Heads weekly report 13 01 2017 v5

13th January 2017 - Issue 2

HEAD’S

WEEKLY REVIEW

Head’s Introduction The first snow for some years arrived at Roedean yesterday and caused huge excitement, particularly with some of our boarders who had not seen snow before.

The forecast freezing conditions meant that the school sent the day buses home early and I hope everyone had a safe journey. I am pleased to report, as I write this, that we have been largely unaffected today, and the girls have taken any changes in their stride.

We will be welcoming our largest cohort of girls to Roedean tomorrow to sit their entrance papers, and I am grateful to the girls and my colleagues for the part they will play in making this a friendly and positive experience.

The Scholars’ Evening at the end of last week was a fantastic occasion when students in all years had the chance to demonstrate the results of combining hard work with passion and talent. I spoke about Roedean’s view that every girl here should enjoy ‘the adventure of scholarship’. It was a lovely evening, enjoyed by the girls and their families, and I was delighted and proud to present the new scholars with their badges and certificates.

Roedean – a winter wonderland!

Pamela Cookey Masterclass On Wednesday, Year 7 and Year 8 were lucky enough to have a Netball masterclass session led by the ex-international and Superleague Netball player, Pamela Cookey.

Pamela led an inspirational presentation in the morning for our Sport Scholars, where the girls enjoyed the opportunity to have pictures taken and ask Pamela about her topflight career in Netball. She then led two very interesting coaching sessions and allowed the girls to practise what they had learnt.

Emphasis was made on ballhandling and denying space to the opposing player. The girls responded brilliantly to her, and I am sure they learned a lot from the session.

In the afternoon, the Year 9 National School squad had some expert tips given to them from the ex-international, and they concentrated on driving on to the ball, keeping the fast and flat pass down the court, and how to handle pressure and working as a team. It was just the boost the girls needed ahead of a busy weekend of Netball where they have a fixture on the Saturday against Bede’s and then a tournament in preparation for the National Schools at Hurst.

Miss Hyams and Miss Crawley also enjoyed meeting the Netball superstar, and they picked up some great tips to pass on to their Netball squads too. Thank you to all who took part – you were great ambassadors for Roedean.

As ever, there has been lots going on, with activities in the Houses, a netball masterclass on Wednesday with the England player Pamela Cookey, the residential English creative writing trip to Kent last weekend, an HHH group welcoming primary school pupils to Roedean, and we have also had a successful week in sport.

Well done to you all.

I wish you all a restful weekend and good luck for everything you do next week!

A Celebration Evening for our Scholars On Friday 6th January, the new Scholars for 2016/17 were invited to a celebratory award evening. The parents and students saw a beautiful display of the scholars’ art work, while enjoying some refreshments as the evening was introduced. They then attended a carousel of three sessions, in which excerpts of exceptional

work from the scholars was showcased. In these sessions, students described the academic research they had undertaken to stretch themselves beyond the taught curriculum, they performed musical and dramatic pieces, and each scholar was presented with their new badge and certificate, following the

Headmaster’s address. We would particularly like to thank Laura W (6.2), Clara H (L5), India B (U3), Annabelle B (U4), Georgie W (6.1), Alice Briggs (U3), Phoebe H (U3), Frieda J (U3), Persia KM (U3), Phoebe H (U3), Jemima G (U4), and Grace R (6.2) for their wonderful contributions to such a successful evening.

AK

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW 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.

Jean D (L5) for making a new girl feel so welcome in the House and integrating her into her group of friends [LTA]

Amelia D (6.2) for showing outstanding improvement in History recently, resulting in an excellent trial grade [RCH]

Eloise K and Flo A (L5) for jumping at the chance to ring the Chapel bell in the absence of our Prefects who are sitting exams [RB]

Ndali B (U5) for excellent background work in Art over the holiday [GRE]

Darcey W (L5) for her fantastic support in Physics of a new girl to the school, sharing her notes [JHI]

13th January 2017 - Issue 2

Assembly – taking care of small things This week’s excellent and thought-provoking Assembly was led by 11P, who made us think very carefully about small things which many of us certainly take for granted, but which have the potential to make a huge difference when seen as part of a bigger picture. This is what they said: ‘Welcome to our Assembly. We are continuing with the theme of making a difference.

This is a penny.

This is the leftover change you throw into your handbag or drop onto the pavement.

If you lose a penny, do you really care? Think of it like this, there are about 500 students in this school and if every single one of us contributed one penny, we would have £5.

