SENIOR
ISSUE 7 • SPRING 2021
Perfecting Puppetry PAGE 3
stedwards.co.uk
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE...
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Live Dissection for Year 8
Developing Partnerships
Crafting with Clay
Novelty Sporting Challenge
St Edward’s Senior & Sixth Form, Cirencester Road, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL53 8EY T:01242 388555 E:reception@stedwards.co.uk
With Spring comes a sense of rejuvenation, a feeling of freshness and positivity about what is to come. As COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift, we are once again able to look forward and make plans for the future. At the same time we are mindful that we have learnt many important lessons over the course of the past year, developed new skills and perhaps we now each look at life in a different way to how we did before the periods of lockdown. One of the things I am most proud of is that throughout all of this, our students have demonstrated a desire and enthusiasm to make their voices heard. And it is our job as educators to help facilitate that and encourage them all to be a part of the conversation. An example of this is through our membership of the Cheltenham Education Partnership (CEP), an organisation which seeks to expand the horizons of young people in Cheltenham and help them realise their full potential. You can read all about one of their current projects ‘Manifesto for Change’ on page S7. The involvement of our students in projects such as this allows them to see that they have an important contribution to make and that their ideas and opinions really do matter. We will seek to continue to find ways in which our students can use their voices for good throughout their time in School and beyond. Providing young people with opportunities, such as the ones you can read about in this edition of ‘Term Times’, which will enable them to develop their self-confidence and increase self-belief in their own capabilities – all of which will lead to success in the future.
Mr M Burke Headmaster
DATES FOR THE DIARY Summer Term 2021 Term Starts: Thursday 22nd April May Day Bank Holiday: Monday 3rd May Half-term: Monday 31st May – Friday 4th June Term Ends: Friday 2nd July, 12pm
Social Media links For all the very latest from the Senior School & Sixth Form please follow us on Twitter: • @StEdwards_Chelt • @SportStEds – for news of our sporting activities • @StEdSenior_Head And on Instagram: • stedwardscheltenham • sportstedwards You can also like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/ StEdwardsSchoolCheltenham
Ready ‘StEdward’s’ Cook! Our School Caterers, Holroyd Howe, threw down the gauntlet for a ‘Ready Steady Cook’ style challenge in March, involving both our Senior and Prep School Chefs, Tony Berry and Alan Smith, along with our Senior School Headmaster Mr Burke. Each contestant was presented with a mystery bag of ingredients and asked to produce a ‘fine dining’ style dish. As well as their main items of food, each cook also had access to a store cupboard of ingredients to help them build their dishes. The challenge highlighted the importance of the responsibility that schools have to plan and prepare nutritious and well-balanced meals for students, in order to provide them with the fuel and nutrients they need to learn and grow. Joining us on the day were three members of the Holroyd Howe Team – Ross Gulley (Operations Manager), Damien Blake (Company Executive Chef) and Glen Banks (Regional Chef Manager, South West/South Wales) – who, as well as setting the challenge, gave us some insights into what you have to take into consideration when designing menus and preparing food for schools.
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The final dishes were judged by a panel of teaching colleagues, who marked each plate of food on its taste and presentation. Congratulations to Mr Burke whose dish of salmon, with cous cous and vegetables was selected as the winning plate of food.
TESTING FOR CARBONATE IONS For their first practical Science lesson following the return to the school site, our Year 11 IGCSE Chemists thoroughly embraced the opportunity to don their safety specs and get stuck into an experiment. Their task was to carry out chemical testing on unknown substances, specifically looking for the presence of negatively charged carbonate ions. It was really fantastic to see our students back in the Labs and engaging with hands-on Science.
Perfecting Puppetry This term, Year 8 have been studying puppetry in Drama, starting online at home and continuing in person following the return to onsite learning in the Studio. The students worked collaboratively to create large paper puppets, inspired by Japanese ‘Bunraku’ puppetry. The biggest challenge was working together to bring the puppet to life and get it moving, incorporating small movements to add authenticity. The final element to the project was to write a monologue for each puppet. These were inspired by lockdown experiences, based on the students themselves, a famous person or someone they knew.
