Weekly Buzz 8th March 2021

The Weekly Buzz

Picture by Harry Powers

08 March 2021

Noticeboard Lunch Menu

Gluten-free options available on each day

Noticeboard

Noticeboard Short Story Competition 2021

The competition this year is open to all students up to current Year 11. All you have to do is write a short story of no more than 1,200 words on any setting and genre. It can be comic or tragic, period or sci-fi - just make sure it's your best! The judges, presided over by reporter and best-selling author Robert Harris, will personally choose the winner and two runners up. https://www.connellguides.com/pages/short-storycompetition-2021?mc_cid=ec24bca47c&mc_eid=51c190b18b https://www.connellguides.com/pages/short-story-competition-2021?

Mrs Carvalho is happy to help with proof-reading and with enmc_cid=ec24bca47c&mc_eid=51c190b18b

tering. To enter please email your short story along with your name, school name, age, school year and email address to: Competition@connellguides.com

Closing date is 14th May 2021

Noticeboard Wellbeing Dear Parents I would like to share with you the Mindful March Calendar issued by "Action for Happiness". Like the previous calendars, it includes lovely suggestions of activities for each day of this month.

We encourage our students to take some time to look within. Learning to be more mindful and aware does wonders for our wellbeing in all areas of life - for example, the way we eat, the things we notice or our relationships. It helps us get in tune with our feelings and stops us dwelling on the past or worrying about the future - so we get more out of the day-to-day. Mindfulness can also help us identify what we are grateful for, which has been proven to help boost happiness levels.

Thank you for your support, Miss Florea

Noticeboard Library

This Thursday was World Book Day. Please encourage your child to complete our quiz (link below) and they will be in with a chance of winning a £20 book voucher.

Winner will be announced next week. https://forms.office.com/Pages/ ResponsePage.aspx? id=jxr09aJEwkePiM0c9RQhWNuY1w7w0NGuwRyuJdOWZ9UQktYWFlTTDdZVUo0Slo4SUVFNlI0S0xNVi4u

Some further ideas for celebrating World Book Day: Watch 153 authors wish you a happy World Book Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLAfk8Ck1M&feature=youtu.be Watch some live author events on the World Book Day Channel https://www.worldbookday.com/event/books-and-the-real-world/ If you are in Year 6 or 7 try our Get Epic Reading Challenge, sign in using our class code khd5108, click your name and search for a book that you would like to read. If you’ve done all of those, why not complete a review for our Pizza Reading Challenge.

Noticeboard Update on Pizza Reading Challenge

It’s really close now. Winning group will be announced before the end of term. Read the best of our reviews here: https://padlet.com/PortlandPlaceLibrary/pdoo9scvcb49ez2r Well done all!

News PPS & Livingstone Tanzania Trust We are pleased to announce that, thanks to generous donations from parents, students, and staff last year, two classrooms have now been redecorated in Gendi Primary School, Tanzania.

This picture shows the before and after the work, funded by

Portland Place School Community in coordination with the Livingstone Tanzania Trust

Due to the pandemic, Team Tanzania never made it to the village, but they need to be recognised for their hard work towards fund-raising for the project. Well done to Jay (left for sixth form), Josh, Amitis, Beatrice, Tommy, Jude, Freddie, Daisy and Lulya!

Again, a huge thank you to everyone for "buying a brick" for Gendi Primary's refurbishing work. We hope that we can go back to Gendi in the future and keep up our link with LTT! Mr Lalande

News Next step: Hand Washing Stations

The LTT has partnered with Blanka Soap who are donating £1 from every order and a further

0.50p for each bar of Zanzi-bar, a soap made specially for LTT

Zanzi-Bar Natural Soap Bar is a natural moisturising soap bar created especially to help support the Mikono Salama (Safe Hands) project run by Livingstone Tanzania Trust. 0.50p out of the price of each one of these bars is donated to providing schoolchildren in Tanzania with hand-washing facilities. Read more about the project on our blog.

The soap bar is inspired by the beautiful Tanzanian island and created using a traditional small-batch soap making technique and a blend of the highest quality ingredients. Organic essential oils of lemongrass, cinnamon, cardamom and pink pepper represent the native flora of Zanzibar and a gentle mix of olive oil, coconut oil, shea butter and glycerin ensures the skin stays hydrated and smooth after use. The blue terrazzo-style design represents droplets of clean water and means that every bar's appearance is unique. Suitable for vegans, not tested on animals.

Please buy a soap here: https://www.blankasoap.com Thank you and take care, Team Tanzania & Mr Lalande

News ISA Shakespeare Monologue Competition 2021

“All the world’s a stage” – was never a truer quote for our Drama students this year.

