Upton Update Summer 2020

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Update

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Upton

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Summer 2020

@UptonHouseSch

Special Features Peter Pan

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Music Tech

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Wellbeing

Welcome from Mrs Thornton As we ended last term we were just moving into lockdown and all that came with it. I remember writing with some natural apprehension about what was to come.

So much uncertainty in the world at that time, and in many ways there still is. I promised then that UptonHouse@Home would deliver normality in a time of uncertainty. I hope you will agree that we have, with your support, and with the to be applauded resilience of your children, achieved our aim. I am so proud of our Upton community. The children have excelled in their standard of work during this time, their diligence, creativity and adaptability. These are skills they will take with them and develop and use in life. Thank you every Uptonian. The Upton staff have truly given their all during this period. For us, this was personal. To deliver outstanding educational value and support was our core focus. Thank you, Upton team. Parents, thank you for your words of appreciation, your patience and assistance.

Our aim was to enable you to work as much as possible; not an easy task, especially with the younger children, but I hope UptonHouse@Home has supported you and also given you an exciting insight into our daily lessons and approach. You may have popped into a maths lesson with Mr Brown or an English lesson with Miss Solomon, or listened to story time with Mrs Broad or Miss Shaw.

Beginning our day every day TOGETHER, without exception, has certainly been a highlight for me. The odd blip such as Windsor’s complete power cut and a rapid relocation needed ten minutes before the start of assembly certainly made our hearts beat faster! I hope sharing time with us and us coming live on screen into your homes has brought us all even closer together as a community. There has never been a more important time to be a community.

As we look towards September, we plan with excitement for everyone to be back in school and our Upton family to be back together physically. There will be rules and guidelines to follow to keep everyone safe; we may still have assemblies online as we may not be able to hold school gatherings and we know there are restrictions to be implemented to adhere with government guidelines.

UptonHouse@Home will still be needed in September in various ways. The children are now experts. Our focus, whatever the September climate may be, will be to continue to deliver outstanding education and normality in this time of uncertainty.

Wishing you all a very happy and healthy summer holiday.

Rhian Thornton Headmistress

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Contents 2

Welcome

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Farewell Mr Brown

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Farewell Form 6

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Peter Pan

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Little Upton

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Music Tech & Music

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Wellbeing

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Welcome to the Team

Farewell Mr Brown Upton, helping dreams come true What an amazing three years it’s been. Setting out as a newly qualified teacher I never imagined that I would find somewhere as great as Upton.

The time at Upton delivered the role I was looking for. Gaining vital experience to running a department and managing a team – a lot to expect from my first post.

Also new to Upton herself, hearing Mrs Thornton’s ambition for the school and meeting the staff and children, who were all so friendly, bright and welcoming, I knew it was the place for me. I was thrilled when I received the offer and thankful that Mrs Thornton saw my potential giving me the opportunity to achieve my goals.

It was all go from the very first term, with maths week straight after my first half term. With the support of the staff, pupils and parents it was a huge success. It was my chance to talk to everyone about how I was going to work with the children to develop their independence in grappling maths problems and how making mistakes was ok and not be afraid to try.

The children have been the highlight of my time at Upton, their enthusiasm and excitement in helping make maths cool and something everyone can do will be my greatest memory.

It was always my dream to travel and work at an international school and without these wonderful 3 years at Upton it wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you.

Thomas Brown

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Farewell Form 6 The best assembly of the term took place on the last day of term bringing us all together to say a virtual goodbye to our wonderful Form 6. We looked back at each of the girls time at Upton and they shared with us their dreams for the future. From astronaut to artist, engineer to teacher we know that they have talent and drive to achieve anything they set their minds to.

They were waved off by all the teachers and staff in school along with their families where they were picked up by a big yellow duck to start their afternoon of fun with duck tours, ice cream, pizza and cooling off at Liquid Leisure. Congratulations girls and good luck!

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Form 6, who are a very important part of the Upton family, have left us. We wish you all the most wonderful adventures ahead in your new senior schools. We very much look forward to seeing you all back at Upton for the red carpet premier of ‘Peter Pan’.

Rhian Thornton Headmistress

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Peter Pan …the show will go on.