The cost of a mosquito net to protect people in poorer countries is £5, and, with malaria killing 1.2 million people a year, the one penny contribution from each of us could protect a family from this.

It is estimated that on average every household has at least £50 hanging around in change, whether in pockets, penny jars or down the back of the sofa. That £50 that you don’t know about, hanging around your house, could buy 10 mosquito nets and if all 500 students in the school did this, we would have 5000 mosquito nets to protect 5000 families, and these 5000 mosquito nets woud all have started with a single penny.

This is a Brussels sprout, voted one of Britain’s most hated foods, the horrible small green cabbages you are forced to eat at Christmas. Every year in the UK, we throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink, but there are 759 million people in the world without enough food to live a healthy life.

Finally, this is 1ml of water. If every student and member of staff in this school contributed just 1ml of water we would have half a litre of water. When brushing your teeth in the morning or evening, you waste 6 litres of water for every minute that you leave the tap running. Now if you brush your teeth twice a day, for two minutes, you are wasting 24 litres of water, and that means here at school we could be wasting up to 12,000 litres of water a day. With dirty water killing over 5000 people a day, these 12,000 litres of water that we waste could mean that every single one of the 5000 people dying daily through a lack of Page 2

clean water could have almost two and a half litres of it.

We hope that you can see just how much we take for granted in the UK and how it could easily make a huge difference to people in poorer countries. Things may seem small and pointless to us and they may not affect our lives, but the effect that they can have on other peoples’ lives is vast in comparison. So finally, please look under your seats – some of you will find a penny, some of you will find a Brussels sprout, some of you will find some water, and some will find nothing. It’s up to you what you do with what you have found; to you it may not seem much but don’t take it for granted, because some people still have nothing.’

Well done to Rhiannon B for pulling the content of the Assembly together, but, with every member of the tutor-group playing their part, it was very clear that they felt strongly about what they were saying – let’s hope that it has made us all reflect on what every one of us can do to make a difference.

CCM P.S. There is now a water bottle in Reception which we hope to fill with pennies – please just chuck in some loose change!

The catering staff were sent home early because of the snow, so Mr Poffley, Mr Hawkes, and Mr Wailes stepped in to serve the boarders their tea!

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW

13th January 2017 - Issue 2

Ginger-bread House 1 We had a really lovely afternoon in House 1 on Sunday. We baked, built and iced ginger-bread houses, and, whilst waiting for them to cool down, we also made a batch of rice crispy cakes for each house to have during their House Meeting that evening.

We laughed as we tried putting the houses together, only to watch them gently collapse; some girls re-designed their own houses, whilst Dione W (U4) persevered until her house stood tall, even adding snow and finishing touches.

A fun happy afternoon was had by all.

Writing creatively on the Isles of Sheppey Last weekend, the English department held their second trip to the Isle of Harty on the north Kent coast, for a weekend of creative writing. We took 17 students from U5 and 6.1, and ensconced ourselves in our cosy cottage, surrounded by nothing except the mudflats of the Thames estuary, salt-marshes, and the disconcerting cries of the night-birds that make this remote place their home.

There were sessions on creating detailed characters, using non-clichéd imagery, writing in response to poetry, signposted writing, and genre writing, among many others. The students produced some really superb pieces, which we intend to gather into an anthology over the next fortnight. We also imitated the famous Byron/the Shelleys/Polidori stay on the shores of Lake Geneva (which famously produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) by holding a Ghost Story contest. Appended here is the opening of Tori N-M’s (6.1) entry into that competition:

point, the fog had drawn in and I couldn’t see very far in front of me. At some point, I had lost sight of Daisy, but her still-playful noises placed her somewhere not far away. Quite suddenly a large black shape loomed out of the mist. It was 25 metres or so away, but I made out the unnatural carcass of a small fishing boat, ruined and stuck fast in the beach. It was about the length of two men lying down headto-toe, and the wood had long-since rotted to a greasy black. The hull was broken open, and curved timber supports speared the air like a phantom ribcage. […]’

The girls produced many wonderful pieces, but congratulations to Jade M (6.1) who won the competition for the best piece of ghost-writing.

‘The late afternoon sun cast faint, watery shadows over the soft swells of the sandflats, and, as the tide had receded, Daisy could bound into the shallow water at the fringe of the beach. Blurred impressions of her paw prints traced a path back to where she was sniffing around a few tufts of grass.