This helped the students to reflect on the past year and the ways in which the pandemic has affected people in different ways. Year 8 also reflected on how they used High Performance Learning Behaviours in this topic recognising the importance of resilience; ‘We kept trying when we found it hard to control our puppet’, risk-taking and confidence; ‘We have tried new ideas and taken risks with what to do’, ‘We performed our puppet pieces, even when we were worried they would go wrong or be embarrassing. We all had to be confident.’
A MINI CHAMBER ORCHESTRA With COVID-19 restrictions putting Choir Practice on hold, some of our Year 7 instrumentalists took the opportunity to form a small Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Mr Higginson. Over the term they were very busy learning Tchaikovsky’s ‘Russian Dance’ (Trepak) and ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ from his famous ‘Nutcracker Suite’. We look forward to their performance in the Summer Term.
Examining Monetary Policy CELEBRATING WORLD BOOK DAY In March, our Lower Sixth Economists put themselves into the shoes of The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee as they took on the challenge of delivering presentations about the economy and how best to face the challenges created by the world-wide pandemic.
Areas covered included interest rates, quantitative easing projections and the state of the labour market, and the components of aggregate demand. Their audience for the event were Upper Sixth Economics students who could understand the economics and pose challenging questions to them including: • Do high interest rates cause high levels of inflation, or is it vice versa? • Does a high level of investment (gross domestic fixed capital formation) cause higher growth, or is it vice versa?
Their discussions incorporated a range of different economic concepts such as the difference between correlation and causation, and multipliers. Our Upper Sixth Economists scored their Lower Sixth peers on their presentations, which resulted in an average score of 8 out of 10, along with the recognition that the economics used by the Lower Sixth in their analyses was extremely strong. Well done, Lower Sixth!
This year’s World Book Day House Competition challenged students to match a teacher with a book. Members of staff each chose a book and displayed it in some way at some point in their lessons during the day. Some teachers brandished their books and talked about them at length, others merely made sure that the book made a brief and silent appearance. Books chosen ranged from ‘Gordon, the Big Engine’ by the Revd. W. Awdry to ‘A Promised Land’ by Barack Obama. Points were scored for spotting the book in the first place – and then book token prizes were on offer for interesting explanations of the relationship between the book and the teacher. The three Houses ran neck and neck throughout the day, with Fisher (136 points) just squeezing past More and Newman (both 133 points) in the final reckoning. Well done Fisher!
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STATISTOPIA! This term, Mathematicians in Years 7 to 9 took part in a project which enabled them to recognise the links between real-life maths and decisions that are made on government spending. They analysed Census data for the fictitious island of ‘Statistopia’, to determine the need for Primary Schools across the 5 regions of the island and also assessed housing requirements. Some of them put compelling cases to the Education Minister for additional money to be spent in their region on building new Primary Schools. They also considered other options such as having larger class sizes, using temporary classrooms and busing children to other regions. Others, having secured funding from the housing minister, began negotiations with housebuilders to determine the percentage of different home types needed to house the residents in their region. They considered building housing estates at the border between regions so they could share the cost of providing utilities including water, electricity and internet.
MIXING MUSIC WITH WELL-BEING It has been proven that spending time in nature can improve mood and well-being, but not everyone has easy access to the natural world. In February, students in Years 8 and 9 explored what a soundscape was in their Music lessons and created their own imaginative journey, through sound, to escape aurally around the world. The students came up with some intriguing titles for their final pieces including ‘Underwater Jungle’ and ‘Paradise of Peace’.
NATIONAL DAY OF REFLECTION Tuesday 23rd March was a very special day – bringing people from all backgrounds, communities, and all parts of the UK together, to reflect on the tragic loss of life we’ve all felt over the last year and support all those who are grieving. To mark the occasion at St Edward’s, students and staff were invited to add daffodil cards to a ‘Tree of Reflection’, on which they wrote reflections about the people they have been missing during the pandemic.
