Ad Caelestia Sequere … Reach For the Stars

Newsletter for Highworth School Issue 4

Message from the Headteacher

Just after February half term Yr11 completed a week of “Pre Public Examinations” or PPEs in preparation for their GCSEs in May and June. The results day on March 10 was very exciting; a number of students secured grades they would be very proud of. Unfortunately there were also a few tears, but they were short lived once students realised they were now in a good position to turn things around. As usual a number of teachers are planning revision lessons over the Easter break. Good luck to all of our students who will be sitting public examinations in the coming weeks. In September the new school uniform will become compulsory and a number of parents have been adopting this change early to avoid the summer rush. If you are thinking of purchasing uniform, we are no longer using Robert Symonds as one of our suppliers. Our main supplier is “Pages Schoolwear” (www.pages-schoolwear.co.uk). The next occasion they are selling uniform at the school is on April 30 from 4-7.30pm. As usual this term has seen some fantastic musical performances from our students. A particularly special event “Primary Musical Outreach” was the gathering of 13 primary schools at Highworth who performed spectacularly under the leadership of Mr Cheesman. Mrs Morgan retires this week after 11 years of service. I know she will be missed by staff and particularly the students. Mr Linstead left after the first week of term to pursue a new commercial business. He has been a wonderful DOL for KK and I am sure that all the students will miss him. Mr Maites, the school caretaker also retires this week and on behalf of the school community, I would like to thank him for all that he has done to keep Highworth in top condition. Finally, enjoy the Easter break and let’s hope we all get some Spring sunshine.

The outgoing Senior Prefect Team has just led their final Student Voice meeting. This was a sad occasion but was also a great chance to review achievements and issues raised by the students over the past year. I would like to express how much of a pleasure and a privilege it has been for me to lead Student Voice and to be a Student Governor. The members of Student Voice are amazing and their feedback and contributions are extremely valuable to the school. On a personal level, having been a student at Highworth for seven years, I am really going to miss the school and my role as Head Girl. However, Highworth has set me up for a bright future and prepared me for the challenges ahead. I would like to take the opportunity to welcome the new Senior Prefect Team led by Anna Bennett as Head Girl and Alistair Gilbert as Head Boy. I wish them the very best of luck and I know that they will settle wonderfully into their new roles and be able to make a difference to the school. Elissa Poyner

Message from the Head Girl

Royal Society of British Artists

Congratulations to one of our Yr13 Art students, Beth Wilson, whose artwork has been chosen to publicise the 2014 National Students’ Art Exhibition at the Mall Galleries which is now in its twelfth year. It features the best young artists in the country exhibiting alongside work from some of our finest professional artists. It is a truly inspirational

exhibition, celebrating gifted and talented artists aged 11 to 18 years of age from schools, colleges and academies. Beth was elected as a RBA (Royal Society of British Artists) Young Art Scholar during their previous exhibition in 2013 and her work together with

information on the forthcoming exhibition can be viewed by following the link below. http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/index.php?pid=2&subid=234

12 May 2014

Gallagher Stadium Maidstone

Kick Off: 16.30

Tickets on Sale at the

Payments Office £4 Adult £2 Child

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Ad Caelestia Sequere … Reach For the Stars

Back in December some of our talented musicians in Yr8 took to the streets of Canterbury to entertain the Christmas shoppers with a bit of busking. Bethan Cook, Amy Ward, Eve Short, Ellen Jones, Florence Rudzinski, Julia Bills, Mary Ward and Nell Bandy managed to raise a fantastic £325 to add to our fundraising efforts for our fantastic charity. This term JP had their non-uniform day and the school saw many members of staff and students alike wear their PJ’s for

JP! Each mentor group worked very hard to plan and run a stall at lunchtime to raise extra money for our chosen charity, Woodlarks. We had stalls ranging from homemade cakes to fruit juice cocktails. All of the stalls were a huge success and in total we managed to raise just over

£800. Woodlarks Camping for the Disabled was established in 1930 and over the last 80 years has provided accessible camping for people with all kind of disabilities. We would like to say a HUGE thank you to the current JP prefect team who have done a superb job since being elected and have made a big difference to the Community spirit, not to mention leading them to 4th place in Community Performing Arts, including 1st for Best Dance. The team officially hand over the role after Easter. After much deliberation and four exceptional speeches, JP voted and elected their new Community Captain and Prefect Team. Community Captain: Sophie Carr; Deputy Captain: Suruthi Shasheetharan; Prefects: Molly Jones and Zoe McIntyre. I look forward to an exciting year ahead with them. This academic year has seen the launch of the new Rewards System and JP already boasts several Bronze and Silver Superstars. A huge congratulations to all of them and keep up the good work. I would like to take this opportunity to give a special mention to our first two students to have earned themselves a Gold Star: Giselle Overy and Catherine Elmslie - a fantastic achievement that they have obviously worked very hard for!