HHH hosts Meridian Primary at Roedean This week, one of the Year 9 HHH groups hosted 35 pupils and staff from Meridian Community Primary School in Peacehaven. The girls have spent a lot of time preparing for this event, which included team-building and icebreaker games. All of the activities were based around Meridian’s 13 Learning Behaviours, such as listening and perseverance. The pupils from Meridian were at Roedean for an hour and they had a fantastic time – the Roedean girls found it a really rewarding experience, and learnt a great deal about planning an event and then watching it unfold. Well done to everyone involved.

Here are some thoughts from the Meridian pupils:

In the distance, I could see a front of fog, building low on the horizon, muddling the line between sea and sky. The air was barely stirred by any breeze, and the air smelled thickly of salt – and something bitter underneath.

Rose – ‘That was so much fun!’

Richard – ‘It was amazing. All of the students were really nice and it was fun.’

I walked a little further along the beach, halffocussed on where I was going, half-focussed on Daisy’s far-off barks and growls. By this

Rosie – ‘I enjoyed it because it did boost my confidence.’

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13th January 2017 - Issue 2

HEAD’S WEEKLY REVIEW SPORTS REPORT House Netball

support the event.

On our first Saturday back after Christmas, we had our first house sports event. Kicking off the Spring term, we hosted the House Netball event for girls in Year 9 and above.

House 3 were the stars of the day, winning every single match. However, this does not take away from the great performances of the other 3 houses, and the new talent that was discovered by the PE staff.

Each house put out very talented teams, along with girls who do not have as much Netball experience, which was lovely to see. A real mixed bag of house spirit and teamwork saw the competition get off to a fantastic start, with House staff and spectators all present to

Thank you to all the House Staff and Sports Captains for their hard work in bringing the teams together and ensuring that the event was as successful as it was.

BMW League

Fantastic 1st VII victory in the BMW League, again!

On Tuesday evening, our BMW Netball squad put on an impressive display to beat Parklife 58 - 18. The girls showed tremendous team work and determination, and they are pushing hard for promotion into the next division up.

Special mention must go to Gabriella R (6.1) and Zarbanu M (U5), whose shooting was amazing all evening, and also to Eleanor F (L5) whose defensive play was outstanding – she is a real talent moving up through the school.

Congratulations – we deserve to go up!

JJ WHAT’S

COMING UP IN THE WEEK

Mon 16 Jan

U3-U4 Drama Auditions for ‘Annie’ U13A Netball Knockout Cup vs Hurst (H)

Tues 17 Jan

U12A Netball Knockout Cup vs Hurst (H) BMW Netball League vs Hove Juniors (A) 3Fall Dance Company performances

Wed 18 Jan

Sussex Schools’ Cross Country Competitions at Waterhall U12A, B, C & D Netball vs Seaford College (H) U13B & C Netball vs LOGS (H) U3-U4 Drama Auditions for ‘Annie’

Thur 19 Jan

U16A Netball Knockout Cup vs St Paul’s (H) U3-U4 Drama Auditions for ‘Annie’

Fri 20 Jan

L4 Theatre Studies Trip to see ‘Peter Pan’ EXEAT

AHEAD?

Netball U12s and U13s field 4 netball teams each!

It was a wonderful achievement to field 4 netball teams for the U12s, and this was their first set of competitive fixtures. There was plenty of talent on show from Roedean girls, and all the matches were played in great spirit and with fair play. The Year 7 girls played really enthusiastically against Lingfield, working hard to move the ball around the court effectively, despite this being made difficult by some great centre court and defensive play from some rather tall girls on the opposition! Roedean played a great game in centre court and particular mention should go to Issy J, Zara C, Ella K-M, and Zainah M. The girls won 2 of the 4 games, and there is lots to look forward to with the Netball term in full swing – well done to all!

On Wednesday, the U13s had their first fixtures with the A, B, and C teams playing Hurst and the D team playing Lingfield Notredame. The

A team had a shaky start in the first quarter and Hurst took the lead confidently. After a rethink at quarter time the team found their feet and started to play the ball more effectively down the court, and in the fourth quarter the girls really found their rhythm and began to use strategies worked on in training, to take away a 15-13 win against the tough Hurst side. The players’ player was Scarlett R. The U13Bs were understandingly slightly rusty, but they began to gel after half-time, and they have a promising season ahead. The U13C team played in a very evenly matched game on Wednesday, and it was not until the final quarter that Hurst slowly pulled away.

Onate was voted the player of the match by the opposition for outstanding defending.

The U13D team had their first game against Lingfield Notre Dame, and it was played in great spirit. We were beaten by a stronger side, but there is great potential, and the player of the match was Julia C-P for her resilience in defence.

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