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15 October 2021 Newsletter 131

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Dear Parents and Guardians

The past two weeks have seen a plethora of trips and visits, activities, and assessments. I have been so impressed with the application that the girls are demonstrating, and I am excited to be able to share our school with our visitors tomorrow at Open Morning. Our girls are fantastic ambassadors for the school and meeting them is always the highlight for visitors. Thank you in advance for your support.

The Heathfield Parents’ Association meeting last week was a great forum to discuss Heathfield from your perspective as parents, and to think about and plan next steps. If you ever have any questions, please do contact your year group reps.

As we approach half term, we are excited to be celebrating together as a community through our Giving Challenge next week. We are very much looking forward to the opportunity to share the 46 hours exploring areas relevant to Sixth Form life from Global politics to public speaking. We will also thoroughly enjoy undertaking the challenges together and have lots of fun along the way (Rhodie’s Revenge looks a particular treat!) Please do take the opportunity to get involved, whether that be in person or online. I look forward to seeing you.

With best wishes for half term,

Best wishes

Ms Sarah Wilson Headmistress

Giving Challenge

The Heathfield Giving campaign is almost upon us. Our 46 hours Giving Challenge is in aid of our new Sixth Form Centre, currently under construction and due to open in 46 weeks. The Giving Challenge will run from 5pm on Monday 18 to 3pm on Wednesday 20 October. You can support our endeavours from 5pm on Monday via #HeathfieldGiving. We look forward to seeing everyone getting involved.

Mrs Emma Boryer, Director of Development

A Level Geography Field Trip

Upper Sixth Geography students undertook the collection of their coursework data with Geofieldwork Ltd in Dorset. The four-day trip comprised of devising hypotheses, undertaking different sampling methods, collating data, and augmenting findings with secondary data.

We arrived in Swanage on the Saturday morning to torrential rain and gale force winds. Waterproofs were found and we headed to Swanage Beach to look at the coastal defences and develop the girls understanding of data collection methods.

Sunday’s weather was far more conducive to fieldwork, so we headed to Poole early to undertake questionnaires and land use surveys in areas of varying deprivation. This was

followed by an afternoon in the Studland sand dunes. Sunday evening was spent devising titles for their individual non-examined-assessment projects and hypotheses ready to collect data the following day.

Students undertook their own investigations on the sand dunes at Studland Bay and helped each other to collect data measuring the pH of zoned areas, the biodiversity, infiltration levels and population counts at the sand dune blowouts.

By the end of Monday, all had primary data gathered and spent the evening collating it and learning how to use Chi-squared statistical tests. The girls worked exceptionally hard through some testing conditions but returned to Heathfield with primary data to begin writing their coursework.

Miss Caitlin McSwiggan, Head of House (Seacole) Teacher of Geography, History and Photography

A Level and GCSE Photography Trip

Finally! How exciting that we could go on a very much awaited Photography trip!

On Thursday 7 October, Form IV and Lower Sixth Photography students were able to see the Alice, Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The exhibits took us through a fantastic journey from Lewis Caroll’s first thoughts, ideas and sketches to visual responses from more contemporary artists who have based their work on the classic stories of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.

The surreal nature of Alice’s dream world allowed the curators of the exhibition to section the exhibits into ‘rooms’ where Alice’s journey became a three-dimensional experience for all visitors. Some of the work was presented as enormous projections where the viewer felt comparatively small whereas some of the rooms were a little disorientating in their décor and required careful consideration when crossing. However, the virtual reality headsets were the biggest hit with our students. All senses were much needed when navigating through the ‘wonderland’! After such a successful afternoon collecting research and inspiration, supper in South Kensington was extremely welcome before returning to school later that evening.

Miss Karen White, Head of Year (Form IV) and Subject Leader Photography

A talk by Isobel Byrne Hill, Civil Engineer

What is an Engineer, and do they have to be Civil?