Year 6 and Year 10 students were asked to take up the challenge of learning, rehearsing and per-

forming a Shakespeare monologue for the ISA Shakespeare Monologue Competition. Whilst working remotely, the students recorded in living rooms, gardens, parks across London and even in other countries!

In Year 6, after reading an abridged version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Humphrey Boland and Susan Li were selected to represent the school in their age category. Whilst in Year 10, Teddy Upton (Puck) and Madoc (Orsino) will represent PPS after some fantastic portrayals of their chosen Shakespeare characters.

Thank you to all students for their hard work and commitment, and good luck to Susan, Humphrey, Teddy and Madoc. We will update you with the competition results soon.

The Drama Department

News

News Art Year 7 Picasso portrait analysis—learning how to analyse pictures by means of a diagram using this original portrait source of Dora Maar.

News

Clockwise from top left: Beckett JenkinsonChamberlain Hazuki Kita Kadi Bahbahani

News

News The Countries of the World: A Collection of Facts (Part 2)

by Alex Parker

Alex has been busily working on researching facts about every single country in the world. His project includes all UN members and observer states.

Alex says, ‘I started writing a paragraph on each country about two months ago. I do hope you enjoy reading it.’

News El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukiele, has been a source of debate over what religion he is, he also only 39 years old. One fisherman from the country, called Jose Salvador Alvarenga, spent 438 days washed up at sea, before he arrived in the Ebon Atoll in the Marshall islands. While congratulated by some, he was actually sued for cannibalism by his fellow sailor’s family. His story is regarded as quite possibly the greatest survival story of all time. Like many Central American countries, its capital is named after the country, San Salvador. It is the smallest and most densely populated on the continent, aside from the Caribbean islands.

Equatorial Guinea is the only non-Hispanic Spanish speaking country in the world but only 15% of people have a high competence in the language, which is down to low literacy rates. The Equator does not intersect Equatorial Guinea, but it is near it, and slightly north of it, but some of its islands are equatorial.

Damascus in Syria is the world’s oldest, continuously inhabited capital city,

being founded as early as 8000 -10000 BC. Almost 3 million people live there. It became the capital city of the Umayyad caliphate for 89 years from 661AD to 750AD. This was a mighty empire stretching from Pakistan to France, two countries that really could not be more different. The battle for the world’s oldest city goes on, with Jericho, a city of 20000 in Palestine, and Byblos, a city in Lebanon with 100000 in contention for it with Damascus, which is by far the largest at 3000000. While not in contention for this rather prestigious award, Aleppo deserves an honorable mention, as it is potentially almost 8000 years old. For reference, Rome is only 2774 years old

as of 2021.

News Tajikistan has the second tallest elevation in the world, behind only the fascinating country of Bhutan. The air in Tajikistan is thin, about 70% that at sea level. Because of this Tajiks have slightly larger lung capacity than people at sea-level, for example countries like the Netherlands. That height is about 3186 metres tall, or about 4 Burj Khalifa’s stacked on top of each other. It is home to many massive dams, including the world’s tallest dam, which succeeded the Vajont dam in Northern Italy. The tallest peak is 7495 metres, taller than anywhere on the Earth that is not on Asia, and is 9 times taller than the Burj Khalifa and 85% the height of Everest.

The tallest mountain in Africa is Mount Kilimanjaro which is 5895 metres tall and it is right in front of the Serengeti, making a truly beautiful landscape. 2 million animals travel in the great migration or about 230,000 more than live in Barcelona, or the population of Chicago. The largest city, Dar Es Salam is almost 13 times as large as the capital city, Dodoma.

The average person from Switzerland has $560000. It is illegal to own a sin-

gle Guinea pig, as they are sociable, and owning one is viewed as harmful, so you must buy them in twos. Lake Constance has no borders, despite being on the border of 3 countries, including Switzerland. Bern is also technically not the capital city. There is nothing in the Swiss constitution that says Bern is the capital, just other countries have their embassies there and recognize it as such.

Turkmenistan was actually a former Soviet republic, and it was an integral part of the silk road to China.

News Tuvalu is a truly amazing country that most people have never even heard of.

It is only 26km^2 in area which makes it the 4th smallest country by land area, and its population of about 11,000. Its economy is driven by fishing and money from having the funny internet domain of .tv. The domain brings in about $5 million dollars a year, but as Tuvalu has the world’s smallest economy at 40-50 million dollars, this is about 10-15% of its tiny economy. Its queen is Elizabeth II and it has the Union Jack as its canton. It is about 3500km from even isolated New Zealand. Everyday, after flights stop, the airport turns into a massive playground. It is really in trouble because of climate change.

Uganda has the most entrepreneurs per capita. It is 15.4% water, which is a lot as it is landlocked, but it is also has many big lakes. 45 million people live there. President Museveni has been in power since 1981, or 39 years, and as he has brought peace to Uganda and beaten diseases, he has been given no term limit at all since 2017.