We end this term with a huge thank you to our superb prefect team: our Captain Holly Chapman, vice-captain Ellen Paredes and prefects Rob Thorogood, Katie Cole, Victoria Gill and Megan Luker. They have led our Community to break our fundraising record, win the performing arts competition and enjoy a busy programme of extra-curricular activities. Here are their reflections. Our proudest moment came after hours of dedicated practice, rehearsals and hard work, when our Community finished first for our production of “Matilda” in the Community Drama Competition and the whole Community’s efforts paid off. Another moment of pride was undoubtedly raising over £6000 for the Butterfly Appeal to help build a new M.S. Therapy Centre in Canterbury and seeing our photo in the Kentish Express. This is the most money ever raised by a prefect team at Highworth, adding value to our experience. We attended the Ground Breaking Ceremony and are looking forward to seeing the building completed. Competitive events like Rounders and Sports Day contributed to our enjoyment and our last contest will be this week’s netball tournament. Being part of a team and having a lot of fun along the way has made our year feel very worthwhile and highly successful. Goodbye and good luck to the new CS prefect team. Hi from the new prefect team. I am the CS Captain, Naomi Clarke and we have two deputies, Ashley Buckman and Christopher Spain, supported by prefects Tahiyat Rashid and Emily Graham. Lucy Vining and Sarah Adcock will be peer mentor prefects. We are all looking forward to doing our best to lead CS to win Community Drama and Sports Day as well as continuing our excellent fundraising tradition.

This term Amy Beach Community has taken part in a number of exciting mentor activities and events to raise money for our chosen charity. We have recently welcomed our new Community Prefect Team and our new Community Captain, Charlie Hennig. They did a fantastic job in organising a mentor quiz that took place in the gym on Tuesday March 18 in which GDA were the well-deserved winners. During Mentor Time, debate teams have been set up and discussions have been taking place on a number of fascinating topics. This has been a really exciting and interesting way of getting the whole Mentor Group involved and understanding current affairs. Also, over the past few weeks, Mentor Groups have been busily collecting pennies to use in the Amy Beach Penny Race

which took place in the Hall on Friday March 28. We will have raised a considerable amount to go towards our charity, War Child, but we have yet to complete counting such a lot of small change! It was a very close race, with AMI the worthy winners, with 9½ rows and ALC/LPE the runners-up with 9¼ rows. During the last fortnight, we have been gathering Amy Beach’s best and most enthusiastic netball players to take part in the Community Netball event which we are looking forward to competing in and hopefully winning! We are all very grateful to Daniel, Harriet, Emily, Emma, Angus and Nathaniel for their enthusiasm, inspiration and hard work this year which has enabled us to compete successfully with the other Communities in a variety of events. We wish them every success in their examinations and happiness in their further education and career choices.

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After brilliant fundraising efforts last term, a small group of students from Kiri Te Kanawa went to see first-hand how important the money we raise is by visiting Demelza House in Sittingbourne. The students were given a tour of the hospice, including the amazing sensory room, the incredible music therapy room and the beautiful gardens and outside play areas. If we reach our target of £3,000 this year, we could pay for a child to receive a year of play therapy from a children’s nurse throughout school term, giving mum and dad a much needed break. KK is continuing towards this target by having a penny race. In mentor groups students will have to draw two pictures from pennies: one of the Demelza logo and one of their choice which they believe represents Demelza. We hope the visit has inspired everyone to donate as much as they can to the truly amazing charity! On the last day of term, KK participated in inter-Community netball. There were two squads, a junior one and a senior one that competed in matches. It was a very enjoyable and successful day. It is time to introduce our new prefect team for the coming year. We wish Georgia Palmer and her team of Amy Walters, Helen Hardy, Hannah Primarolo, Daisy Jones and Laura Quearney all the very best. And finally, a massive thank you to Jenna and her team for all their efforts this year. Jenna has been an inspiration and driving force for the whole of KK – thank you!