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Live Dissection for Year 8 Whilst it is possible to gain a good understanding of the function of human organs from diagrams and discussion, nothing quite solidifies these concepts quite like a live dissection. The link between structure and function can be excellently demonstrated using real organs, and the lungs in particular offer some very unique tissue structures to explore.
Year 8 were full of anticipation in late March when they observed Mrs Fowler-Roberts dissect a lung in one of their Science lessons. As Mrs FowlerRoberts identified each of the notable structures present in the ‘pluck’ (several organs intact with each other), the students were asked to recall the way in which the parts of the respiratory system function, including the trachea, diaphragm, heart and of course, the lungs themselves. After investigating the functionality, each student was
given the opportunity to inflate the lungs using a hand pump – something which they each found fascinating. The students greatly enjoyed this interactive experience, and a range of High Performance Learning (HPL) Behaviours for Learning were in evidence, including working with curiosity and demonstrating interest in the subject.
ESU Churchill Public Speaking Competition The English-Speaking Union (ESU), Churchill Public Speaking Competition took place virtually this term, with St Edward’s hosting the West Regional event. We were delighted that the St Edward’s Team One were one of the Teams who made it through the Heats to the Regional Final with our very own Sophie E (Year 11), Speaker for St Edward’s Team One, being awarded the Best Speaker Prize - for the second year running. Her topic was ‘Women must not accept; they must challenge’ a quote by Margaret Sanger. Rachel S (Year 11), as Questioner was superb and Zoe G (Year 11), in her first competition, also rose to the challenge. St Edward’s Team Two, consisting of Sam H (Year 11), Sam S (Year 11) and Shaniqua M (Year 11); were all new to the competition and showed great potential. The Regional Final took place towards the end of term and the St Edward’s Team were speaking on the topic, ‘Should Cannabis be legalised’. The girls all performed well and emerged as Runners Up when all the Teams had taken part. Sophie E was also once again awarded the prize for Best Speaker – a magnificent achievement. Despite the challenging nature of the event being held online, rather than face-to-face, all of the St Edward’s Team members from the Heats and the Regional Finals are to be heartily congratulated on their commitment, hard work and unfailing good humour.
LOWER SCHOOL SPELLING BEE
A Virtual Trip to Amazon At the beginning of March, our A Level Business and Economics students joined a live virtual tour of three Amazon Fulfilment Centres in the UK. The e-commerce branch of the company has seen a huge uplift in sales during the pandemic causing their fulfilment centres to be busier than ever - the perfect time to (virtually) visit and find out how these world leaders manage to maintain efficiency during these times. During the question and answer session at the end of the tour, St Edward’s submitted a question on the gender pay gap and the proportion of women in the centre’s leadership team. We were very pleased that the presenters engaged so positively with this question, with impressive facts on the subject and even a reference to International Women’s Day which was taking place the following week. The students were impressed with how wellinformed and varied in approach the presenters were, engaging with the delegates’ questions as the tour progressed.
The students were excited to hear about the new ‘Amazon Fresh’ store in West London. A till-less grocery store, the shop uses hundreds of cameras and sensors to feed information to state-of-theart software, developed using deep-learning artificial intelligence techniques. This monitors the products picked up by customers and charges them via an app when they exit the store. Our students were fascinated by the concept and discussed the huge implications for the future of the way businesses operate, a sign of a more robotic world to come.
Developing Partnerships At the Senior School we relish the opportunity of forming links with local Primary and Prep Schools, where we can collaborate and share expertise and facilities with the aim of benefitting students at all of the schools involved. In our partnerships this term, we worked around social distancing restrictions when our specialist teachers in Drama and Biology shared their expertise with two local schools, delivering workshops via Zoom.
