You know it is Christmas when our Early Years and Key Stage 1 students are practising for their Christmas Extravaganza, coupled with our Winter Concert where our older students perform.Ìý It is normally a highlight of the year when they showcase their hard work in the school hall which was scheduled for next week.Ìý You can view both the Extravaganza and the Winter Concert (renamed ‘virtually for you’) in the comfort of your own home this year and don’t need to struggle for space in the hall to get a recording on your phone!Ìý Click below to get into the Christmas spirit. We also have the Christmas Bedtime Stories on Monday with some very special guest narrators so please join us if you can.
We have seen many families and students on campus this week.Ìý It has been great to see new students meeting their buddies, the library being utilized and even some of our PE examination students being put through their paces on the astro.Ìý I will be writing to all parents on Monday with regard to the next steps in ensuring a safe return to campus.
Instead of celebrating Christmas with our community partners with traditional gifts, we are providing vital supplies that will enable a safe return for their students. Next week, we have our first Community Partners meeting which will include students from both sections of the school, working with our leadership team in steering the future direction of these important partnerships. Our student leaders will provide updates in due course and you can read more about some of their other initiatives below. If you keep reading, you will also see how much is still being achieved by our wonderful students right the way across all keys stages.ÌýÌý
Have a lovely weekend and please stay safe.Ìý
Brian Platts
Principal
Recent and future updates
Library Booking
The Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ library is a great resource, which we are sure our community has been missing during recent lockdowns. We are aiming to offer families the opportunity to access library resources in the safest way possible over the next few weeks. The library will only be accessible by prior booking and those visiting must adhere to our safety protocols.
Early Years & Key Stage 1 Christmas Extravaganza
Our youngest students have been working very hard to prepare a special Christmas Show for you.
We hope you will all enjoy our Early Years and Key Stage 1 Christmas Extravaganza!Ìý
Click on the link to watch the Show!
Winter Concert (renamed ‘virtually for you’)
Our older students have been working very hard to prepare a special virtual winter concert for you.
We hope you will all enjoy our Winter Concert (renamed ‘virtually for you’)!Ìý
Click on the link to watch the Show!
News from our Student Leadership
Hello Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ! We hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are ready to take this week head on. Things are seeming to get back to normal sooner than expected with the first official person in the world to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine outside trial conditions. This is great news, we will be back to eating our favourite chocolate rolls in no time!
Prefect Notices – Recently the prefects have been allocated to Key Stage 3 and 4 mentor groups to provide students with the opportunity to voice themselves. This is an open space for students to freely share their views and opinions. The meetings are specifically designed to provide feedback on what has been working well for the students; any concerns they may have and any suggestions or ideas they have to improve existing systems. So far these meetings have been successful and we are looking forward to hearing more from the students.Ìý
Teacher of the Week – This week we were flooded with nominations for the teacher of the week event. We are extremely pleased by the participation and engagement of the primary students with this activity! Keep it up everyone!
Time to break the suspense, this week’s teacher of the week is none other than Mr. Paul! Mr. Paul is extremely kind and understanding towards students. He has an incredible amount of patience and is willing to spend the whole lesson answering students’ questions making sure that no one is left behind. Thank you Mr. Paul for being an amazing teacher!
Fun Challenges – To ourÌý surprise, a lot of you were able to solve last week’s challenge. It’s good to know that you can recognise our teachers easily! Congratulations to Abdul Karim for being the first one to complete the challenge.
For this week’s fun challenge you have to guess the four locations of these photos from school. Hopefully it should be a nice refresher to see the school again.Ìý
Early Years News
The Foundation 1 students are learning about ‘People Who Help Us’. When asked what they want to be when they grow up Bilashita and Lucie said they want to be a doctor and help people get better. Kayleigh wants to be a teacher just like her mom and help children learn.
Foundation 2 learnt th ‘n’ sound this week. They have made silly soup with the ‘n’ sound, forming the letter ‘n’, making a n…n…nurse hat and building a n…n…nest. Aaman and Adira made a beautiful nest!
Key Stage 1 News
The Year 1 students wrote a page for Traction Man’s diary this week. They have been working very hard in Term 1 and 2 to develop their Phonics and Handwriting skills and now they are turning into little writers. They also used their writing skills to make invitations for their Christmas Show and hope you will all enjoy watching the Early Years and Key Stage 1 Christmas Extravaganza today!
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This week Year 2 have been researching Christmas traditions like presents, trees, cards and the colours of Christmas, and presenting it any way they liked. Have a look at Brihit’s, Trishaanee’s and Renee’s fabulous projects! In English, the students have been innovating their class text. ‘I will never not ever not eat a tomato’. Manya had lots of innovative ideas to change the characters and foods in the story.
Lower Key Stage 2 News
As part of their Temples, Tombs and Treasures topic, Year 3 have been researching the life of King Tutankhamun, a famous Egyptian pharaoh. They used colour, pictures and amazing facts to create fact files and posters.
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The German whizzes in Year 4 have combined their shape knowledge with the festive season and designed some incredible gingerbread houses.