The Careers and Outreach department had the pleasure of welcoming Isobel Byrne Hill on Wednesday. Isobel is a senior civil engineer who has worked on numerous high profile infrastructure projects.

Isobel spoke passionately about what her role entails and why engineers are important to society. She walked us through her career, from her beginnings as a junior engineer on the Royal Opera House extension (Dame Vivien Duffield, a Heathfield Old Girl, was instrumental in initiating and delivering this project for the Royal Opera House) and helping build a school in Tanzania in four months. She worked with architects to design the roof at Heathrow Terminal 5 and her current project is the HS2 line at West Ruislip. There was a flurry of excitement during the speaker supper when some of our Upper Sixth students realised that the trees in the Olympic Park, which they study as part of A level Geography, were designed by Isobel. Isobel also designed the structure of the Aquatic Centre roof in the Olympic Park for London 2012.

Isobel wanted to instil in the girls an appreciation, inspiration and understanding of what it is like to be an engineer; this showed at the end of her talk as she was questioned enthusiastically by the students on topics such as Isobel’s inspirations, regrets, plans, advice to her younger self and her thoughts on the protestors at Euston.

For our next event on 3 November, we look forward to Heathfield Question Time when a panel of students will field questions from our audience, which will include local politicians. All parents and other members of the Heathfield Community are welcome to come and hear what is sure to be a lively event.

Mrs Rushi Millns, Director of Careers and Outreach Music

Lyra Initial Guitar

Isabel Grade I Clarinet

Esme Grade II Clarinet

Ellie Grade II Flute

Sushi Grade II Piano

Olivia Grade II Guitar

Scarlet Grade III Singing

Amie-Louise Grade III Singing

Tamara Grade III Singing

Sarah Grade III Clarinet

Olive Grade III Saxophone

Imaan Grade IV Piano

Liv Grade IV Singing

Isabella Grade IV Singing

Camilla Grade IV Singing

Chloe Grade V Violin

Ally Grade V Singing

Honor Grade V Singing

Lily Grade V Rock & Pop Vocals

Bella Grade V Singing

Grace Grade VI Cello

Sonya Grade VI Singing

Sonya Grade VI Piano

Tina Grade VIII Piano

A fantastic achievement by all. We are very proud of you. Mrs Julie Dance, Director of Music

A note from the Headmistress’ Scholar

With my time at Heathfield ending soon, I can fondly reminisce and appreciate the plethora of exciting opportunities and prospects that being a Heathfield girl has presented me with. Becoming the Headmistress’ Scholar is one such opportunity that I would have never imagined myself capable of achieving when I first started at Heathfield. In addition to achieving highly at GCSE, I am also immensely proud to have been elected Deputy Head Girl, a role I treasure, representing my peers and school.

Last Friday, the Head Girl team were delighted to attend the annual Head of School Conference at Wellington College. We gathered alongside other Heads of school to embark on a day of leadership discussion and development. We were encouraged to explore a range of ideas affiliated to what makes an effective leader and the potential challenges faced when in a position of responsibility.

It was hard not to feel a slight sense of imposter syndrome being surrounded by such an inspirational and talented cohort of heads of school. However, it embedded my appreciation of the importance of the development of the variety of skills needed for leadership and teamwork. I look forward to bringing these skills into all my future endeavours, including studying Economics and French at university.

Louise, Upper Sixth, Deputy Head Girl

@HeathfieldLearn provides all members of our community with the information needed to adopt an evidence-based approach to teaching and learning, both in and out of the classroom. The focus for this newsletter is an introduction to an area of research that has permanently changed the way I plan and deliver lessons: Cognitive Load Theory.

Learning is understood to be a permanent change to our long-term memory. For information to move into our long-term memory, it must first be attended to and processed in a meaningful way by our working memory.