Our new Head of Drama, Mrs Monk, got stuck into delivering a workshop to Kitebrook Prep School in Moreton-In-Marsh. The session was titled ‘Using your voice and being a more confident speaker’ which was really well received, with the Kitebrook pupils engaging exuberantly with the activities. The group started with some breathing exercises – engaging their core and extending their breaths by counting, before adding movement. They then used vocal exercises to practise their pronunciation and projection. To round off the session the pupils were asked to stand opposite each other at a 2m distance and explain what they had done in the morning, projecting their voices and making sure that they pronounced each word nice and clearly. In our second session, Mrs Fowler-Roberts demonstrated the dissection of a pig’s heart for the Year 6 children of Christchurch Primary School. The Christchurch pupils had been learning about the circulatory system in their recent Science lessons and were fascinated to see the inside of the organ ‘in real life’.
The Lower School Spelling Bee has been a staple of the Spring calendar at St Edward’s for a number of years, with More House winning the competition a record five times out of the previous eight! Towards the end of term, following initial heats, 18 eager finalists were challenged to spell aloud, as many words as the time allowed. Contestants from Newman took the floor first, followed by Fisher and then More, until several rounds were complete. Contestants gained points for their House for each correctly spelt word. An event full of high drama, the ‘spell-off’ resulted in Newman House winning the competition with a total of 28 points, closely followed by Fisher with 24 points and More with 22 points. We look forward to seeing whether Newman can retain their crown when the event returns in 2022!
EXPERIMENTING WITH… CABBAGE! Year 7 took part in a very interesting, if rather pongy, experiment in their Chemistry lessons this term when they made their own indicator fluid out of red cabbage leaves, simply by extracting the fluid. The lesson was part of their studies into the pH scale. The students were provided with a coloured pH scale that related to their cabbage fluid indicator. They added drops of the substances they were testing to their home-made indicator and compared the resulting colour to the pH scale provided. They were then able to use this information to assess the pH of the substance under test.
YEAR 9 PHILOSOPHY Since the start of the academic year, all Year 9 students have been taking part in a weekly philosophy lesson. Delivered by the Headmaster, Mr Burke, the students have studied key figures from Greek philosophy and taken part in a range of activities including groups presenting a citation for the teenager who they think has been the most influential in recent years and a project on the ‘Fairtrade’ certification scheme, evaluating how fair it actually is for the producers and suppliers involved.
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MEET
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Mrs Leanne Huxtable, Pastoral And Achievement Co-ordinator
What is your role within the School? I love my role at St Edward’s. I support students, parents and staff alike. As a non-teaching member of staff, I am accessible to everyone and can react quickly to any concerns. Whether a student needs help with friendships, revision techniques or emotional support, my door is always open. I am privileged to be one of the first staff to meet the new cohort into the Senior School and visit every single one so that they have a face they will recognise on their first day. What did you do before working at St Edward’s? I worked at Cirencester Kingshill School for 10 years. I held many roles during this time and the experience I gained there is brought together nicely under the same umbrella here at St Edward’s. What would you say is the most interesting part of your day-to-day work? The students are the most interesting part of my role and getting to know them individually is wonderful. Every day is very different, and I love the odd ‘curve ball’ which children have a habit of throwing. What activities do you enjoy in your spare time? My family and dog are my world! I have a 20-yearold daughter and a 16-year-old son, and I love spending time with them. When I have spare time, I enjoy playing golf. I hasten to add that I am not very good, but it gives me a lot of enjoyment. Who, or what, would you say has most inspired you in life? Probably a cliché, but I would have to say my mother. She is the kindest, most loving and patient person I know. Tell us one activity that is on your ‘Bucket List’ Top of my Bucket List at the moment is travelling to Norway to see the Aurora Borealis. Finally, the best thing about working at St Edward’s is... The people and the community. We have amazing students who in turn have incredibly supportive parents. The staff team are welcoming and fun to be around. Finally, the environment, the grounds are just beautiful! S6
Exercise CCF Recharge After several months of being unable to hold our weekly Combined Cadet Force (CCF) training sessions, it was difficult to tell who was more excited about the return of CCF following our return to face-to-face learning; the staff or the students! During their first session, and in Year Group bubbles, the Cadets completed five teamwork challenges, testing their memory, spatial awareness, accuracy and communication skills: • Operation Eye in the Sky – Teams were given the opportunity to learn how to fly a drone over the rugby pitches, with a final test seeing them attempt to land the craft accurately on the pitch side-line. • Skill at Arms – A race against the clock, where each member of the team fitted their rifle sling and loaded and un-loaded their magazine with drill rounds.
