Head's Weekly Review - 10 May 19 - Issue 28

10 May 2019 - Issue 3

HEAD’S

WEEKLY REVIEW

Roedean’s Brighton Festival Fringe Concert – Outstanding!

Please see page 3

Children's Parade

Head’s Introduction It is less than a week since the outstanding Brighton Festival Fringe Concert last Saturday, and I want to congratulate everyone involved on a remarkable achievement. The choir was brilliant, the orchestra was brilliant, and the nine soloists were exceptional. We are so fortunate to be exposed so regularly to music of this calibre, and we must constantly remind ourselves that this not the norm in schools; well done again to Kamali, Martha, Scarlett, Ava, Freya, Jacqueline, Amelie, Zarbanu, Sorcha, and of course Ms Bartlette, Mr Rous, and Miss Fewkes.

Good luck to our two public exam year groups who have started their Study Leave this week. On Tuesday, Year 11 had a lovely Assembly where Mrs Robins handed out funny awards and showed videos, and this was followed by a fantastic dinner in the Studios. Year 11 Study Leave began on Wednesday, but it has been great to see that a good number are choosing to revise in School, where they can touch base with their teachers and have individual support sessions.

Year 13 have had Art Exams all week and Modern Languages orals, and their Study Leave started today. We had Leavers’ Chapel and Handshaking at 12:00, and then a formal lunch with their tutors

Class of 20 l9

Please see page 4

and teachers. There was a wonderful atmosphere, with awards from the girls, lots of laughs, a few tears, and many memories. Good luck for the coming weeks!

The Year 9 and 10 Academic Mentoring presentations on Wednesday were of an incredibly high standard. It is always amazing to see what the girls choose to research when they are given free rein, and they had all also worked on presentation skills, which was clear. Well done to all the girls, and to Miss Boobis for leading the process and guiding the girls through it.

Rehearsals for Peter Pan are well underway, and we will have an early preview of a snippet tomorrow on Open Day. It was also wonderful to welcome well over 30 Year 5 and 7 girls this week for deferred entry testing - they are hoping to secure places now for Year 7 and 9 in September 2020. In addition to the testing, they will be joining us for taster lessons in a range of subjects next week.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and good luck to the F24 Car Club who will be racing at Goodwood on Sunday.

10 May 2019 - Issue 3

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW

Huge success for Year 9 and Year 10 students in the Royal Society for Biology's Biology Challenge 2019 This year, over 45,000 students took part nationally in the Royal Society for Biology's Biology Challenge 2019 and here at Roedean, all of our Year 10 students took part and Year 9s who wanted to take the challenge took part.

We have had some fantastic results - 83 of our students have achieved an award (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Highly Commended and Commended). We have one Gold Award winner - Isabel G in Year 10.

She has done so well to achieve this - she is in the top 5% of students who took the competition.

We have 14 Silver awards (including for 2 Year 9 students - Gina D and Edie F) and 20 Bronze awards.

Litter-Picking Volunteers When two boarders sign out to go to The Pier, you could be forgiven for thinking they are taking a break from revision and want the thrill of a ride or two today… not in House 2! After they asked to borrow some gardening gloves(!), it turns out that they have joined a voluntary litter-picking group and they go to help clean up our beaches at the weekend. What absolute legends, and they weren’t going to say a word to anyone! Well done, Carol L and Christine S (Yr11)

News of Friends A Boarding Taster Galina B (Yr7), who is a day girl, enjoyed a few days of boarding in House 1 last week. On the Wednesday night, we decorated cupcakes and then ate them whilst watching a film. She had a great time!

JWL

Congratulations to OR Miztli Rose (Cadena, No. 4, 2000-07) who is bringing her debut comedy sketch show to the Brighton Fringe as a work-in-progress.

Miztli’s show Top Secret House Party! Will be showing at The Pipeline on 18 and 19 May at 3.30pm. The show is an hour long, and, as it is a work-inprogress, tickets are free. The show is suitable for over 12s and Miztli would love to see some members of the Roedean Community in the audience! You can read more here: https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/ladylikes-top-secret-houseparty-130314/

Students and Staff present

An Evening of Song for Charity On Friday 17 May, Dr Barrand and a number of students, including Sorcha, Zarbanu, Ava, Amelie, and others are presenting an evening of song in the Old Ref, with cheese and wine. The tickets are free, but all donations will go to St Mark’s. We will be very fortunate to be accompanied by Mr Rous and Mr Hawkes, and the concert will include songs by Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles.

Unsung heroes in the spotlight Each week, many wonderful things happen at Roedean, about which many in the school are perhaps unaware; this section of the weekly review is dedicated to ‘unsung heroes’, in order to draw our attention to these people and remind us that our community is special.

