A reminder that the deadline to purchase Christmas Lunch tickets is 30th November. Christmas Lunch will be held this year on Tuesday 12th December (Y7 & Y9), Wednesday 13th December (Y8 & Y10) and Thursday 14th December (Y11, Y12, Y13) are available to purchase via Parentpay at a cost of £3.75. Please buy tickets via ParentPay by Thursday 30th November. Tickets will not be issued after this time. If you need a login reminder for your ParentPay account please contact Finance. There will be food available from the new canteen at lunchtime on all these days if students would like to purchase lunch.

We have a new leader topping the board this week! Turing are now in first place with 7,087 house points overall. Newton are second with 6,895 points and Austen third with 6,884.  Well done this week to Dave T (7T), Elizabeth B-C (8A) Evia O (8T), Kay W (7A) Liffey L (8A) Evelyn L (8A) and Lily H (8A) who all gained over 12 points this week and to Turing house for gaining the most points this week overall.

 A reminder of our upcoming charity weeks:

• Fawcett & Hepworth are on the week commencing 27th November
• Johnson & Newton w/c 5th February
• Shakespeare & Turing w/c 18th March. 

As mentioned previously in the Sandprint, there are two excellent services which parents and students can access for support with their mental health and well-being.

First Steps (who work closely with CAMHS, ED and NHS links to support young people who are struggling with eating difficulties, disorders, low self-esteem and poor body image) provide an excellent variety of resources. They have recently received funding for the Hertfordshire area and can offer free support to any students who may have struggles around their eating or low self-esteem. Young people can either self-refer or can be referred by someone else through their website www.firststepsed.co.uk. This is an excellent service for those experiencing difficulties, so if you would like to find out more, please visit the website or speak to Mrs Coyne in the SLA.

The Sandbox by Mindler is also an excellent free, NHS funded service to support children and young people in Herts with their mental health and well being. It offers access to internet enabled Cognitive Behavioural therapy, one to one support from professional therapist by texts, phone, online chat or video calls. Signing up is easy and doesn’t require a referral from a professional. You can visit The Sandbox website or click here to find out more details.

There are events and times in the school year where we require the use of a BSL interpreter. If you are able to support with some interpreting over the course of the academic year, please contact admin@sandringham.aat.school for the attention of Athena Pitsillis. We are currently in need of support for our Into the Sixth evening on Thursday 11th January.

If you are looking to learn British Sign Language, we can also recommend an excellent course starting in January at Heathlands School. Please see the flyer below or email bsl@heathlands.herts.sch.uk for more details.

Do you Parkrun? Staff and students can earn points for their house every time they walk, run or volunteer at a parkrun or junior parkrun. Simply complete this Google Form, by 5pm on the Sunday of your parkrun weekend for it to count. Time and position are not important, participation is how you earn points, so why not encourage as many friends and family to join you. 

• Our local parkrun (Saturday 9am) is Jersey Farm, details found here. 5k.

• Our local junior parkrun (Sunday 9am) is Verulamium, details found here. 2k. 

If you’ve never taken part before you will need a parkrun barcode. How to register and further details can be found here. 

Feel free to add details of your participation from previous events, dating back to the start of this academic year (2nd September). We look forward to seeing some of you at one of the various parkrun events soon!

Families who ordered the whole school photograph to school should have received and email saying that their order is ready to collect from Main Reception. Please come at a convenient time during the school day to sign for your order. If you have not placed an order yet, you can still do so here https://htmp.st/261351-32WSGand6THFORM. If you need any assistance in ordering your photos, feel free to contact Tempest on 01736 751555 (option 3).

For individual photographs for Years 8-11- when orders placed to school arrive, we will allocate to form tutors to give out to students. If you have not yet placed an order, you can do so with VanCols up until the  22nd November 2023 to get free delivery to school. After this date, you can still order photos at an additional postage cost. Please go to  www.getphotos.co.uk to place your order. If you do not have the code for your child, please email the admin address and we can provide the code for you 

We are so proud of everyone who is taking part in the Whole School Show. It has been a huge success so far and we are delighted with how our performers are giving it their absolute all on stage. Our backstage and technicians have been absolute superstars as well and the musicians are making it a show to remember. We are now sold out for Saturday night but there are still a few tickets left for tonight (Friday) and the Saturday matinee. Here are a few photos of the cast in action and a thank you from the Year 6 students at Skyswood who came to see the show this week. More official photos to come! 

Thank you so much for inviting us to the Little Shop of Horrors show. We really enjoyed it and appreciated the work that you put into this! It inspired those of us who are going to Sandringham to join in next year! We were blown away with your singing, acting and dancing. We were entertained throughout the whole production. We particularly enjoyed watching and listening to the amazing plant. We are super happy with what we saw. We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to be able to watch your amazing performance. We can’t wait to see more brilliant shows. The set was incredible, it really blew us away. We hope you will carry on with making these masterpieces. Yours sincerely, From Skyswood Year 6!