As we lead up to Easter and the exam season, we have to say a very sad goodbye to our amazing Community Prefect Team. We’d like to thank Zainab Braimoh for being a fantastic Community Captain and her amazing team: Deputy Captains Georgia Haylor and Maisha Shareef and Community Prefects Emma Deans, Lauren Harris and Sarah Ottewill for all they have done. They have worked hard as a team over the last year, leading to our Sports Day victory and organising the fantastic performance of “The Lion King”. Everyone in VM wishes them all the best in their exams and their life beyond Highworth. We are also pleased to announce that Carmel Mould will be picking up the reigns as our new Community Captain and will be supported by Sam Clark as Deputy and Beth Kimber and Steph Thurston as Prefects. Throughout the year every member of VM has been trying hard in every aspect of school life to be awarded with Positive Events. These lead to Superstar Awards and it is excellent to see so many VM students achieving these. We have been awarding certificates each term and are proud to see their names on the school website. Special congratulations are in order for Grace Rasmussen, as she is the first student in VM to achieve the Gold Award with 15 Positive Events for each of the skills - well done, Grace. The final week of this term has seen VM adopting their natural competitive nature in the Inter-Community Netball Tournament. It has also been our annual penny race, an inter-mentor competition, in order to raise money for our Community charity, Ronald McDonald House in Camberwell. We wish you all a lovely Easter Break and wish all our students the best for their exams in Term 5.

The highlight of this term for NS has to be our non-uniform day on 21 March. For our cake stall at break time, we filled two tables with delicious home-made goodies, all donated by the generous members of our Community. The stalls in the Hall at lunch time were also very varied and students of all ages left munching pancakes, cakes of every description and sweet kebabs, washed down by hot chocolate, while those wanting to be even more (!) healthy dipped pepper and carrot sticks into hummus and ate fresh fruits of the season, all lovingly prepared by PHU. A stall that proved very popular was the Guess the Teacher from their Baby Photograph organised by RCO, although students also enjoyed guessing the number of sweets in the jar, trying to pull out the winning lollipops and the tombola! In addition to all these activities, we again had the multi-talented Giles Thornton from KCA taking part in a six-hour Performathon, wandering around the school all day with a saxophone in one hand and a collecting bucket in the other, being invited into many classrooms and entertaining students and their teachers by playing their requests. Giles has already raised over £450 as a result of his hard work, with sponsorship money still coming in, which means that we have already made over £1,000 in total on that day for our two charities of Great Ormond Street Hospital and Young Minds. Many thanks to all who contributed to this in any way. Finally, in our assembly earlier this term certificates were presented to an impressive number of Bronze and Silver Superstars and prizes and certificates were given to the students who achieved the highest number of Positive Events in their year group: Madura Lokesh in Yr7, Charlotte Giles in Yr8, Ella Russell in Yr9, Abi Wyllie in Yr10, Lexie Spokes in Yr 11, Ben Balzan in Yr12 and Harvinder Ottal in Yr13, with RCO being the winning mentor group. We ended by saying goodbye and thank you to our Prefect Team led by Laine and introducing our new team: Anna, Tamsyn, Molly, Jess, Sarah, Sam, Ed and Zhane, who already have a long list of all they plan to do in the coming months!

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Our students who have been in several events of Primary Musical Outreach this term: Jazz Orchestra - The Jazz Orchestra made a great contribution to the primary outreach programme by entertaining another Hall full of children on an afternoon earlier this month. Colin Welch gave the children a guide to the instruments, with the help of some entertaining stunts with a hosepipe! Wind Ensembles - The Woodwind Quintet and the Clarinet Quartet went on a tour of 4 primary schools on a recent Focus Day. They performed two narrated pieces and the children were very appreciative. Playday - 500 children from 13 primary schools came to Highworth on Friday last week to perform to each other, to listen to the Highworth Orchestra and to play two specially arranged pieces in one massive ensemble.

Music Notes

Congratulations to …….

Coming Soon….

