Duke of Edinburgh Award Winners! 6

Lakeland Waterpark Adventures!

Over the weekend 23rd-25th September, Miss Watkins, Mr Bell and Miss Smith accompanied by 27 intrepid explorers from year 9 headed on their waterpark residential. The three day long trip was an outdoor extravaganza based at Coniston in the Lake District and was the opportunity for students and staff alike to challenge themselves and push themselves out of their comfort zone in front of a beautiful backdrop of rolling hills and stunning waterfalls.

The journey up to Coniston was windy but scenic and the group were pleased to be met with flat terrain and a mere jump into the beautiful 13th century house where they called home for the weekend, compared to the Snowdon-esque climb they had endured on their Langdale residential! The first evening was mainly organisational with pupils sorting themselves into their dorms, enjoying some dinner and deciding which of the four groups would take on the washing up first. After, genuinely, no grumbles regarding the chores list, the group headed outside for a game of hide and seek in the dark. The teachers were crowned winners on night 1 and night 2, only being found by one group respectively and the pupils learnt the value of looking behind walls, where the teachers had been hiding in plain sight the whole time. The Saturday and Sunday saw the group splitting into three sub teams to take on one of three activities on a rotation; a canoe tour, a tree top high ropes course or a Ghyll scramble. The canoeing session was met with beautiful sunshine but a harsh wind led to some aching arms. Fear not however, it was nothing a quick swim in Coniston Lake and some jumping from rock formations couldn’t cure and led to new experiences, laughter and some close misses. Maia Ramos impressed through holding her breath under the freezing cold water for the longest. The treetops rope course challenged pupils to jump off 35m poles with nothing but their classmates to protect them and as the confidence and pride of the pupils grew, as did the beams on their faces. Harry Su and John Lugares particularly impressed the Coniston staff through their determination to overcome their fear of heights and Oskar Ziaja took it all in his stride being the first to throw himself into activities. The final activity, the Ghyll scramble, was the most physically demanding and required pupils to climb up waterfalls against the crushing flow of water! The students absolutely excelled and we saw beautiful moments of teamwork and kindness as stronger members of the group threw their hands down to help pull other pupils up some of the more challenging stretches, most notably Prosper Obidi, Josh Scoynes and Danielle Adora. The Sunday afternoon saw smiles all round as pupils received their certificates of achievement. Miss Watkins was caught shedding a tear or two at how proud she was of her old year group and hopes firmly that those who found a natural talent, Cindy Nwanonobi, or even just caught the outdoor bug, Akim Abubakar, continue to explore this moving forward.

A Trip Around the World at OLHS

On Friday 30th September, Our Lady’s celebrated Languages Day. This was an opportunity for the entire community to celebrate the broad and diverse linguistic and cultural diversity that makes Our Lady’s such a unique and dynamic place to learn and work. Miss Watkins started off proceedings, delivering assemblies to all year groups on the importance of language learning. She shocked pupils with worldwide statistics relating to languages but it was the realisation that 60% of the Our Lady’s community have an awareness of another language, with 70 languages present amongst us, that really won over the hearts and minds of pupils.

On the Friday itself, pupils had the opportunity to take part in one of two competitions. The first was a languages themed bake off competition, which saw beautiful cakes adorned with language, flags and even a very impressive attempt at an Eiffel Tower! Miss Roe and Mr Menga were blown away and crowned Lily Agnew and Celestyn Mbagwu joint winners for their efforts. During the afternoon, Miss Watkins was accompanied by pupils from around the school who were given a table in the hall and were challenged with representing their culture, country, language or religion of choice in a way that felt appropriate to them. In total 18 different stalls were entered with pupils choosing to represent; Poland, Islam, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Congo, Spain, France, Sweden, Pakistan, Portugal, India, Italy, Germany, Ghana, Jamaica, Philippines, Equitorial Guinea and Ukraine. Staff and pupils had the opportunity to move around

the stalls and learn about the different places on display from the experts themselves and were delighted with the sights, smells, tastes and information that was presented. Whilst all pupils did a wonderful job, judges crowned Nigeria the winning team with Poland in a close second and the Philippines and India sharing third place. A wonderful day had by all!