Godstowe News: Summer Term 20/5

Godstowe news

Summer Term 20 May 2022

Key Dates for next week 23rd May FI - UIII Assessment week 25th May FI, FII and LIII Parents Coffee Morning 27th May Godstowe celebrates the Queen's Platinum Jubilee HALF TERM - timings on page 17 of the red Calendar

Our U11 and U13 IAPS Cross Country team

A letter from the Headmistress

24th May 4.45pm - U13 6 pairs Tennis at Royal Masonic School (away) 25th May 4.30pm - U12B and U13B Athletics at Wycombe Abbey (away)

Dear Parents, Well what a busy week!

Our Cross Country team travelled to Suffolk and ran brilliantly. The U13 team won the IAPS Championships and we couldn't be more proud.

Monday saw a practice of our 70 for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. Well done to the IV's who organised with great detail where each child should stand. It all went very well and I'm looking forward to seeing it on Friday in our red, white and blue outfits.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we had our class and sports team photos. All children looked very smart and I know you'll be looking forward to seeing the final photos. More photos took place on Thursday with our whole school photo. Even Meg took part!

I would like to wish all the girls in Main School good luck in their assessments next week. I know that they have been revising hard in lessons and at home.

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Sports Fixtures

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26th May U8-U11 Athletics Festival at High March (away)

On Thursday 19th May we had our Whole School Photo with children from Nursery through to Fourths and all staff members gathered on the Athletics field.

Click on the photo below to see a timelapse of everyone getting into position.

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Weekly Awards Boarders of the Week

Accelerated Readers

House Points

Highlands Turner Walker

Ai-Li C Juliette M Chrissie Z

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

Leonor M-T Chizuru Y Reese N

Camilla P-W Orissa D

Sports Stars of the Week

Friday Badges

Annabelle T-P Annabel P-W Freya J

IC IH IM

Ava M Scarlett Y Amaya P

Franklin Adlington Seacole Pankhurst

Olivia M Poppy dCT Coco C

Godstowe's celebration for the Platinum Jubilee The Queen’s upcoming Platinum Jubilee has been on everyone’s minds lately; with parties planned and duly scheduled with friends. So, Godstowe decided to contribute in its own way, commemorating this remarkable achievement. Now, as it’s Godstowe, it's an all or nothing thing. The Pupil Council was consulted on ideas, and they came up with an aerial figure 70, captured by a drone flying over the tennis courts, created by and composed of Godstowe girls!

But, this is no simple feat, so who would figure out the mathematics behind it all? Well, 18 amazing Fourths were ready to help! Everyone in their maths set was involved, and it was a lesson of excitement at the opportunity to use maths in real life and figures.

There was lots to do, from designing and calculating the dimensions of each shape, finding the measurements of the tennis courts and how many people could fit in the designated area (whilst keeping in mind variations between different years, of course).

Godstowe girls are naturally driven and ambitious, so ultimately groups were formed and everyone began the task at hand.

Everyone worked extremely hard, diligently putting their heads together to come up with many different and unique designs. It was an exemplary show of teamwork and cooperation, with a class vote determining the final plan.

It was very soon that the girls had to rely on their mathematical skills, as the day of the practice arrived one Monday of indecisive weather! Four girls and Mrs Kenyon headed out to the tennis courts with tape measures, chalk and a map of their design. 2 hours, 3 brief spells of rain and many sticks of chalk later, they finished their massive outline of the 70.

Perfectionism had found its place, as year groups were soon called to fill in the shape.

Everyone fit perfectly, and the girls should all be very proud of themselves! This is the plan that has been designed and we hope it goes as smoothly on the day as it did in rehearsal.

Special Mentions: Annika S (design, execution, article), Arabella DQA (data collecting, article), Mrs Kenyon (director), and the remainder of her IV maths set!