This week’s whole school theme is Politics Week. Political awareness is often defined as: ''the extent to which an individual pays attention to politics and understands what he or she has encountered '' (Zaller 1992, 21). The students received an excellent assembly from History teacher, Ms Edwards, who got students to reflect on whether there is enough political engagement in the younger generation, and whether it would be better if we had more younger people in positions of power. We hope this experience has encouraged our students to be more engaged in politics and to pursue opportunities to get involved and have their voices heard.

The MFL team are delighted to introduce a new Spanish Club for Year 7 students on Wednesday lunchtimes. More details are in the picture above. We look forward to seeing you there!

We are currently looking for an ITT Administrator for the Alban Teaching School Hub, an Assistant Operations Manager, a Teaching Assistant and Exam Invigilators to work at our fantastic school.

Please share with friends who may be interested. More information is available on our website https://sandringham.herts.sch.uk/vacancies/

We are delighted to include a few cast interviews from our amazing Whole School Show again this week. We hope it inspires others to come and see the show itself or join some of our fantastic Drama clubs here at Sandringham.

Dillon B: This experience has been mixed with lots of hard work and excitement, I love having the opportunity to interact with all the amazing cast members and crew. Playing the dentist is a challenge but I've also fallen in love with this role as it has pushed me to the limits and even opened my eyes up for the singing opportunities I have never had before. We are experimenting with puppetry, dancing, singing and all the amazing acting skills- it has been a real learning curve and such a fulfilling journey. I cannot wait to show the final product of this fantastic show !

Sara E- Year 9: The most enjoyable thing about the show is the rehearsals as during numbers you get to know new people who have similar interests and work in an environment that you love and enjoy ! In my skills I have definitely improved my initiative as in numbers you have to act all the time and I’ve now learnt how to do that automatically .  I have been working on a few numbers such as The Meek Shall Inherit, Suddenly Seymour, Skid Row (Downtown) and the Opening and the Finale . These are all amazing numbers that I am very happy to be a part of . It has been a really amazing experience to be in and I can’t wait till we perform !  

Chelsea L: I think I've definitely improved in my stage presence working on this show, I feel much more confident on stage (even if it's just acting in the background), it gives me a sense of joy whenever I am on stage. In the rehearsals, I got picked to be in an extra number aside from the ones the Junior Ensemble are in which I was very delighted to hear about. We have been rehearsing and perfecting each song and number, also running through the whole play countless times and I can't wait to perform in front of an audience.

This week, we are delighted to feature Jamie B in 13AU in our Student Spotlight, ahead of the Southern Trials to become part of the squad for the Team GB Under 19 American Football Squad this weekend. Jamie began playing for the Herts Cheetahs over 5 years ago starting out with the non contact Flag Football team before progressing to full contact American Football for the Herts Cheetahs in 2021. He has just started training for his 3rd Season with the team based in Watford and is really enjoying the experience.

He plays Centre position as an Offensive Linesman, starting each play with the football and “snapping” it to the QuarterBack who then will run, pass or throw the football to progress the ball downfield.  Once Jamie has snapped the ball it is his job to defend the QB by blocking and stopping the opposing teams Defensive Linesman who will be trying to tackle the QB.

We wish him all the best in his upcoming trials and look forward to hearing about his continuing successes in the sport. 

Thank you for all of your donations to Children in Need so far. If you would still like to donate to via ParentPay, the link to do so is here. 

There is still time to sign up for help with the Fo$S Christmas Fair on 2nd December 11am - 3pm at Sandringham School.

Volunteers: Fo$S always appreciate anyone who can volunteer to help us out on the day. They need volunteers to help cook, serve food and drinks, run the tombola, plus help clear up afterwards.  If you can spare an hour or more of your time please sign up here.

Donations for Tombola & Raffle: Donations of sweets, chocolates or drinks would be very gratefully received.  You can either drop off your donations to the main reception (please note: if donating alcoholic drinks they must be brought in by an adult), or donate to our tombola money pool and Fo$S will purchase items to go on the tombola. Link here.

We were proud to see ex Sandringham student @hopemusicuk on The Voice recently on team Olly Murs. A fantastic pianist, composer, and singer. We will be cheering you all the way Hope! Amazing work.