This term, as we know, has been unlike any other in Upton history and it has brought about many challenges that we have all had to navigate through. One such challenge for me was wondering how I could deliver an entire musical whilst teaching behind a screen! Drama is such a practical lesson that it seemed almost impossible, however, I love a challenge. As we began rehearsals it became apparent that my ‘ambitious’ idea was going to be the most complex task I have ever undertaken as a drama teacher. I taught the children the music and choreography using Teams and often had to take their word for it that they knew the tune as I couldn’t have them all unmuted. For the first time ever, we also wanted to include Transition and Form 1, which was such a lovely addition to our cast.

I then had to look logistically at how I was going to achieve consistency across the board with the videos that were being recorded so spent two weeks putting together the parent information pack, which hopefully held all the answers to most of the questions that arose.

Mrs Lewin and I worked together to come up with backdrop ideas and she worked tirelessly to create individual background resource packs for the entire cast. Mrs Webb joined me to work on ideas for costumes and after three hours online shopping helped me put the packs together for collection. In total we sent home 340 backgrounds for the whole school and just under 80 costumes for the Form 6 girls.

The children then made their wonderful backgrounds at home and began filming - we have seen some incredible costumes and make-up in the videos you have submitted, so thank you parents. The Form 6 girls filmed their scenes complete with clapper boards and green screens, and they recorded their vocals professionally, so I have a good mix of sound when it comes to editing. The children’s talent has shone through in their videos and just goes to show what we can achieve, even in the face of adversity when we all work together.

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So, what’s the next step?

I will now begin editing our full-length musical together over the summer break. I will be teaching myself how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, software used by most professional filmmakers (eek!) and will hopefully have it ready for our return in September. It will be difficult, I will certainly go slightly insane listening to the same songs over and over again, but I can assure you the end product will be magical.

It will be such a joyous occasion when we are all able to watch our amazing children shine like the stars they are.

I would like to personally thank you for your co-operation and support in this endeavour and I look forward to bringing you into the world of Peter Pan! Jessica Duncan Head of Drama

Pre-Nursery This term's topic was "All about me and ourselves". The children sent in lots of lovely photographs of their families and pets which we displayed on our topic board.

They continued their learning journey at home, learning about their bodies, their senses and feelings. Also learning about good hygiene and how germs are spread!

They continued to learn about colours with our colour of the week showing great investigation skills. They participated in shapes and number hunts and did some lovely mark making.

We were lucky to have some children back for a few weeks before the term ended. It was lovely to see them learn and play once again in the Pre-Nursey.

The children who stayed home continued their learning journey at home and it was lovely to see their photographs and videos on Tapestry.

Nursery What a weird and wonderful term the summer turned out to be.

The children experienced the challenge of learning and exploring remotely and engaged enthusiastically with activities and videos sent home via email and our online Tapestry learning platform. They have looked at dinosaurs, space, pirates, castles, hospitals and the seashore. In May they took part in a remote collective event, riding their bicycles and scooters for a challenge of their choice and raising a phenomenal amount of money for the Alexander Devine charity.

With the introduction of ‘bubble’ groups some of the children were able to return to school on June 1st and enjoyed being together again with their friends. The children at home were able to share pictures and the fun of joining in the end of term Singsong.

Transition Such a busy, fun-filled term for Transition starting off with one of our most favourite topics so far, dinosaurs! The children fully embraced this topic whilst getting to grips with a whole new way of learning. It was fabulous to see all the learning happening at home… we had dinosaur handprints, letters to mummy dinosaur when a mysterious egg appeared in the classroom one night and some amazing model dinosaurs. Such creative children in Transition!

The next focus was mini beasts and it is clear we have some budding entomologists amongst us. We explored bees, caterpillars, butterflies, snails, slugs, ants and ladybirds in detail and we have honed our observational skills spotting mini beasts everywhere we go. Our final topic of the school year was under the sea. We have become deep sea divers imagining what we can see in the depths of the ocean and I think we have all learnt at least one new weird and wonderful sea creature that we never even knew existed! A term full of hard work, fun and laughter.

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Music Tech

Music

Mr McEvoy’s launch of Music Technology In September I will be taking on a new role as Head of Music Technology, introducing what I very much hope will be an inspiring new curriculum to Upton House School. I am extremely excited at the prospect of sharing with our children the infinite possibilities of music production using a range of different technologies including GarageBand, Logic Pro X and iMovie.