Unfortunately, our working memory has an extremely limited capacity and can become overloaded quickly if there is an excessive amount of external or internal information being processed at the same time. External information may be physical (a teacher moving around the room), visual (images or text on the board), or auditory (the teacher’s voice). Internal information could be exam-anxiety, hunger, or excitement about an after-school activity.

To maximise the effectiveness of the working memory during lessons, it is important to present added information in small steps and build on prior knowledge whenever possible. The working memory processes images and speech separately, so pairing these together can increase the capacity of students’ working memory during lessons. Conversely, learning is less effective if speech and text need to be processed at the same time as students need to listen to their ‘inner voice’ and the teacher talking at the same time.

In the next newsletter we will share how the findings of cognitive load theory are used to benefit the teaching and learning at Heathfield.

Mrs Zoe Benjamin, Assistant Head (Teaching and Learning)

Flourishing

Over the past two weeks we have been looking at empathy. Empathy comes under the positive psychology domain of Positive Relationships. We have had discussions about how a person might

use empathy to build connections in their life and be a more understanding pupil, friend or family member.

Students completed a questionnaire to reflect on how empathetic they are, and we watched a video clip from the film Inside Out, in which the character Sadness demonstrates empathy for Bing Bong the imaginary elephant friend! Older year groups looked at a video clip of Brene Brown talking about the difference between empathy and sympathy.

Students were encouraged to think about ways they could be more empathetic in their day to day lives. We continue to practise the skill of meditation in lessons. Parents who are interested in joining a lesson in Flourishing for the Giving Challenge next week will learn more about the benefits of meditation and even have an opportunity to take ten minutes out of their busy lives to give meditation a go.

Mrs Rachel Oakley, Teacher in Charge of Psychology and Co-ordinator Positive Education

Prep School Introduction to Lacrosse

On October 6, Heathfield was delighted to welcome fifty year 4 and 5 girls from Falcons School for Girls, Putney and Highfield Prep, Maidenhead for an Introduction to Lacrosse. The sun shone and the girls threw themselves into learning the basic skills of Lacrosse which they then put into practice with mini-matches. After all their challenging work everyone enjoyed a wonderful Heathfield Tea in our Assembly Hall and took home a goody bag.

Ms Anna Morgan, Director of Marketing and Admissions

Sport

Another fantastic fortnight of sport at Heathfield; despite a few postponements due to weather and the current covid climate in Berkshire, our students have been brilliant, showing resilience and determination to participate in competitive sport.

We hosted a Swimming Gala with The Marist and Gordons for our GCSE and ALevel PE students to allow them to film evidence for the practical element of their courses.

Our Swim teams from U12 to Seniors all competed in an Ascot Swimming Gala with impressive results, U12 - 2nd, U13 - 1st, U14 - 3rd and Senior's 2nd. Birdie and Grace (Form IV) both achieved school records in their respectable events, congratulations and well, done to all students involved.

Lastly, this week our Senior Netball team and U16 Netball team competed at the South East Berkshire netball tournament, both teams played great netball with team spirit. A superb effort from all, especially considering the lack of competitive sport over the last 18 months for these players.

Mrs Carys Ratcliffe, Director of Sport and Head of House (Austen)

Weekend 2 - 3 October

Form V and some lucky Form III students had a wonderful day at Thorpe Park. The girls gathered in small groups, and each group went off on their own adventure to conquer some of the gigantic roller coasters including the heights of Stealth, twists of Saw and many loops of Colossus! Although heights were not for everyone, girls had just as much fun on the gentler Coasters such as the classic Flying Fish and much-loved Banana Boat. All the girls had time to browse the shops and buy souvenirs and photos.

At School, several Form III girls enjoyed learning Bush Craft skills, including fire making and basic survival.

Meanwhile, over at Gravity Force, Form IV students were having a blast jumping and springing around on the many trampolines. They experienced trampoline themed basketball and dodgeball while also jumping high into the massive foam pit. Great fun was had by all.

Mrs Gillian Wakeford, Housemistress (Wantage House)