Crafting with Clay In their Art lessons this term Year 9 became sculptors when they created their very own models of human heads using clay. They experimented with different techniques to add the detail and incorporate as many accurate facial features as possible into their work.
• Command Task (Stepping Stones) – Each team was presented with a 10 x 10 grid and asked to cross from one side to the other. Without talking, they had to find the correct path over the grid, avoiding the unmarked ‘trap’ squares. • The Game (as it’s known in CCF) – The Cadets had to tie a Highwayman’s Hitch, in a race against each other. This exercise in particular was hugely competitive and great fun. • Operation Rescue – Cadets were challenged to move a weighted stretcher over and under multiple 3ft fences, through a 30ft tunnel (containing a few surprises), and a 50-metre dash to the end. Leadership, teamwork and determination were just some of the skills that were well and truly tested! The activities were a great way to welcome the Cadets back to training and ensure that everyone was really looking forward to getting back into the routine of the weekly Parade.
Changemakers LINGUISTICS OLYMPIAD SUCCESS!
At St Edward’s, we are very proud to be part of the Cheltenham Education Partnership (CEP) an equal partnership of secondary schools (from both the maintained and Independent sectors) and local organisations and charities. The driving ambition of the Partnership is to expand the horizons of young people in Cheltenham and to help them realise their full potential. One of the CEP projects our students are currently participating in is called ‘Manifesto for Change’, where groups of students from member schools are considering ‘How should education change in response to lessons learned from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic?’ Representatives from each participating school are in the process of carrying out research, following which there will be an opportunity for them to engage in debate with other participants prior to the manifesto being produced.
of ‘Cleverlands: The secrets behind the success of the world’s education super powers’. The book follows one teacher’s journey (Lucy herself) across five high performing education systems in Finland, Singapore, Shanghai and Canada. The students had the chance to pose questions to Lucy, such as ‘What factors do you think Shanghai students benefited from having either home or in-school environments?’ and ‘What do you think the primary purpose of education should be?’
This term our dedicated group of St Edward’s ‘Changemakers’ have been meeting regularly and, at one of their sessions, had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Lucy Crehan the writer
As well as being able to pose their own questions to the author, the group also benefitted from discussions started by questions posed by students from other schools at the workshop.
Once Upon a Time
Our GCSE Language students impressed at the UK National Linguistics Olympiad in March. Now in its eleventh year, the Olympiad engages thousands of students in 2-3 hours of ‘code-breaking’ using linguistic data to work out how the underlying system in each question works. The competition is a fantastic way to encourage students to examine the patterns and structures of language and exercise their analytical skills - all fantastic examples of High Performance Learning (HPL) objectives! This year’s competition yielded several national successes for St Edward’s students with Hannah L, Mia L and Mia G (all Year 10) gaining Bronze Awards and Annie M (Year 10) earning a Silver Award.
A CELEBRATION OF PI For two weeks in March, students across the Senior School considered the mathematical constant ‘Pi’ and its value within Mathematics in a celebration of Pi Day which takes place annually on 14th March. Activities included Pi Day Dingbats, Buffon’s Needle Challenge, the creation of Pi paperchains, a SumDog Pi Special Competition and The Great Pi Recital Challenge, the overall winner of which was Natasha B (Year 7) who managed to recite to a superbly impressive 78 decimal places.