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Claire Gillett, Head of Lodge

Hannah Smart, Head of Nursery

This week Nursery finished the ‘Our World’ topic with looking at how we can care for the environment and recycling. The children managed to sort out lots of objects that could and could not be recycled and we thought about what we could use instead of items that can’t be recycled. The children enjoyed creating artwork using recycled materials and a particularly popular activity was printing blossom trees with the bottom of old plastic bottles. They looked great! There has been a big focus this week on fine motor skills and perfecting writing our names ready for next year. The sound of the week was ‘W’ and the children made beautiful watermelons! The children really loved playing ‘crossing the magic river game’ in phonics this week but they could only cross if they could read or name a word beginning with W. It was quite tricky to think of so many but we had some amazing ideas! Next week is going to be a special week in Nursery which we are sure the children are going to love!

This week in Beginners we have continued to find out all about minibeasts! We wrote a recount about our trip to Mop End, remembering all the super things we did and saw there. We have also continued to find out about spiders, using a rhyme about a special spider called Incy Wincy. In Maths, we have continued our exploration of teen numbers. In Phonics, we have continued to practice the tricky digraphs and use them in our reading and writing.

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Kindergarten had a fantastic outing this week to the Oxford Botanic Gardens. It was a glorious sunny day and the children had a lovely time exploring the various plants and trees outside. They also had the opportunity to explore the Rainforest greenhouse where they found chocolate pods, chillis, sugar cane, pink bananas, ginger and a pineapple! Other highlights included spotting goldfish in the pond, meeting friendly ducks at lunchtime and the coach journeys!

Transition were very excited last Friday afternoon when Mrs Hamilton brought in one of their chickens! It really brought our Science lesson about the life cycle of a chicken to life, and we would like to extend our thanks to Mrs Hamilton. We have been moving on this week to focus on caring for animals and their basic needs. This term in History, Transition is learning about the Great Fire of London. They have started their studies by considering the differences between London life in 1666 and the present day, and are looking forward to finding out about what caused the fire.

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We are going to include updates each week of our girls lessons in Main School.

This week in English..

Uppers visit to the Theatre "On Wednesday, we walked to the Wycombe Swan Theatre to watch the National Theatre's Olivier and Tony award-winning production, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime". The play was brilliantly done! The story is a little dark but it was great to see it acted out.

In our English lessons, we've been analysing a poem called "Badger" and identifying poetic devices. We also started a debate on the poem and the statement was "Violent poems shouldn't be taught in School". It was a fascinating debate and really interesting to hear other people's opinions." - Anoushka UIII

Fourths' Short Story "In Fourths, we've been working on a short story called "On the sidewalk bleeding" by Evan Hunter. It's a really interesting story about a boy who gets judged for who he is.

This leads to him being stabbed on the sidewalk. Mrs de Villiers has been encouraging us to identify symbolism in the text. We then made identity slides for ourselves and presented them to the class. It was interesting to see what other people thought of themselves and how they feel judged." Annointed, IV

Form II have been making their stories more interesting "Mrs Lake is our Form Tutor and she teaches us English. We've been talking about poetic devices and how we can use them to make our stories more interesting. We will read a chapter of Stig in the Dump and then Mrs Lake will ask us what we think will happen next. We've also been doing comprehension assessments to see what we already know and what we might need help on. We both like English and find it interesting to learn with Mrs Lake." - Eleanor and Grace, IIL

Our letters to the Queen "We have been doing letter writing in our English lessons with Mrs Hornett. We've been writing to the Queen and telling Her of what we are going to do here at school. The letters have had to look really professional with capital letters, and then we can write it on nice sheets of paper and use some special pens." - Sophia-Rose and Anjola, IH

Middles' Revision lessons "My English teacher is Mrs de Villiers and we've been practising and revising for our exams. She's been talking us through how to plan our stories using only 5 minutes for our plan and to stick to it. In our exams we don't have a lot of time so we have to be clever with how we spend it. We've also been covering some poetic devices as we know our exam will be a poetic comprehension. I'm a bit nervous but I know if I revise lots and take deep breaths, I'll hopefully do well." - Ilaria, MIII

Book Review from Harriette and Sophia-Rose, IH Book Name: We're going on a bear hunt Book Author: Michael Rosen My rating:

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"On the first page, they're starting to go on a bear hunt and they think nothing bad is going to happen but they're wrong. They had to go through lots of things before they got to the bear cave. What we liked about the story was the bit when they got chased by the bear and when they are in the cave and the dog is even afraid when it sees the bear."