Musical dates for your diary: Voces8 - Our Yr9 students have a great opportunity to work with a professional vocal ensemble Voces8, with the aim of putting on a joint concert. The internationally acclaimed group (www.voces8.com) are coming to Ashford to work with students from Highworth, Norton Knatchbull and Ashford Schools. The project will culminate in a concert on Wednesday 7 May at St Mary’s Church. HiJAC - our summer open-air musical event - Tuesday 24 June. Jazz Orchestra at Eastwell Manor - after a successful event last year, the Jazz Orchestra is again performing at this wonderful venue - Friday 4 July. The Wizard of Oz - our summer show involving hundreds of students from Yrs7, 8 and 9 - Thursday 10 July and Friday 11 July

The Highworth Folk Band has had an incredibly busy term, rehearsing for the Highworth Spring Concert, as well as two exciting events outside school. The first was ‘Three Acres and A Cow - A History of Land Rights and Protest in Folk Song And Story’, self-described as ‘Part TED talk, part history lecture, part folk club sing-a-long, part poetry slam, part storytelling session’ - and certainly a novel experience for us! Learning new music with Robin Grey, a London-based folk singer, was a great opportunity to develop our confidence and ensemble skills and the audience seemed to love our own repertoire, which we performed during the interval. Meanwhile, we were busy rehearsing a set of 3 pieces for the Music For Youth Regional Festival. Although some of our older members have been playing at the festival for years and have made it through to the National Festival in Birmingham two years running, it was brilliant to have Maddy Rogers (recorder), Lois Slinger (accordion), Caiti Carpenter (violin), Giselle Overy (violin), Ella Bradfield (guitar), Molly Barker (guitar), and Millie Green (cello) in our festival performance for the first time! Fingers crossed for this year’s National Festival!

Fabulous Folk Band

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The Pageturner is an Art competition that is organised annually by the University of Creative Arts in Canterbury in conjunction with the Turner Contemporary Art gallery in Margate. Once again there have been over 400 entries and the following students have just received notification that they have been shortlisted for the prize giving evening at Canterbury Christ Church on the 23 April 2014. They are Anna Bobeldijk, Ella Bradfield, Grace Elliott, Lucy Baines, Jess Dury, Jessica Lund, Hester Mattocks, Isand Schwartz, Lucy Willis and Anna Pashkin. We wish the students lots of luck as any prizewinners will have their work exhibited at the prestigious Turner Contemporary gallery between June and July. We will keep you updated!

Pageturner Art Competition Scene Productions

GCSE and A Level Drama students were enthralled by Scene Productions’ adaptation of George Buchner’s ‘Woyzeck’ earlier this month. Set amidst the backdrop of World War One, Woyzeck delves into the mind of a broken soldier, a mind plagued with apocalyptic visions, twisted, infected and plagued into homicidal lunacy. The

production was presented as a surreal visual jigsaw, punctuated with physical theatre, projections, puppetry and a haunting sound track. The production style explored the ideas of theatre practitioners, Artaud, Berkoff and Laban and offered students a

wealth of exciting inspiration for future performance work.

The Highworth Wind Quintet and Clarinet Quintet, led by Colin Welch, performed at Eastwell Manor on Friday 28 March at their ‘Touch of Class’ afternoon tea and music event. They were very well received by a large audience and performed beautifully.

We are proud to announce the musical achievement of Yr13 student Giles Thornton. This term, Giles has achieved Grade 8 distinctions through Trinity Guildhall Examinations, in Saxophone, Clarinet and Singing. Following his A levels, Giles will be studying Jazz Saxophone at the prestigious

Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

“Touch of Class”

Reading for Charity

Yrs7 and 8 managed to raise £668.96 for Readathon, helping to fund Clic Sargent and Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Charity, to provide care for critically ill children. As a thank you, we have received almost £130 in book vouchers to spend on new reading books for students to read in class and to take home and enjoy. Our Scholastic Book Fair sold over £800 worth of books, with students of all ages discussing their favourite books to read and recommending them to their peers. This event created a huge amount of excitement across the school and has raised £190 in commission to buy new books to fill the libraries in the classrooms. I would like to say thank you to all students who contributed to these events and to the parents and guardians who sponsored students, enabling them to take part. These events have enhanced the students’ enthusiasm for reading and have fuelled many reading-based discussions and debates. Well done to everyone who took part! Miss Gray

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Disneyland Paris

During the February half term, 20 Yr12 and 13 Media Studies students embarked on a visit to Disneyland Paris. The purpose of the visit was to look at how the media is important to a global company such as Disney and students were able to put their skills to use as they worked on a brief campaign to advertise the resort and its various offers and events. The students enjoyed a trip to Paris, visiting the Eiffel Tower, Trocadero and Arc de Triumph whilst also enjoying an hour’s cruise along the Seine. The second and third days of the trip allowed for visits into the Disneyland Resort, with students enjoying their time on the various rides and attractions. This was a wonderful opportunity for the students to work together in teams and think about how the media applies on such a large scale.

