the opportunity to take the Morrisby online psychometric test. The profiling exercise looks at the student’s different abilities then provides genuine insights into potential future careers through scientific analysis of their results. This will be followed a 15 minutes feedback interview with an independent Careers Advisor. It is designed to complement the core careers provision already on offer at Sandringham School.

Information have been sent to Years 10-13 parents/carers. Please register and make payment by Friday 19th March.

It would be really helpful if as many families as possible could e-mail their support for the removal of a redundant footpath on the school site so that an Order can be finalised. All you need to do is to e-mail planningcomments@stalbans.gov.uk for the attention of the Planning Technical Support, St. Albans District Council quoting Sandridge 29a (Sandringham School) Public Path Stopping Up Order 2021. You have until 5.00 p.m on 15th April 2021. Your support is important to demonstrate the strength of opinion of the community to improve the security of the school and allow for the expansion of sporting facilities.

You may wish to explain that this route has not been used since the mid 1970’s, does not disadvantage anyone since there is a shorter and more attractive route (the bridle path), plus we need to expand the school facilities and strengthen the security of the site for both Sandringham students and also those at the Wheatfields Schools.

The Background detail.

Many of you will know that the school has planned to develop the tennis courts as part of our expansion programme. Whilst finalising planning permission, it was realised that a redundant public right of way ran across the court extension area. For the past two years we have been working with St. Albans District Council to have this route stopped off.

The history of this old path is now better understood. The school was first built in the late 1950’s over an existing Public Right of Way. Consequently, this PRoW was diverted to avoid passing through the school grounds for reasons of security and safety of children. In the mid-1970’s, due to an increase in population, the school was expanded by HCC and for some reason that has not been explained to us, the PRoW was not rediverted again to keep it outside of the school grounds. Because new fencing was erected, there was no natural thoroughfare and so the route became redundant and unusable, with the bridle footpath by the side of the school becoming the common passage route.

St. Albans District Council approved the stopping off of this footpath in January 2020, and have now been through the process of issuing a Public Path Stopping Up Order. This notice has been placed in the school grounds, and at various key points around the grounds. It will also appear in local newspapers.

Members of the public now have until the 15th April to make any representations about or objections to the order.

On the 18th of March, education charity World Class Schools Quality Mark (WCSQM) will be holding a virtual awards ceremony to acknowledge and recognise the achievements and World Class characteristics of students throughout the UK during a year of lockdown. As a World Class School, here at Sandringham we aim to promote some of their core values: community, learning, responsibility, commitment to sustainability and dedication to challenging the status quo. Over the coming weeks we will be featuring more articles on what we think it means to be a World Class Citizen and students whom we feel are a shining example of this.

The annual World Class Schools ceremony this year will be held virtually on Friday March 18th and will celebrate school and student achievements across a range of different categories, including the announcement of the winners of the annual WCSQM essay writing competition,the winners of the WCSQM Lockdown Competition, and a celebration of the first ‘Students of the Month’, as part of WCSQM’s Student Character Campaign launched in January 2021. 

Several of our students will be featured at the presentation: Alumni Sophie Angel, Reuben Mahendra, Nabrissa Badu and Lily Hurp (Y12) and Keerthana Appandairaj (Y10) who was an honourable mention in the essay writing competition. Please keep an eye out for them in the Awards Ceremony which we will share the link to in the Sandprint next Friday 18th March. Further details on Keerthana's essay are featured under English News. 

F2 in the Art Block is named after Marianne North, a botanical artist who defied the stereotypes of Victorian women by travelling and leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of art and plant discovery. She was not fond of conventional societal norms and through her paintings of flowers in their natural habitats, was able to give a glimpse of plants inaccessible to most people at the time.

North was born in 1830 and from a young age accompanied her beloved father, Frederick North, around Europe and the Middle East painting in her spare time. With his death in 1870, Marianne found herself adrift and wanting focus. Having never married, she had retained much of her father's fortune and used it in her pursuit of painting flowers in their natural settings.