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Boarders' Corner

Highlands House

Our weekend was spent making the boarding house gardens look beautiful. Walker House began planning some magical fairy gardens which sit along the edge of their lawn.

Last year’s fairy gardens captured the imagination of everyone who stopped by to see them and we can’t wait to admire this year’s displays. Turner House took a trip in the minibuses to the garden centre and purchased bedding plants for their Jubilee garden display. The girls got their hands dirty to start planting in their freshly designed plant pots. Highlands House decorated pots too and planted sunflower seeds in order to start a tallest flower competition. Each of our six dorms worked in teams to create a hanging basket as well. Thanks to our Estates team, the brackets have now been hung around the Highlands building and we are looking forward to watching them grow.

Coming up this weekend is our ‘Fun in the Sun’ Festival which will take over the top field on Saturday. The boarders are looking forward to an inflatable assault course, bouncy castle, petting zoo and will also be surprised by a petting zoo, face painting, creperie and a visit from Franca’s ice cream van. Hopefully the weather stays bright and sunny for us!

Alexandra's charity efforts "I rode 450 laps around my garden on my bike which equalled 35 miles. I did it for the Ukraine charity. For my Dove Diploma, one of the tasks is Charity fundraising and I wanted to raise money to want to help children in Ukraine that were suffering. I took two days to do it but raised over £1000. I'm really pleased with that!"

Boarders' Video 15th - 16th May /GodstoweSchool

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Sports Results Athletics

Rebecca Turner, Director of Sport

On Saturday 14th May, the Uppers and Fourths had their first athletics meet of the season against Oratory and Queen Anne's. It was a friendly event so there was no overall winner but Godstowe was very successful.

There were a number of girls who achieved personal bests or won their event. It was a fantastic afternoon and I was so proud of the girls as they gave their all in the events that were asked of them.

Swimming

Rebecca Turner, Director of Sport It was a very exciting afternoon at Lambrook on Tuesday.

Not only were we excited to be back in the pool but their were four Transition girls selected to represent Godstowe at their first ever gala! They were superb throughout the event and held their own considering the magnitude of the afternoon. Every girl swam brilliantly in a well fought out gala with the score swinging in both schools favour.

On Wednesday 17th May, Form II, LIII and MIII had a fantastic afternoon at their first athletics meet at the Royal Mason School. The girls sped off around the 400m track to get used to running on a larger track. After a quick team talk, they moved on to their first events. Everyone performed really well and Godstowe were victorious overall which was a fitting end to the afternoon.

Tennis

Katherine MacDougall, PE Teacher

Our Middle Thirds had their first tennis fixture of the season on Tuesday, 16th May, against Maltman's Green School. The sun was shining and the competition was friendly although very challenging. Maltman's have some strong players so unfortunately we didn't win but we did learn lots and definitely improved our knowledge of doubles play and how to work with different doubles partners.

Cross Country

Nina Sloggett, Head of Cross Country

On Sunday 15th May, the IAPs National Cross Country Championships were held at Woodbridge School in Suffolk. This championship was the national final for prep schools, so schools from all over the country took part. Seven girls were chosen to represent Godstowe in this championship and they made up two teams, Under 13 and Under 11. The competition was really strong but our teams ran brilliantly and achieved some fantastic results.

In the Under 11 race Juliette M had to race against year 6 girls and she is only year 5. She came 4th in the race. In the Under 13 race Emily H came 2nd, again racing against girls that were older than her. Olivia I came 4th..

There were also awards for the best teams. We were really proud of both teams' performances. The Under 11s came 2nd and the Under 13s won the championship, making them the best prep school team in the country. This is an amazing achievement!

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Art and Design Exhibition A sample of some art and design work from our Exhibition.