Ypres - Belgium

On the 14 February, Yr9 took an exciting and interesting visit to Ypres, the location tied to many WW1 events. Our first stop was the Flanders Field Museum where there were historical documents and artefacts such as army uniforms, gas masks, letters from home and real war propaganda posters. Our next stop was to the home of some of Belgium’s finest chocolate: the Peter De Groote Chocolatier! It was at this point that most of us parted with our money for some of the deliciousness Belgium had to offer! Next was a visit to the trenches. Even after years, the trenches still have a very gloomy and chilling feel to them and after being almost knee-deep in mud, it becomes easy to sympathize with the soldiers who regularly endured shoulder-high, deadly mud. After a short lunch break, we changed out of our muddy wellies and made our way to a cemetery reserved only for British officers from WWI. We were told that the number of graves would be shocking, but even that did not quite prepare us for the hundreds and hundreds of marble gravestones, all laid out neatly in rows. Most graves were not even engraved as the identity of the remains were not known. Later we visited a German cemetery and the contrast was clear. Although there seemed to be fewer graves, the atmosphere was eerie and it looked dark and rather sinister. There was a mass grave of approximately 25,000 men, which really demonstrated the scale of death that WWI had on both Britain and Germany. This trip enlightened us all on the conditions that World War One soldiers faced and the scale of destruction that it caused.

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St Hugh’s College Oxford

A group of 22 Yr12 and 23 Yr11 students visited St Hugh’s College, Oxford on Friday 21 March. We were given an informative talk on applying to Oxford and a group of current students talked about the application process and the courses they were studying, to inspire our own students in seeing Oxford University as an academic route for them. Following lunch, our students were given guided tours around the college and there were plenty of opportunities to ask lots of questions. The visit is a part of our support given to those students aspiring to study on competitive courses in Higher Education. We are planning a similar visit to Queens, our link college at Cambridge University, in July. Further details will follow. Mrs Welch

‘Inspire - Leading Through Culture’

This year we have been lucky enough to work on a county-wide Art project. “INSPIRE Leading through Culture” is a programme which aims to develop leadership skills in young people, enabling them to inspire others in their learning. It draws together the talents of local arts organisations, such as Stour Valley Arts and the Turner Contemporary Gallery, to lead partnerships with local schools. On November 28, thirty students from Yr9 were randomly selected to have the chance to become Arts Leaders. It was their focus to consider how to teach these new skills to each other and ten students were selected for their ability to explain, help and motivate other students and to represent the school as Arts Leaders. They were: Bethany Terry, Eleanor Burnaby-Pritchard, Rea Mae Limbu, Kylla Hernandez, Tanya Brown, Chloe Daily, Emily Reilly, Harriet Exon, Amber Pegden and Ruchika Sontenam. On February 2 the Arts Leaders, Mrs Morton, Miss Lipsham and Mrs Davies met other schools involved with the project at the Baptist Church in the centre of Ashford. The day was filled with creativity as all students learnt about chemigram printing, clay printing, large scale wicker work and even a performance piece with sticks and branches from Kingswood in Challock. By the end of the day, the Arts Leaders were able to organise a timetable of events to lead fifty Yr7 students during a Big Arts day on March 6 at school which, needless to say, was a huge success. On March 14 the Yr9 Arts Leaders, accompanied by Mr Kenny and Mrs Dearlove, completed their final workshop during a visit to Challock Woods where they were able to use their mentoring and leadership skills to work with and inspire a group of Primary School children of mixed age and ability. It was a beautiful day and our students made a very positive impact on both the event leaders and primary teachers who were also present. Thank you to everyone who contributed and made all the workshops possible.

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Our U14 football team who won the quarter finals of the National Cup and won 6-1 against Shenfield School, Essex. We are now down to the last four teams in the country. Well done, girls!

Our Yr7 hockey teams who both beat Wye Free School in their recent matches. The A-team won 6-1 (goal scorers Poppy Branchett, Taylor Wise and Rosie Jones) and the B team won 4-3 (goal scorers Alice Bussey and Lara Jefferson-George). Well done!

The U13 netball team who made it to the finals of the U13 County Tournament last week. They beat Townley Grammar, Kings School, Canterbury and Rainham Mark Grammar School to reach the finals. All the girls played well and were a credit to the school.

The U12 netball team who played some wonderful netball to reach the quarter finals of the U12 County Netball tournament in Rainham. They worked hard as a team and beat some very tough competition which is an amazing achievement for such a young team.

The U15 handball team who reached the finals of the County U15 Handball Tournament.

