Inside Heathfield enews issue 12

Issue Number 12, w/c 20th October 2013 & w/c 28th October 2013 GCSE Presentation Evening Congratulations to all the LVI Form who on Friday evening were presented with their GCSE certificates. The evening started in the Assembly Hall where the girls received their certificates and awards in front of an audience of parents and staff. Then everyone moved into the dining room for a formal dinner. It was a lovely evening to celebrate the girls’ achievements.

Miss S Lloyd, Marketing Manager

Art Trip to Paris On 18th October the Fifth & Lower Sixth Form Art and History of Art students had an early start as we set off on our journey to Paris, waking up at 5.30am. We arrived in Paris at midday and headed to the lovely hotel in the heart of Paris to unpack our things, looking forward to the trip ahead. We started our busy schedule with a visit to the Louvre and managed to pack in a lot over the next three days: museums, markets, walking, seeing architecture and Parisian sites of significance, visiting the Eiffel tower – the first time for some – cafe experiences and having the chance to go to a theatre to watch a Tango musical that everyone was very enthusiastic about. Many of the art students particularly liked the Modern Art museums such as the Pompidou Centre and we found artists that related to our projects. We were all fascinated by the variety of architecture such as the Louvre building and the inside-out design of the Pompidou Centre. For the History of Art students it was exciting to see some of the real pieces of Art that we had been studying in class such as the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. We improved our visual analysing skills and learned about perspective. We practised our French and some of us navigated the Metro on our own! There were other challenges: for some it was being independent; for others it was navigating the restaurant 'Flunch' and another it was drinking coffee!

We all thought that the hotel had a fantastic location along with its warm and welcoming atmosphere and a great time was had by all.

Billie LVI Form Student & Art Prefect

Issue Number 12, w/c 20th October 2013 & w/c 28th October 2013 Horse racing certificate at Ascot Racecourse Heathfield girls were invited to take part in the inaugural horse racing certificate at Ascot Racecourse where they took a fascinating and memorable look into the world of racing. The race day was also the QIPCO British Champions Day, the richest flat racing day of the season.

We were at the racecourse to begin the day at 10.30am. After registration we were given a personal tour of the racecourse which included visiting the saddling enclosure, collecting ring and the famous track itself and we were introduced to the Clerk of the course. The girls had a very detailed and interesting lesson in tacking up a race horse with its specialised equipment and also learnt about the very strict regime of fitness and diet a professional jockey has to follow to be ahead of his game.

Emma (Form III), Grace (Form II) and Frances (Form V) then had the opportunity themselves to feel what it was like to ride on a tiny saddle with extremely short stirrups. The British Racing school provided ‘wooden horses’ with a mechanism to replicate the galloping racehorse rhythm. Then onto the ’electric horse’ for an even more realistic feel to a racehorse! I think we may have some very capable jockeys in the making. The day did not finish there; after spotting Ant and Dec walking towards us, we had the opportunity to meet three very famous jockeys of their day, Joe Mercier, John Reid and Johnny Murtagh who gave us their autograph and tips for the day! The Queen’s arrival was witnessed by some of us at very close quarters.

It was a very successful fact-finding day for the Heathfield girls who all received their Horse racing certificates and Pony Club Pony Racing badges.

Mrs G Glimmerveen, Equestrian Co-ordinator

Fifth Form Dinner On the evening of Saturday 2nd November, Form V hosted our much anticipated Form V dinner with Harrow. We excitedly started off the evening by all getting ready together upstairs. Finally, when the boys arrived we all made our way down to the Assembly Hall to greet them with some mocktails kindly created by Mrs Kemp. As the night proceeded we began our meal with a delicious starter of avocado, tomato and mozzarella. After some initial awkward small talk with the boys, everybody found their feet and we started to have some amusing conversations. After our three-course dinner (the starter was followed by chicken and then a delectable brownie accompanied with strawberries), the DJ cranked up the tunes and we all reluctantly got up to dance. As the evening progressed everyone found a dancing partner and partied; there were even a few (sometimes painful) slow dances! By 10 o'clock the evening was coming to an end and everyone was getting ready to depart. Overall it was a great evening and was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone, even some of the teachers like Dr Harden, who also found their way onto the dance floor!

Alessandra & Frances, Form V Students

Issue Number 12, w/c 20th October 2013 & w/c 28th October 2013 New Chapel Cross During Half Term the Chapel Cross was replaced as the old Cross had fallen into disrepair. It is believed that the old Cross was the original cross that was installed when the Chapel was built in 1899, but if you know otherwise we would love to hear from you. Before the new Cross was put into position Fr. Tim blessed it. The new Cross is now sitting proudly on top of the Chapel, so next time you walk passed the Chapel please take a minute to have a look.