Kyiv, or Kiev’s Arsenalna station is the deepest metro station in the world as it plunges under the Dnieper river, which is very deep, and the station is different with its layout. Not only this, but it is 105.5 metres deep. For reference, Hampstead station is the deepest station on the London Underground at 58.5 metres deep, which is just over half. Much like another former Soviet republic in Estonia, Ukraine’s flag represents the summer landscape of the country, which is about the size of France, the yellow at the bottom are the cornfields in the country, whilst the top of the flag is the blue sky.

News Slovenia is home to the weirdly named town of Ptuj. Slovenia’s 2.5 million peo-

ple is as many live in the giant Sahara desert. Despite its tiny size, in both population and area, 2 of the world’s best goalkeepers are from there: Samir Handanovic and Jan Oblak. The Italian town of Trieste digs right in to Italy as a result of messy wars and it has part of Croatia surrounded by it. It also has a cave with the deepest vertical drop on the border with Italy, as it drops 608 metres, or about a ridiculous 67 metres taller than the one world trade centre in New York.

Venezuela’s inflation rate was almost 1.37 million% with the result that restaurants would not give the price of meals until after one ate. It also is disputing its border with much smaller and less populous neighbouring Guyana. The name of the country is actually of origin of the Italian word that Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci coined, ‘little venice’, not to be confused with Little Venice in Paddington in London, the word in question is Veneziola. It is also home to the world’s largest oil reserves. For some weird reason, the government has banned Coke Zero. Angel Falls is the world’s tallest waterfall, at 979 metres, or about 151 metres taller than the Burj Khalifa, and it plunges 807 metres, only 21 metres shorter than the Burj Khalifa Vietnam is shaped like an S and is probably one of many countries that are a lot larger than many people appreciate, as it is about 1650 km. For reference the UK’s most extreme points of Land’s End and John O’Groats are about 970 km away as-the-crow-flies. It used to be spelt Viet nam, with a space between the syllables. According to folklore in Vietnam, Vietnamese people are descended from dragons. 1 in 2 people have a motorbike, which must make it the motorbike centre of the world. That means about 45 million motorbikes out of a 98 million strong population. The Vietnamese Dong is the second least valuable

currency in the world at 1 dollars equalling 23,000 dong, second only to the Iranian rial at 1 to 42000 rial.

News Art Miguel from Year 8 did this lovely 3D hand ‘sculpture’ inspired by Kate MacDowell.

News Art Here are some lovely Bridget Riley inspired pieces by Year 6.

Clockwise from top left: Daniil Vasilyev Leyla Cilengiroglu Fritzy Fatlovskey Humphrey Boland

Mia Lipkin Susan Li Nora Masciaro

News ISA Young Musician Competition Success!

Portland Place Music Department are amazingly proud and pleased to congratulate Jemima-Frances Hyam in Year 9 for being awarded 3rd place in the middle school category of the ISA Young Musician Competition 2021. The standard of performances was exceptionally high with students of Independent Schools from the length and breadth of the country. The judges’ comments for Jemima’s performance complimented her on a “tremendous display of a variety of techniques and a wonderful rich tone - very enjoyable”.

Jemima has a prize on its way which we will present to her, along with her certificate!

Fantastic news and well done Jemima!

Sports report Land’s End to John O’Groats House Challenge The house competition will remain open until midnight on Sunday 7th March, so there’s still time to squeeze in a quick walk or a bike ride over the weekend! In next week’s newsletter we will publish the final standings and highlight the best performers throughout the school. There have been some amazing contributions from many of our students and we will be celebrating their efforts accordingly.

Miss Boyce’s Dance Challenge This challenge, for Years 6/7 & 8 saw pupils attempt to copy a dance set by Miss Boyce. A huge well done to all the students who put together a dance entry on video. It was a hard choice picking the winners, but Susan Li and Isabella Calvert-Bull showed great precision in their movements and were well-deserved winners of their age groups.

Susan Li

Year 6/7 Winner Susan Li (Year 6)

Year 8 Winner Isabella Calvert-Bull

Susan Li

Sports report Mr Kubik’s Football Challenge Over the last month PPS pupils have been attempting Mr Kubik's lockdown football skill challenge! The challenge required pupils to complete a specific keep up routine and would be judged on who completed the routine with the most skill, control, and composure. A huge well done to the following pupils who have won the lockdown football challenge for their respective year groups!