A CLOSER LOOK AT BLOOD
There is sometimes nothing better than sitting down to enjoy a good story, immersing yourself in the lives of the characters and being whisked away into another world. This has been particularly true over the course of the last year, when books have provided us all with a good opportunity to escape from everything else that is going on in the world. National Storytelling Week, which took place in February, is an event organised by The Society for Storytelling which states that ‘Storytelling is at the root of every art form: we think in story form, make sense of our world in narrative – from something we’ve seen, through last night’s television, to what family and folk stories we remember and retell. Performance storytelling can be a powerful experience, both entertaining and moving. Story is also the traditional medium of communication from generation to generation, a tool for education and therapy.’
The staff at St Edward’s Senior & Sixth Form decided to honour the art of storytelling by taking it upon themselves to record a reading of ‘Mr Stink’ by David Walliams (with permission from the lovely people at HarperCollins Children’s Books). A comfy green chair travelled around the school site, visiting the various departments where members of staff took a seat to read their chapter. As we have not been able to hold our events and activities for Prep and Junior School pupils over the last year, it was a good opportunity for us to say hello and entertain them over the half-term break!
Making, fixing, staining and examining a blood smear is an excellent way to gain confidence and competence in microscopy. Our Lower Sixth Biologists developed their microscopy skills this term when they prepared slides in order to examine samples of horse blood. To improve the visibility of some of the cell types in their samples, the students used Leischman’s stain. To do this, they had to spread their sample very thinly across the slide. Ideally, they were looking to get parts of the slide spread thinly enough so that the sample was just one cell deep. This allows individual cells to be observed and counted. The class then followed several steps, applying different solutions to their slides in order to prepare them for viewing, before examining them under the microscope and taking photos of the results.
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SPORT ST EDWARD’S LIVE WORKOUTS At start of term, whilst we were in lockdown, Sport St Edward’s once again took PE and Games online providing challenging, but enjoyable, live workouts for our students to participate in. As well as being a great way to stay active, the sessions were also very beneficial to the students, providing structure to their fitness training. To kick off the series of sessions the focus for both boys and girls was interval training – a series of high intensity workouts with a rest built into the session.
Spring House Sporting Events The return to School in the second half of term meant that we were in the fortunate position to run House Football, Hockey and Netball competitions across the year groups.
A TRIBUTE TO CAPTAIN SIR TOM MOORE During Senior Games in early February, Mr Foster challenged our pupils to complete 100 down and ups as a tribute to the memory of inspiring Captain Sir Tom Moore who himself managed the feat of 100 laps of his garden in the run up to his 100th birthday. The St Edward’s challenge was intended as a celebration of the amazing achievements of Captain Tom and served as a reminder that seemingly ordinary people can do very special things that make a difference to others.
It was fantastic to see the students once again able to demonstrate an incredible amount of House Spirit and camaraderie, as they competed for points for their Houses. The results of the competitions were as follows: Boys’ House Football • 1st: Newman • 2nd: Fisher • 3rd: More Boys’ House Hockey • 1st: Fisher • =2nd: More and Newman Girls’ House Netball • 1st: Newman • 2nd: Fisher • 3rd: More
Novelty Sporting Challenge for Sixth Form HEALTHY BREAKFASTS ALL ROUND In January, Lower Sixth Sport Science students took part in a live cook-a-long with Mr Wapshott and Mr Foster as part of their study of Diet and Nutrition. The activity saw the students make a healthy breakfast of blueberry-packed smoothies and Huevos Rancheros, a Mexican dish of eggs served on hot corn tortillas and smothered in cooked salsa. It was lovely for the students to take part in a practical activity as a group from home.
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For their last Sport lesson of the term, Sixth Form students took part in a novelty sports day which transported them back in time and saw them take on a range of Primary School style challenges vying for points for their Houses. The students took part in a range of fun activities, including an egg and spoon race, a three-legged race, a tug of war and a water-balloon toss. A huge amount of fun was had by all, with More House taking the title at the end of the event!
St Edward’s Senior & Sixth Form, Cirencester Road, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL53 8EY
T: 01242 388555 E: reception@stedwards.co.uk