Miss S Lloyd, Marketing Manager

Issue Number 12, w/c 20th October 2013 & w/c 28th October 2013 Seacole Weekend, 2nd and 3rd November 2013 The weekend started with every girl in the school being involved in our Open Morning, either as a tour guide or helping the academic staff run activities and demonstrations in the classrooms. After lunch Forms I and II took turns to carve a pumpkin to light up the dining room for a spooky supper while others mastered the art of weaving ribbons to decorate a little box in House colours to keep their badges and other small items tidy in their rooms. Forms III and IV headed off with Alison to tackle the ‘Long Walk’ in to Windsor with the reward of some free time to look around the town in groups as their incentive to keep going. There was excitement amongst Form V as they prepared for their formal dinner with Harrow in the evening. The theme this year was ‘Winter’ and they achieved an elegant, sparkly look in the Assembly Hall before going upstairs to don their black tie outfits. In the evening Forms I and II played games and watched movies with their Housemistresses, Forms III and IV enjoyed a trip to the cinema to see a choice of films and the LVI headed off for dinner and a film in Camberley, leaving Form V to their special evening.

The Form V dinner was a huge success and all enjoyed the food and excellent disco which got everybody dancing until the boys headed home reluctantly.

Sunday started with Chapel and this was followed by a whole day of rehearsals for the cast of Fiddler on the Roof.

Others had a series of workshops in school for girls to opt in to. Our thanks go to our House Captains for the ‘Cupcake Decorating’ course kindly offered by Emily (LVI Form) with the assistance of Isabella (LVI Form). This was most popular and many girls created wonderful cakes with a bonfire theme. In addition Liz was busy with large groups of girls who created enough ‘spooky biscuits’ to allow each girl in the school to have one at our bonfire celebration.

Forms I and II ventured out to Virginia Water Lake for an autumn walk and to take photographs of the scenes for a competition.

We look forward to the winning pictures appearing on the electronic boards around school.

Mrs J Kemp Head of House – Seacole and Teacher of Science

IT Behind the Scenes Throughout the summer and into Michaelmas term, the IT Department has been busy behind the scenes expanding and improving our services to students and staff. These are some of the projects which have already reached fruition: Printing from iPads is now available, enabling students with iPads, iPods and iPhones to print directly from their devices using our PaperCut app and their printing credits.

Wireless Networking in the Sixth Form Bungalow used to be a bit hit-and-miss, with many rooms requiring a cable in order to connect to the network. Not so useful for tablets! We have now installed six new Cisco Meraki access points to fully flood the Bungalow with signal and allow the UVI Form to work in the manner they choose.

The C1 and Library suites now feature Windows 8 Touch all-in-one computers, allowing them to be used in the same manner as many of the laptops and tablets used around the school. Asking the girls how they found them, they reported the new machines to be ‘dead cool’.

Not to be outdone, senior managers have started to receive new Windows 8 Tablets to enable them to use their devices more portably, in meetings for instance, thus enabling them to work more efficiently.

In Classrooms, we have worked hard to replace some of our older projector equipment with new devices, brightening up the lessons considerably. The computers driving the electronic SMARTboards are also new and much faster than the older machines. They can even keep up with our teachers’ rapid thinking!

Finally, a new feature of our website parental portal offers Documents for Parents using our LiveDrive cloud service so that self-service access to all documents sent home is now available to all parents. It certainly helps to beat the pesky postal service in some countries. Mr M Taylor, Director of IT

Issue Number 12, w/c 20th October 2013 & w/c 28th October 2013 Geography Photography Competition: Seeing is Believing This year’s theme ‘Seeing is Believing’ appeared to stimulate even more interest than usual with the highest numbers of entries to date - both from students and staff.

The results of this Geography Photography competition were announced in Assembly on Friday 1 st November. Photographs taken over the summer were joyfully judged by a panel of three – Mrs Heywood, Miss White and Mrs Mason in October and then prizes and an Assembly were prepared for the much anticipated announcements.

The interpretation of ‘Seeing is Believing’ was so diverse ranging from a sombre image of a Belgian World War cemetery from Tansy (Form I) to cows on a beach in Azerbaijan from Lina (Form V). The various creative elements were much appreciated by the audience with Form V’s Frances’s dramatic lightning shot possibly stealing the show. Seacole House was loudly applauded as the overall winning House.

Watch this space in summer for the announcement of next year’s theme!

Mrs B Mason, Head of Humanities Faculty

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1 Frances (Form V) - Most Challenging Photograph

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2 Holly (LVI Form) - Closest to the Theme 3 Kitty (Form III) - Form III Winner 4 Ella (LVI Form) - Overall Sixth Form Winner 5 Tansy (Form I) - Form I Winner 6 Mr Taylor - Staff Second Prize 7 Lydia (Form II) - Geographically Interesting 8 Lina (Form V) - Forms IV & V Overall Winner 9 Mrs Benjamin - Staff First Prize 10 Tilly (UVI Form) - UVI Form Winner 11 Elinor (Form V) - Form V Winner 12 Sophie (Form III) - Most Unusual 13 Anna (LVI Form) - LVI Form Winner 14 Milly (Form IV) - Form IV Winner 15 Mr Lata - Staff Third Prize 16 Chloe (Form II) - Forms I - III Overall Winner 17 Eugenia (Form II) - Form II Winner

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