Sixth Life

The Lower Sixth Art and English students set off for the first field trip of the school year on Friday 10th September. They stayed overnight at Cot Valley YHA, visited Priest’s Cove, St Ives and took walks in the surrounding beautiful Zennor Moor. With a focus on learning more about Abstraction and Modernism, the trip included an enjoyable night walk, a visit to the Tate Gallery, and the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden. Sixth Form artists draw inspiration from their Cape Cornwall trip.

Huge congratulations to Louis Murray, who has risen up the squash rankings to claim the number 1 spot in England at Under 17 level, adding this accolade to his recent victory at the highly competitive Under 19s South West Regional Championships, a feat all the more impressive given he is still only 16 years old.

Louis, a Lower Sixth student at Truro School, has put in a vast amount of work over the last few years, training relentlessly throughout lockdowns and managing this alongside his GCSEs and his transition into A-Levels. However, the commitment to his goals has paid off, and he is reaping the rewards of his hard work now the season has reopened.

Louis now aspires to go to undergraduate college in the USA as a student-athlete so he can further his academic and sporting potential. Tim Smith, Truro School Squash Coach, said, “Louis’ greatest asset is his unrelenting will to compete and win. to detail is what separates him from his closest peers.”

Dan Sanderson, Director of Sport, commented, “We are very proud to have Louis at our school, and we are very excited to hear about his latest success. Truro School squash coach Tim Smith is preparing the boys for another crack at the national title, and the team are hoping to go one better than the 2nd place finish in 2019. With Louis in his current form and the return of other key players from injury, it could well be their year!”

Ranked No. 1 in England (U17s); Boys U19s Southwest Regional Champion (aged 16)

Boys U17s and U19s Cornish Junior Champion (aged 16)

Represented Cornwall senior team (aged 15)

Played professional Challenger Tour tournaments as a wildcard

Compassion sits at the heart of our school and our Methodist foundation. This is also a season where we think about those who do not have such easy access to nourishing food. Harvest is a time when we gather together to help those who need support.

Our Charity Prefects, Katie and Lara, held an assembly to talk about our Charity Day charities. The Charity Committee is a studentled committee who research different charities and vote on which ones the school will support each term. He is always looking for new ways to fine-tune and improve, while his attention

As a component of their Leiths professional cookery qualification, Upper Sixth students have to plan, prepare and host a large themed canapé party. This year, the students decided on a ‘Christmas Market’ theme, and have spent the past three weeks trialling and tasting canapes, designing packaging and making decorations.

100 special guests were invited to experience carol singing, warming mulled wine and orange-spiced mince pies outside on arrival, before being invited to walk through the Christmas market to choose a selection of savoury canapés to parcel up and take home to enjoy. From seared venison with celeriac puree on chestnut rosti to thyme crackers with blue cheese, spiced poached pear and honeycomb, the flavours and attention to detail were delicious and creative.

Guests were then invited to visit Santa’s corner, where Father Christmas and his Elf gave everyone a beautifully packaged gift containing a selection of dainty desserts, such as Baileys panna cotta with dark-chocolate ganache, almond praline, tiny spiced apple meringue tarts and homemade mint-and-whitechocolate macarons.

Without a doubt, this was a canapé party to remember and provided the Leiths students with the perfect opportunity to thank staff for all their hard work this year.

Our Upper Sixth Geologists completed their fieldwork and, in spite of the weather forecast, managed to dodge the showers!

They spent the day visiting Crooklet Beach, in Bude, where they mapped the folding and completed a graphic log of the rocks before heading off to Millook Haven to study the world-famous chevron folding.

Nails were bitten and nerves were wracked at the hottest lunchtime ticket: the Sixth Form House Quiz. With Vinter pitched against House, the packed audience was left on the edge of their seats. After storming to an initial lead, the Vinter Team played their joker card but failed to answer two Venice-themed questions correctly.