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Upper Key Stage 2 News
As we draw close to the end of our second term, Year 5 and 6 have been busy reflecting on all they have learned over the last fifteen weeks, finding their strengths and identifying areas to focus on as we move into Term 3. It has been impressive to see the fruits of everyone’s hard work.Ìý
In their PSHE sessions over the last two weeks, Year 6 have been ‘opening’ their Wellbeing Advent calendars – I have particularly enjoyed seeing the melt of Snowmen of Gratitude that have been built!Ìý
Last week, we saw Year 5 planning their Ancient Greek and Roman buildings. This week, construction is well under way, with students putting into practice all they have learned about different methods for joining cardboard – and not too much sellotape to be seen!Ìý
Key Stage 3 News
As we come into the penultimate week before the christmas break, Key Stage 3 have shown no signs of letting up on the quality of work that is being produced. We have been online for such an extended period of time now, but Key Stage 3 are continuing to excel across all of their subjects. I am running out of superlatives for these children, but they should be extremely proud of their resilience and efforts to continue to learn. It has been extremely tough and everyone has had their bad days, but your success over these months has shown how great of a key stage you really are.Ìý
In PSHE, the students were tasked with looking into Mental Health. It has been such an important thing to take it into account over the online period for not only the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ community, but everyone around the world. The students were tasked with reading an article about how different famous authors used a range of strategies to cope with their mental health over the lockdown period. They were then tasked with creating a spider diagram outlining these different strategies that they could use moving forward.
Once again, the students in Key stage Three have been showing off their musical talents. The Year 8’s have been continuing to work on their Nepali Folk song or Raga Music. It is very exciting that we will be able to hear all of the finished products in the coming weeks.Ìý
In Year 7, they continued their study of Indonesian Gamelan Music. They have been finishing off their projects telling the story of Jack and better & Yak and Yeti.Ìý
In Year 9 Math’s, the students have been looking at areas. They have been looking at different flags and working out the area of the different colours inside the flags. It is great to see the students getting the benefits of cross curricular links, with Maths and Geography combining.
In Year 8 Drama, the students finished off their module on puppetry by completing a performance for the teachers. It was great to see some of the performances and how creative the students can be when it comes to the performing arts.
Our Student of the week is Maya in Year 7. Maya was tasked in art to do a freehand drawing of a Mexican doll. She was instructed not to use any tracing paper or gridding to help her. Her end product was absolutely fantastic. She used excellent graphite shading to really accentuate the different features the doll had. It is an incredible piece of work and really deserves all the praise. Well done to this budding artist in the making.
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Key Stage 4 News
While it may be the penultimate week of this term, this has not dampened the enthusiasm and hard work of our KS4 students.ÌýÌý
The Year 11s have been preparing for their mock examinations, and concerns have been shared by KS4 students about the planned reopening of school in January in their meetings with the school’s prefects.Ìý It has been wonderful to see and hear these meetings taking place as the students have been talking to the prefects about their concerns very well, and the prefects have been doing an excellent job of chairing these meetings.Ìý Ms Howell, commented on how professional Jason and Jinny were in the meeting she was in.Ìý With concerns shared, as a school, we can come together collectively to help allay any concerns students may be understandably feeling, especially Year 11 students in the run-up to their mock examinations.
Students have continued to impress this week with a vast array of work.
In Music, students have been learning how best to answer music exam questions using collaborative technology.Ìý Well done, Year 11 Music Class!
Continuing with Year 11 Music, Abayaa is showing us how it’s done with her excellent John Williams’ Star Wars revision and exam style questions!Ìý
Year 10 and 11 Drama students have been working on presenting a scripted monologue for their coursework.Ìý
This week was their examination and students had worked hard improving their performances and responding to the feedback of their teacher and their peers.
In Year 10 Geography, students have been continuing to look at settlement, and this week has seen them considering various land-uses within settlements and urban areas.Ìý Using this knowledge, they were then asked to apply it to Kathmandu, and consider where they thought the Central Business District (CDB) of Kathmandu is. Here are their thoughts.Ìý Where do you think the CBD of KTM is?Ìý It’s perhaps not as easy as you might think!
Students are continuing with the designing of their boat for the America’s Cup.Ìý Recently, students have been working on the materials to be used and the aerodynamics, and are now in the drawing stage for their design.Ìý Watch this space!
In English, Year 11 have been practising their retrieval of key quotations from Twelfth Night with very impressive recall of the context of these as well.Ìý Well done, Year 11!Ìý Which is your favourite quote?
This week’s student of the week is Shastraveer in Year 11.
Shastraveer has been working hard since the beginning of the year, and all of his teachers are impressed by his mature and hard-working attitude.Ìý Indeed, there has not been one negative comment about Shastraveer for the whole school year so far!Ìý Well done, Shastraveer, and keep up the excellent work!ÌýÌý
Here is what he has to say:
My advice for other students would be to stop worrying about the things that are out of our control, but instead try to do the best we can with what we have at our disposal. I understand that it can be very hard to feel motivated with such a monotonous atmosphere and we must accept the fact that we cannot change our situation. Although we are not able to change our current circumstance, we can change our mindset and how we choose to live our lives. Any situation can be made better by having a positive attitude. Waking up everyday and feeling like you’re stuck in the same place can be heartbreaking and demotivating at times. However, you must always take everything one step at a time and believe that hard work can and will lead you towards the right direction and to greater happiness..
Wise words from Shastraveer!
I look forward to seeing what the final week of this term brings!
Key Stage 5 News
HighlightsÌý
Congratulations to the following students for their achievements this week:Ìý
Roisin, Ishika and Jinny for their consistently positive engagement inÌý English literature lessons, insightful and productive contributions to discussion and analysis. Their work is always completed to a high standard and shows positive progress.Ìý
Mr Piaf was really impressed with Devasri and Didi this week when they spotted a mistake with terminology used in Psychology. They showed tremendous understanding as well as dedication to their own learning and that of their classmates.Ìý
University ApplicationsÌý
Reminder for all students to share their most recent plans with their mentors and arrange 1:1s if they have any questions.Ìý
Mariya has been nominated for her conscientious attitude to her studies and for always chasing up any questions she has, her work is always handed in on time and she asks further questions to deepen her understanding.
My advice to other students would be to keep challenging themselves and to never give up even when things don’t really seem to be working out sometimesÌý because every effort you put in and every challenge you take will eventually lead to success.