She broke with Victorian conventions and travelled all over the globe (including Jamaica, Brazil and Japan) on her own, in order to satisfy her passion for recording the world's flora with her paintbrush. Her style was groundbreaking at the time, using brightly coloured oil paints to capture flowers, landscapes, animals and birds.

At the suggestion of Charles Darwin , who had been a friend of her father's, she chose her next great destination of Australia where some of the plants she painted proved new to science and one genus and four species were named in her honour. 

The result of these epic journeys can be seen in the Marianne North Gallery at Kew which features 832 paintings, all completed in 13 years of travel round the world. It is still one of the most popular attractions there and captured scenery in a pioneering style. North died on 30th August 1890 but her legacy lives on in the gallery, providing visitors to Kew with the chance to explore the amazing 'snapshot in time' represented by her paintings.

“[On a sunset:] I cannot speak or move. I am drunk with beauty!”

Every week the Mathematics Faculty publish a puzzle for you to try.  For every entry you will receive 1 housepoint, if you answer correctly you will win 2 housepoints and if you are the fastest person to answer the puzzle correctly then you will win 5 housepoints!  To enter, simply scan the QR code and fill out the google form.  Good luck!

The Literary Trust says: “Libraries will be a vital source for children in overcoming the learning barriers caused by Covid-19. Our research shows that children and young people who use the library have, on average, higher mental wellbeing scores than those who don’t.”

We have a huge range of books available in all genres at the LRC so please check out the titles available on our Accessit Web App, which you can view through MySandstorm. 

Keep Reading!

FRENCH:  Le mot de la semaine – fondamental/essentiel
GERMAN: Die Wort der Woche – grundsätzlich/elementar
SPANISH: La palabra de la semana – fundamental/esencial

Thinking Questions :

• Sometimes words in a foreign language are very similar to our mother tongue, this makes them easy to recognise but how can we work on our spelling to ensure we are as accurate as possible?
• Spotting links between languages can help us with our understanding, but what about false friends (words that look like English words but mean something different)? What can we do to try and make sure we are not caught out?

For our whole school theme this week, we celebrate British Science Week. British Science Week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics that will take place between 5-14 March in 2021. One of the campaigns in British Science Week this year is ‘Smashing Stereotypes’. ‘Smashing Stereotypes’ aims to encourage STEM employees and researchers to share stories about their day-to-day work and highlight the diversity of the STEM workforce, the extent of jobs and careers available, and that scientists are just like everyone else. We encourage you to find out more about the different people who work in the STEM sector and the variety of roles that they fulfil so we are informed about the possible careers we can pursue in this sector in the future. 

We would like to thank everyone who participated in our House Photography Competition. We announced the winners and featured their photographs last week but there were so many more amazing entries that we would like to share with you. As you can see from the exhibition film below, the level of participation and outcomes were exceptionally high in our first year running this exciting House event. We have been so delighted to review all of the entries submitted and to see all of the special moments that you have captured as we welcome the arrival of spring. We do hope that the competition provided our participants with the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors at this time and again we would like to thank everyone for such superb participation. We would also like to thank Mrs Leto for another wonderful exhibition film and we do hope you enjoy it!

Exhibition https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LRp-2wKzd-24O_oJO2D6HnuB6ifedcIe/view?usp=sharing 

Year 9 student Lily D has been selected to dance in a new exhibition at St Albans Museum. Lily was one of 10 selected to take part in workshops in movement, sound, film and technology that will launch a new Augmented Reality installation at the museum. This is a fantastic opportunity so well done to Lily for being selected. We look forward to seeing her feature in it in the future.

If you would like your son/daughter to be in the Student Spotlight, please email melissa.holian@sandringham.herts.sch.uk with any details/photos that you would like included. 

F is for… fundamental [adjective]

Definition: Forming or relating to the most important part of something.

Example: There's a fundamental difference between these two political parties.

Synonyms: Crucial, Integral, Significant

Antonyms: Insignificant, Minor, Needless

Etymology: From the Latin root ‘fundare’ meaning to found.