Glimpsing a chance to claw back a lead, the School Team rose to the occasion with a succession of correct answers. Sadly for School, it wasn’t quite enough, and the Vinter Team managed to hold on to their lead, with a narrow 60-50 victory.

Lower Sixth art students visited Falmouth Art Gallery to view the current Lucian Freud exhibition ‘Unholy Trinity’.

Our Sixth Form students celebrated in ‘Covid-safe’ style at the annual Christmas party. It was an evening filled with festive cheer, lots of good food and a range of great games in the absence of dancing.

It was lovely to see the Sixth Formers able to celebrate together again, and it was clear that everyone had an enjoyable evening.

A pre-season camp was held at Ashbury Manor in the last week of the holidays.

The focus was on football and golf but, with an abundance of other activities on offer, it kept our pupils busy and tired them out.

The pupils had three days of strength and conditioning, football attacking play, 27 holes of golf, basketball, snooker, darts, ten-pin bowling and badminton, to name a few.

Mr Hooper, who organised the tour, said it was a pleasure to be on the trip with the pupils. Their behaviour was impeccable, which got them noticed by the staff at Ashbury Manor. Well done all.

The Lower Sixth Geology students completed the first fieldwork day of their A-Level course.

The first part of the morning, they were taught basic field skills such as taking a back bearing, reading grid references, pacing, and how to complete a rock description. They quickly picked up these skills, and the students were then able to put their skills into action. The rest of the day was filled with practical sessions on the beach. They studied a raised beach deposit, a submerged forest and an unconformity which provided evidence for relative sea-level change in the past in Cornwall.

The students had a great day putting all that they’ve learned in the classroom into practice.

Well done to our talented Upper Sixth drama students who performed their A-Level devised show in the Burrell Theatre.

The students performed three shows titled ‘Fish Finger Sandwich’, ‘Styx’ and ‘Slow Collapse of the Future’.

Our DT entrepreneurs pitched their design ideas to a panel of experts in the hope of securing their valuable feedback. Students were tasked with developing, improving and exploring their designs before entering the den (aka the Heseltine Gallery) and communicating their plan to the dragons, including our Chair of Governors, Richard Thomas.

The event provided valuable insight into professional designers’ expectations, and presented the students with positive feedback in advance of their final product.

Our Sixth Form psychology class has been exploring the holism reductionism debate through the analogy of an orange. The students moved from exploring a holistic view - looking at the orange as a whole and thinking about its environment, the community and systems involved in getting the orange to us - through to the levels of analysis in line with the reductionist debate.

The lowest level required analysis of the orange’s structure, and there were some fantastic images of the ‘juicy’ fruit. Focusing on the idea of conditions, such as phobias, allowed the students to consider the application of the debate to real examples of behaviour. Who knew you could do so much with an orange?

The new Sixth Form Diploma launched this term, to support our students with a guided framework of exciting opportunities within supracurricular, personal growth and leadership and service.

The Diploma, built around the core A-Level offering, is designed to be choice-driven, enabling students to more easily evidence their achievements and developments whilst providing them with valuable skills beyond schooling or qualifications. This week our Sixth Formers have been in the driving seat, taking part in car maintenance, learning basic diving skills, cooking up a storm in the seasonnaires course, getting to grips with self-defence, and much more.

Courage and curiosity were on display at a recent Mandarin Class here at Truro School.

Mandarin is available as an option for the newly launched Sixth Form Diploma. Designed to be run around the core academic curriculum, the Diploma offers Sixth Formers the opportunity to document their development and explore areas of interest within supra-curricular, personal growth, leadership and service. The Mandarin Classes, led by Mrs Monnier-Gilchrist, allow students to develop their spoken and written Mandarin. It was great to see the names students had created for themselves - which they felt expressed their personality best - and, as the lesson progressed, how each student grew in confidence within the language.

One student, Olly, explained why he had chosen this option for his Diploma: “Mandarin is a very popular language globally. I want to travel abroad, so modern languages like French and German and, increasingly, Mandarin, are incredibly important.”