Online music learning has been an exciting adventure. Children have been learning piano skills through various music software and using an online piano. We studied music from film and learnt many songs, actions and dances.

The wonderful thing about Music Technology is that it is COMPLETELY ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL STUDENTS, regardless of whether they consider themselves to be ‘musical’, or indeed whether they can play a musical instrument or not. Making decisions about the soundscape they create is as simple as choosing which colours to use when drawing.

Children also had a chance to learn about the history of music and its grand masters, such as Beethoven. Most one-to-one music lessons also continued online and even an online in-house music exams were being held for some very keen musicians. All children had an opportunity to interact with their teachers and continued progressing and reaching their goals.

I very much hope to integrate the children’s compositions with other areas of the curriculum, for example creating backing tracks for English or history presentations, adding music to animation projects, musical representations of artwork, setting music to short movies or even producing music videos! Naturally, this will involve a high level of creativity and will also allow the children to explore the worlds of songwriting and scriptwriting.

I cannot wait to get started after the October half term!

Craig McEvoy

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Olya Shafikova Head of Music

Wellbeing Supporting our wellbeing this term.

Looking after the wellbeing of our community has always been at the heart of Upton. This term, as we have faced such an unprecedented time of change and uncertainty, UptonHouse@Home has offered active ways for our children and families to support their emotional health via our weekly wellbeing lessons.

From Transition to Form 6 the children have enjoyed practising how to pause and focus on building positive connections with themselves.

Engaging in different creative activities, the children have developed self-awareness skills, explored different emotions, thinking of strategies that help self-regulate and enable them to make positive choices to boost resilience. In building a child’s

understanding of themselves it helps them to connect so they can support their learning and growth, laying strong foundations for the future.

It has been a joy to see how the children have engaged with the activities each week, building their own emotional toolkit to take forward and use across any challenge ahead. In addition to our wellbeing lessons, our Thursday wellbeing assemblies have given the children the chance to learn a new breathing or mindful exercise. Practicing how to pause and focus on our breathing can bring a sense of physical calm to our body that allows our mind to settle. You will find some of these exercises, along with other useful resources, within our extended ‘Family Support and Wellbeing’ pages on

the school website. Regular resources and information are posted via our Twitter account. Two specially recorded parent presentations were delivered via Teams at the start of term and as part of Mental Health Awareness week in May, addressing key issues for parents to support their family’s wellbeing at this time.

Wellbeing is an active process of awareness, reflection, curiosity, testing and patience: learning to tune into our unique inner voice to listen and to use our superpowers. Learn how to use them to help ourselves, each other and the world around us. We are never too young to start!

Anna Hewitt

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Welcome to the Team It’s a welcome back to the Prep department to Miss Sarah Smith as Form teacher for Form 3S, she will be working alongside Miss Jessican Smith who will be Form 3J teacher. Miss Sarah Smith has worked at Upton previously as Head of Modern Foreign Languages and Head of Humanities. She is an experienced class teacher and the two Miss Smiths will make a talented, experienced and caring team in Form 3.

and Librarian. Miss Bonnage is also extremely sporty so we cannot wait to add her skills to our talented sporting team.

Our Nursery team is also growing and we’re delighted to appoint two new members of staff. Mrs Carlie Shillcock and Miss Chloe Timberlake join us in September and we look forward to having them on board.

Another fabulous addition to the Prep Department is Miss Maxine Bonnage who will join in September as a new Teaching Assistant

Mrs Shillcock

Miss Smith

Miss Bonnage

Miss Timberlake

“As an Upton parent, I’m so excited to now be joining the Upton teaching team in September. I can’t wait to meet all the children!”

“It’s great to be back and I look forward to working with our new Form 3S!”

“I am excited to be joining Upton because I can’t wait to meet and work with all of the children as well as being a part of the wonderful staff team. I have a passion for playing hockey and I currently represent Windsor Hockey Club Ladies 1s team and will be Captain from this season going forward.”

“I am extremely excited to join the Upton House Team, and look forward to meeting all of the children, staff and parents.”

Upton House School

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