CHALLENGE WINNERS Year 6/7 - Jake Gadney Year 8 - Miles Sellens Flack Year 9 - Jessy Fryer Jacobs Year 10 - Jake Cossey

Mr Rider’s Netball & Basketball Challenge A late entry from Lana Tuite proved to be the best effort so far from any of our pupils. Isabelle Calvert-Bull and Rory Grosvenor deserve credit for improving on their first attempts, but Lana’s fluency and rhythm proved decisive and she wind the netball/basketball challenge. Rory’s use of a tennis ball certainly increased the difficulty. Runner-up prizes will be awarded to both Rory and Isabella. Well done to all that made an entry!

Year 9 - Lana Tuite Year 8—Isabella Calvert-Bull

Year 7—Rory Grosvenor

Sports report Mr Steward’s Rugby Challenge Despite a relatively low number of entries, the skills that were shown were of top quality, with a couple of our Year 8’s students, William Downing and Luke Ahrens, showing both standing and running skills and Ben White from Year 11 working with a partner to help increase his distance passing.

After watching the World Cup winning Number 8, Kieran Read some of our students used any target that they could find or make and used both rugby balls and toilet paper to show how accurate their passing was. With Rugby being part of the Curriculum when we re-enter the school, it will be something that we will assess to see who has the most accurate pass and what ways we can help progress

this.

All the students who sent in the videos have shown great skill and we are looking forward to pushing them to progress these skills in the next few weeks. Here are the top 3 entries, congratulations to William Downing, who has been judged to be the winner of the rugby skills challenge!

Year 8—William Downing Year 8—Luke Ahrens Year 11—Ben White

Luke Ahrens with a stack of “rugby balls”

William Downing

Ben White

Diary CLUBS 12:50-13:45

Monday

Chamber Choir - Room 1 - Miss Boyle

12:50—13:40

Y6-11 Table Tennis Club, PPS Hall

Friday

12:50—13:40

Y6-8 Drama Club, Drama Studio

12:50—13:50

GCSE Art Club, Miss Dever, H11

12:50—13:40

Y6-8 Book Club

12:50—13:40

Y6-11 Table Tennis Club, PPS Hall

12:50—13:40

Advanced Arabic, Ms Elshelmani, G41

12:50—13:40

Digital Theatre & Club, Drama Studio

12:50—13:40

Y11 GCSE Art Club, Ms Osborne, HH12 (invite only)

12:50—13:40

GCSE Spanish, Ms Magniez, G32

13:15—13:45

KS3 Science Journal & Book Club, H1

12:50—13:45

Vocal Ensemble, Ms Ryder, R1

12:55—13:40

UKMT Maths Challenge practice, G41

13:10—13:45

Y11 Science Revision (Biology), H1

Tuesday 12:50—13:35

Senior Weights Club (Y9-11), PPS Changing Rooms

12:50—13:45

GCSE French, Mr Lalande, G41

12:50—13:45

PPS Choir, Mr Hill & Miss Boyle, GPS Hall

13:00—13:45

Cyber Discovery (age 13+), Mr Whiteside, G34

13:15—13:45

KS3 STEM Club, Ms Robinson, H1

15:45—16:45

Japanese Club, Ms Eren, R36

15:45—16:45

Y11 GCSE Design Club, Ms Birtles, B1

15:50—17:00

Art Club, Ms Dever, H11

12:55—13:40

Look out for updated Y6-11 Fitness Training Club (HIIT/Circuit), Club &R11Enrichment PPS TERM DATES Spring Term 2021 GCSE Computer Science (Y11), G34 info Term starts Maths Puzzles, Mr Hill, G41 Monday 4 January

13:00—13:45

Russian Club, Ms Zalesny, R24

Half term

13:10—13:45

Y11 Science Revision (Physics), H1

End of term

15:45—16:30

KS3 Maths Club (Y6-9), R24

Summer Term 2021

15:45—16:30

GCSE Statistics & Additional Maths, G33

Term starts

15:45—16:30

Arabic Club, Mrs Elshlmani, R36

Bank holiday

16:00—17:00

Fencing, PPS Hall, meet PPS changing rooms 15:45

Wednesday 12:50—13:40 12:50—13:40

Thursday

Half term End of term

12:50—13:40

Y6-11 Dance Club, Rm 11

12:50—13:40

Y8-11 Creative Writing, Ms Baig/Ms O’Donnell

12:50—13:40

Mandarin Club, Ms Huang, PPS Hall

13:10—13:45

Y11 Science Revision (Chemistry), H1

15:45—16:30

Mon 15 Feb – Fri 19 Feb Thursday 1 April

Thursday 22 April Mon 3 May (school closed) Mon 31 May – Fri 4 June Friday 9 July

Autumn Term 2021 Term starts

Monday 6 September

KS4 Maths Club (Y10-11), G33

Half term

Mon 18 Oct – Fri 29 Oct

15:45—16:45

KS2/3 Design Technology Club, Mr Bradford, B1

End of term

Friday 10 December

15:50—17:00

Art Club, H10 & H11

Thank you for reading