We have some budding entrepreneurs in our midst! The students from the Year 9 module, Pitch Perfect, spent the last 8 weeks developing a business idea to “pitch” to their classmates. This involved the students undertaking market research to determine the feasibility of the idea, designing a logo, working out a budget, and developing promotional strategies. We had some ingenious ideas including; Glues Gone, which removed glue from anything; ThermoPack, a portable lunch bag that could keep food hot or cold; and Jerk Shack, a food shop selling chicken flavoured with a secret sauce. Congratulations to all the students for their creativity in the projects. And well done to the two winning groups (as voted by the class): Alex M and Ethan C, and Etienne A and Rafael M.

The Puzzle of the Week is a Mathematics challenge run weekly. This week's puzzle is shown above. For every entry you will receive 1 house point, if you answer correctly you will win 2 house points and if you are the fastest person to answer the puzzle correctly then you will win 5 house points!  To enter, simply scan the QR code and fill out the google form.  Good luck! Why not play at home and see who is the quickest to get the answer?

Well done to all involved in Y7&8 house netball- a golden goal final between Turing and Elgar to fight for 1st place with Turing taking the win! Lovely to see our Y7&8 bonding as a house team.

Results were as follows: 1st - Turing 2nd - Elgar 3rd - Shakespeare 4th - Austen 5th - Newton 6th - Fawcett 7th - Johnson 8th - Hepworth

An excellent turnout for the rugby as well with the results for Year 7: 1st Johnson 2nd- Elgar 3rd - Newton

and for Year 8: 1st- Austen 2nd- Turing 3rd - Elgar

FRENCH: Le mot de la semaine: La juridiction

GERMAN: Das Wort der Woche: Die Zuständigkeit

SPANISH: La palabra de la semana: jurisdicción

Thinking Question:

• How does a language reflect a culture?

Ana Dakkar is a student at Harding-Pencroft Academy, a five-year high school that graduates the best marine scientists, naval warriors, navigators, and underwater explorers in the world. Everything changes for Ana when, along with her schoolmates, she witnesses a terrible tragedy. The professor accompanying them informs Ana that their rival school, Land Institute, and Harding-Pencroft have been fighting a cold war for a hundred and fifty years. But now the heat is on and the students are in danger of becoming fish food. Nathan W 7T who has recently read the book says ‘I really enjoyed how the book linked to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and how the author described the submarine. This book is great in so many ways. I would rate it five star.’

J is for… Jurisdiction [noun]

Definition: The authority of a court or official organisation to make decisions and judgements

Example: The court has jurisdiction over most criminal offences.

Synonyms: Authority, Control, Power

Antonyms: Powerlessness, Incapacity

Etymology: From the Latin ‘juris’ meaning law and ‘dictio’ meaning declaration.

Well done to the U15’s who beat St Eds 43-20 in the quarter final of the Netball County Cup OP - Katie J, PP - Bea T, CP - Pearl M. Through to the semi finals now. Amazing work team.

The Y10 basketball team were involved in an excellent game this week, unfortunately narrowly missing out by 5 points to SCC. Plenty of positives and lots to build on for the rest of the season

Last Saturday, our Year 7, 8 and 9 boys took on Verulam for a chilly and early start. Our Year 7s put in a strong performance to beat Verulam 9-4. Some great individual performances with Harry Y as MOM. Our Year 8s also had a really close game with Verulam coming out the eventual winners. Some great tries scored by both sides, with the final score being 9-7. Notable performances from Lewis S and Jim S. Well done to all who played!

Please see above for the upcoming fixtures for the next two weeks

Well done to our amazing cross country team who had a brilliant run last Saturday. A superb effort from all runners and we are delighted to say that our Inter boys have QUALIFIED for the national cross country final on December 2nd. Their 3rd place finish at the regionals was enough to see them through. Amazing work! Pictured here are all of our squads and the results were as follows:

• Junior boys - 7th
• Junior girls - 15th
• Inter boys - 3rd
• Senior boys - 7th
• Senior girls - 4th

Congratulations to the students pictured above who took part in the Regional Tennis finals last week. Both pairs won their doubles matches to beat Bedes school 10-2. A great effort making them third in the region

Congratulations also to Marelie R on her ITF J100 doubles win in Cyprus. An amazing achievement, well done

Sandringham School's Music Faculty present a traditional service of lessons and carols, taking place in St Saviour's Church in Marshalswick on Wednesday 13th December at 7pm.

Tickets are on sale here and cost £4-£5

The critically acclaimed creative team that brought you ‘Hansel & Gretel’ are back with more fun-fuelled pantomime madness; a joyful new twist on another old story, it’s not to be missed. Rapunzel saves the day (and herself!) in this action packed, magical musical pantomime adventure. Let down your hair with a cast of kooky characters as they dance and sing through this unusual, tangled tale; where people live in giant old boots and tall towers, where frog boys rap about enchanted ponds and girls with long hair battle more than split ends! Tickets cost £10-£17.50 and you can buy them here.