Mr Hardy, one week overdue, for being so helpful and cheery at the weekend during lockdown – it was much appreciated! [MMG and MDC]

Mr Fletcher for coming in on Sunday mornings to teach Maths to a small group of Year 13s [TKE]

If you would like to come, please book a ticket through www.roedeantheatre.co.uk so that we have an idea of numbers. We hope to see lots of you there!

Page 2

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW

10 May 2019 - Issue 3

Roedean’s Brighton Festival Fringe Concert – Outstanding!

This is the 16th year that Roedean has held a large-scale concert as part of the Brighton Festival Fringe, and we are delighted to be part of the largest Arts Festival in England, to which 400,000 visitors come each year. The concerts are outstanding every year, so we have a reputation to maintain, but this year’s concert in the School’s beautiful Chapel did not disappoint!

The performance started with the incredibly wellknown and powerful Prelude from Charpentier’s Te Deum, and this was followed three choral movements from the same work. The massed choir which brings together the Roedean girls with singers from the local community sang with great confidence and skill.

Each year, this concert is a showcase for the School’s most talented musicians, who have the rare opportunity to play a concerto movement with a full orchestra. The first soloist was Kamali (Yr11) who played the Romance from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D Minor. The opening melody is unusually exposed, with the piano playing without any orchestral accompaniment, but this is soon followed by a turbulent second episode. Kamali played beautifully, and her dexterity in this section was exceptional.

The Hummel Theme and Variations for Oboe were played next by Martha (Yr13). After a reflective introduction, the bright theme is introduced. The set of variations on this theme become increasingly difficult – Martha presented

the different tonal colours wonderfully, and the finale was spectacular, ending on a bright top F. The next player was Scarlett (Yr11), who performed the Allegro Molto from Kabalevsky’s Violin Concerto in C Major. The piece was challenging, both for the soloist and the orchestra, and it was a delight to hear how well they coped with it. The Kabalevsky was followed by another twentieth century piece, by Gershwin – Someone to Watch Over Me is an iconic song which has been performed by such stellar singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and Ava (Yr11) completely mastered the jazzy feel needed to pull it off, showing great control and excellent diction.

The final solo concerto movement, the fiendishly difficult Allegro Molto Appassionato from Mendelssohn’s E Minor Violin Concerto, was performed brilliantly by Freya (Yr13). She showed excellent control when presenting the beautiful melody, and in the cadenza, and the grand finale of the movement was full of panache. It was an excellent performance.

The main choral piece was the hugely famous Vivaldi Gloria in D Major. Although the piece is normally performed by a mixed choir, it may have originally been written for female voices, and this explains the fact that all the solo parts are for soprano or alto. The movements for full choir were complemented beautifully by the solo movements, the first of which, Laudamus

Page 3

Te, is a duet for two sopranos. Jacqueline and Amelie (Yr11) sang wonderfully, and their voices blended in perfect harmony, beginning with a question and answer theme. This was mirrored later in the fifth movement, Domine Deus, Rex Coelestis – Zarbanu (Yr13) performed the beautifully undulating line, moving in thirds with the solo oboe part, played by Martha. The last solo movement, Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris¸ requires exceptional vocal dexterity by the alto soloist, and Sorcha (Yr13) showed that she was more than up to the challenge with her confident performance. Congratulations to all of the soloists and choir members – the Gloria is so well-known that there is nowhere to hide, and the performance was excellent.

At the end, as has become a bit of a tradition, the Year 13 leaving musicians bade farewell to Roedean Music symbolically by singing to the Director of Music – their mash-up of You’ll Never Walk Alone and Climb Every Mountain was incredibly appropriate for a teacher who has always been able to draw the very highest standards out of them and been such an influential figure in their musical careers.

Congratulations to all the performers, and to the conductors Sophia Bartlette, Ben Rous, and to our seemingly indefatigable Director of Music, Veronica Fewkes. It was an outstanding concert… again – well done!

RB

10 May 2019 - Issue 3

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW

Year 9 and 10 Pupils Negotiate An Entangled World This year’s Academic Mentoring Project presented the girls with a challenge: conduct research within the theme of ‘An Entangled World’. Pupils rose to the challenge beautifully, with ideas spanning an impressively diverse range of topics from Women in Cinema to Psychopathy (perhaps a

little frequently!), from Media Bias to The Placebo Effect, and from Cancer to Unusual Art. The 15 pupils who presented did so with confidence, ownership, and clear enjoyment of the material they had researched. Some talks were inspirational, a call to arms, whilst others were illuminating and insightful. The audience was much enriched for having heard them, with one student commenting, ‘Those were so good! I learned so much’, and a teacher telling me, ‘I couldn’t get bored, the topics were all just too interesting!’ Congratulations to all the pupils involved: you exhibited a wide variety of scholarly behaviours that will stand you in very good stead as you progress through your studies.

