Godstowe News - Autumn 2021 01/10

Godstowe news

Autumn Term 1 October, 2021

Weekly Awards

Headmistress' Letter Dear Parents, It has been another very busy and bustling week at Godstowe. In assembly on Monday we took some time to consider the equal value of every single person within our Godstowe community and how we need all of the different parts to carry out their roles for our school to flourish.

I am enjoying getting to know the youngest girls in Main School and was very impressed by the standard of their spelling as well as their motivation and obvious joy at learning, when I took a Form I spelling lesson this week. At lunch it has been a pleasure to sit and chat and to hear all about their weekend plans too.

Our older pupils enjoyed the Elevate Education study skills sessions on Tuesday and with every fixture being risk assessed, I am delighted that yesterday’s netball fixture went ahead as well as going so well, and I know that the girls are looking forward to the lacrosse tomorrow.

We continued this theme this morning by presenting a very wide range of certificates, including typing speed certificates, music and sports awards, boarders of the week, Friday badges for Form I and many ,many more.

Lola S Mia S

House Shield Pankhurst Accelerated Reader Blanca O Boarders of the Week Walker - Princess Highlands - Lisa Turner - Yimika

Friday Badge IH - Diya R IM - Sophia K IC - Vera N

Sports Stars Elissia N Michaela A Naomi W

Maths Challenge for Form II

Sophia Z Bea T Isabella B

Typing Awards

Last Friday afternoon, Eleanor, Lucy, Valentina and Grace enjoyed an afternoon of mathematical activities at Davenies School. The girls were representing Godstowe at the Year 4 Maths Challenge against a whole host of local schools. They paired up and worked together trying to solve puzzles, problems and activities to earn them points. Read more here.

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Artwork

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Beginner: Francesca M Isabelle W Olivia P Josephine B

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Intermediate: Sara M Amelia L-S Advanced: Georgina B

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Claire Gillett, Head of Lodge

Hannah Smart, Head of Nursery

This week Nursery have been exploring an Autumn theme. They have enjoyed learning their song to perform for Harvest Festival and we have been enjoying some nature walks to look for signs of Autumn too. The children made a beautiful scarecrow display, where they had to use both collage and threading skills to complete their scarecrow. The sound of the week was 's' and the children made snakes, developing fine motor skills through using small cotton buds to print their patterns. The Number Zoo character was Ticklish Two, who is a beautiful swan with sparkly white feathers.

You'll now see our very own swans on display in the classroom. Next week the sound will be 'a'.

helps us with this skill. We have enjoyed being outside again this week and we have enjoyed collecting 5 natural objects during our Woodland learning adventure.

This week, Kindergarten have continued to explore The Gruffalo and were able to act out the story using puppets and their very own puppet theatres. In their Geography lessons the children have been exploring homes from around the world and to support this, they created a home from a paper bag in their DT lesson! Kindergarten have also started to look at the five senses in their Science and enjoyed an investigation, whereby they guessed the source of several mystery smells!

In Transition we have been starting a new Maths topic this week, looking at different ways to add up two numbers, such as by counting on in tens or by putting the numbers in columns. In our Science and DT lessons we have been focusing on the properties of different materials. The children had a chance to make their own structures using spaghetti and marshmallows and in their Science lesson, they were making materials change shape by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching them.

In Beginners this week we have been exploring our busy bodies and discovering the amazing things we can do with them.

We had a go at lots of different movements and wrote some sentences about using the words 'I can'. We labelled the different parts of our bodies with a friend and we learnt new words to describe why and how our bodies work so well. In Maths we have been practising recognising numbers quickly and using our special maths equipment Numicon which

Young Climate Warriors Young Climate Warriors are challenged this week is to swap imported fruit for locally grown apples. Local, seasonal eating helps minimises carbon emissions related to transportation, heated greenhouses, cold storage units, and higher levels of fertilisers or pesticides.

2021 has been a very difficult year for farmers, including apple growers - too much rain, and too many spring frosts.

Some apple farmers say they are down to half their normal crop size, pears have fared even worse. Since the inception of agriculture, farmers have always had to adapt to conditions imposed on them by the climate, but recent human-induced

climate change is throwing them some unexpected curve-balls. The Met Office produces annual easily accessible infographics depicting ‘The State of the UK Climate’; they clearly show that our climate is changing and our unpredictable weather is already having an impact on our harvests.

For most of our growers, much of 2021 has been a disastrous run of bad luck. For many crops, it is simply a case of salvaging what we can, and hoping that next season is better.

Guy Singh-Watson, Riverford /GodstoweSchool

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Boarders' Corner

written this week by Walker House

Sports Results

Rachel Hearnshaw, Director of Sport

Today won’t be the usual installment of boarders corner where we update you on all the fun we had at the weekend. That’s because this weekend, the girls all had a well-deserved break at Exeat, returning to the boarding houses on Sunday with plenty of stories to tell. So instead, we thought this would be a good opportunity to give you all a little insight into the daily routine of a Godstowe boarder in the wonderful Walker House.

The following Netball matches were played this week against Beaconsfield High: U13A - won 30-6 Player of the Match - Lola U13B - won 8-1 Player of the Match - Yimika Well done to the three Godstowe girls who ran for Cookham Runners at the NWL Young Athletes League last week. Olivia 2nd place, Lola 5th, Holly 12th We are proud of you!

Gone are the days where the girls are woken up with a plain knock on the door.

Alexa awakes each dorm with relaxing classical music to stimulate the brain and fine tune the senses. Not for long though, as the clock strikes 7am, the Walker wake up playlist starts to blast through the house, signifying it’s time for the girls to get up and out of bed. Teeth cleaned, hair brushed, tied up and uniform on, we expect all of our girls to be downstairs between the two bells (played by Alexa of course) at 7:15am and 7:20am.

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How can you support FoG? There are many ways you can support FoG. Please consider supporting us in one or more of the following ways:

Introduction to FoG

Cookery Book Artwork Competition As most girls will be aware I am putting together a cookery book with all the recipes I teach in Design Technology lessons. I would love to have some artwork, to go into the book, supplied by the girls. I am therefore launching a competition for the artwork.

·Join the committee or become a Class Rep. ·Volunteer to help out with specific events.

IWe hope you’ve all had a good start to the ·Volunteer services or skills ·Volunteer to help out at the SHUS (it doesn’t need new academic year and we thought that to be every week) this would be a great time to remind you Entries should be portrait on A4 ·Donate uniform to SHUS for selling on. about FoG and our role at Godstowe. paper and can be made using pencils, ·Buy from SHUS (and be more environmentally pens, paint and computers. They friendly at the same time) FoG has two main roles. The first is to should be handed to me by half term. create a sense of community for parents at I look forward to seeing your lovely Godstowe, this is through the use of Currently, we’re looking for volunteers for the designs!

Classlist and our amazing Class Reps and SHUS on a Monday and to sign up additional through our (in non covid times) regular “helping hands” who can help with some of Mrs Lee-Metcalfe events for parents and children. We believe our upcoming events. Look out for an that this is one of the reasons that information session soon.

Godstowe is such a lovely welcoming environment. Our second is to raise money to support the school’s nominated charities and so that school can buy ‘extras’ for the children, for example this year FoG paid for the new play equipment in Lodge. We raise money for FoG through our social events School photos were taken earlier this week, and through the SHUS (second hand so watch this space for details on how to uniform shop). order.

Individual Portrait Photographs

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