Well done!

HBO

Golds for Pearl!

Congratulations to Pearl P (Yr7) who competed at the Chailey Dance Festival last weekend – she did brilliantly, and won 2 Gold and 1 Silver medal for her quartet and solo dances.

Well done!

Children’s Parade Last Saturday was the annual Children's Parade in Brighton, and Roedean was lucky enough to have their own unique way of participating.

The parade has been running for over 25 years and involves over 5000 local school children, who design and make their own show stopping floats and costumes, and then parade around Brighton's vibrant streets.

green and covered with the students’ hand prints.

It took several weeks to complete from start to finish, but was certainly worth it in the end.

This year, the Roedean Art Scholars were honoured to help St Mark's Primary School construct and decorate their float, based on the fable 'the tortoise and the hare’. The float was covered in layers of paper mâché, painted in vivid

Congratulations to the Art department and Scholars for giving up your time to support such an exciting and positive event in the local community.

GWI

The float looked incredible, and it was viewed by around 10,000 people who came along to see the parade and be part of the largest annual children’s event in the UK.

Roedean Netballers at the K2 Congratulations to three Year 7 netballers, whose team, Fiveways Blacks, won the West Sussex netball league at K2! The girls have worked really hard at training this season and have gelled well as a team. In winning, the have beaten their arch rivals, Pied Piper. The Roedean girls are Elsie F, Katie L, and Lilah O. Their coach, Helen Weaver, was delighted with their performance: ‘I am bursting with pride for the team. All I could think about today was how much they have grown this year as young women and developed into such a lovely team and it's been such a privilege to witness that and get to know them all. They came out with such fight and passion and rounded off a great season with style!’

Year 12 enjoying their horse riding lesson during games Page 4

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW

U13A vs Hurst

The U13 Division 1 team had a close match against Hurst. Both Amy N and Nia S demonstrated some brilliant rallies in their singles matches. They played fantastic forehands and backhands, making it harder for their opponents to return. The scores were 6-0 and a close 7-5 to Hurst. Both Isabelle B and Amelia K showed some brilliant teamwork in their doubles match, which resulted in a confident 6-3 win.

Amelia K performed brilliantly in her singles and was applying pressure to her opponent by hitting deep shots, and she won 6-2. Isabelle B performed some fantastic shots, in particular her forehand groundstrokes were consistent throughout so well done! Both Nia S and Amy N showed great determination throughout their doubles game, but Hurst was hitting clean winners throughout. Overall, there was some brilliant tennis played, so who well to all! The final score was Hurst 8-Roedean 4.

U15A & U15B

Tennis U15A vs Hurst

The U15 Division 1 team had a good competitive match against Hurst. In the singles, all girls were having strong baseline rallies and showed great determination throughout. Both Lucy P and Scarlett R had a very close result with Hurst, just winning both their singles matches 6-4. Both doubles matches had brilliant rallies and some great net play. Sophia C & Delphine C lost 6-3, and Scarlett R & Lucy P just lost in the tie break, so it was a close match. All girls showed some great resilience – well done to all four players.

U15B vs Hurst

The U15 Division 2 team had a good match versus Hurst. The girls played solid groundstrokes throughout and served brilliantly. It was clear to see that Hurst had some strong players. Both doubles matches were of good quality and all the girls demonstrated some fantastic forehands and backhands. In particular, a special mention should go to Molly M for her brilliant backhand cross court shots. Overall, the result was 12-0 to Hurst, but Roedean demonstrated some great play throughout and should be pleased with how they played. A huge well done to Louie H, Molly M, Marina C, & Hanna F.

U13A

High Jump Session

JJ WHAT’S COMING UP IN THE

There is a specialist High Jump session being run by Dr Barrand on Wednesday 15 May in Activity 2 slot for anyone interested in this event.

KWA

Mon 13 May

U14A,B&C Tennis vs Lingfield (A)

Wed 15 May

Years 7&8 Athletics at Hurst Prep (A)

We welcome contributions from all parts of the Roedean community.

If you have something you would like featured in the Headmaster’s Weekly Review, please email: marketing@roedean.co.uk

WEEK AHEAD?

U13A Cricket vs Worth (H) U12A,B&C Cricket vs Burgess Hill (H)

Fri 17 May

Years 7-11 combined Athletics at K2

Sat 18 May

Years 9,10&12 Senior House Cricket

An Evening of Song – charity concert with Dr Barrand and students

Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award Practice Expedition

Follow us

@RoedeanSchool

@RoedeanSchool