The U13 and U15 tennis teams who made it through to the Kent County Finals in June. The U13 team of Imogen Amos and Savannah Harris were unbeaten throughout the day defeating very strong players from Benenden and Canterbury. Lizzie Connors and Phoebe Pang qualified as runners-up.

Students who took part in the Kent Schools’ Trampolining Competition - Gemma Lane, Hannah Smith and Lucy Ambler who secured silver medals and Chez Swansborough who won bronze. Well done!

The victorious U13 cricket team who won the Lady Taverner’s Regional Cricket Tournament, winning all 4 games they played.

Helen Watts and Faye Mileham in Yr8 and Chloe Giles Yr9 on achieving their 50,000m rowing awards and to Faye Hood Yr8 and Noemie Tordoir in Yr12 on completion of their 25,000m rowing awards.

Twelve of our top indoor rowers who went to Lee Valley Athletics Centre on 23 March to take part in the National Indoor Junior Rowing Championships. The event is now the biggest indoor rowing event in the world with around 2,000 competitors. Top performers of the day were Ella McCormack in Yr10 who came a magnificent 10th in her individual 5 minutes race, rowing 1,287 metres and Faye Mileham in Yr8 who finished 21st covering 762m in her 3 minutes. Faye then joined Chloe Giles, Louise Telford and Katie Cantwell-Jones, all in Yr9, to compete in the Junior Relay. Highworth secured a 6th place finish, just 4 seconds off a medal over the 2,000m. Eight of the team achieved a personal best on the day. The NJIRC team were: Hannah Parsler, Alice Halstead, Anna Pierce (Yr7); Fay Mileham, Helen Watts (Yr8); Chloe Giles, Katie Cantwell-Jones, Louise Telford (Yr9); Ella McCormack, Amy Royal (Yr10); Ashly Johny, Maryam Abdulkadir (Yr11). Well done, girls!

Congratulations to…….

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Tuesday 22 April - Term 5 commences; return to Week A timetable

Friday 25 April - Mexican Culture Day Monday 28 April - Yr10 French Trip to Normandy

Wednesday 30 April - Yr8 Parents’ Evening

Thursday 1 May - Yr7 & Yr8 Maths Challenge

Monday 5 May - Bank Holiday

W/C 12 May - External Exams Start W/C 19 May - Yr7 & Yr8 Exam Week

Friday 23 May - Last Day of Term

Headteacher: Mr P Danielsen Highworth Grammar School, Quantock Drive, Ashford, Kent, TN24 8UD

Phone No.: 01233 624910, Fax: 01233 612028 Email: office@highworth.kent.sch.uk Website: www.highworth.kent.sch.uk

The Maths Challenges began with our Yr8 and 9 team of Katie Baker, Phoebe Barrett, Annie Huang and Marina Watley taking a visit to Westlands School at Sittingbourne to measure up the other Kent teams in a preliminary competition. The games of symmetry, nth term sequences and algebraic solutions tested our resolve, sometimes with common sense dictating the answer over a complicated algebraic sum. The Yr10 team of Molly Barker, Amy MacCormack, Annabelle Trew and Ifeoluwa Yinka-Adebisi had a more extreme challenge with Kent’s Further Maths Support Programme operating from Canterbury’s Simon Langton

Girls. This time the challenge was to work with numbers to Base 6 (Base 10 is our decimal system and Base 2 binary is how computers run), and so no number or answer had the digits 6, 7, 8, or 9. When this had finished, we knew that our brains had been challenged – A Level Maths - easy! If you are interested in seeing the type of questions we did in either of these competitions, come along to Mr Wibberley’s Maths Challenges every Friday in C234 at

lunchtime. See you there.

Marvellous Maths Challenge

Culture Days

On Friday 28 February, our mentor groups competed in an Italian Culture Quiz testing their knowledge of food, famous Italians, landmarks, brands and the arts. Congratulations go to the prize-winning group, CS/KKE who not only gained the most impressive score, but were the first to finish! The prize for the best Italian Fiesta was awarded to Paris Hume who created a delicious menu and party plan. Well done, Paris! Continuing our Carnevale celebrations, a themed lunch was served in The Hub on Thursday 6 March and we would like to thank the kitchen staff for all their hard work. Our next culture day will be a celebration of Mexico on 25 April. If you have any ideas or would like to help, please contact s.ferris@highworth.kent.sch.uk. Thirteen Japanese trainee science teachers from Chaucer College joined us for the day on Thursday 6 March to observe science lessons and teach language, calligraphy, origami and traditional games in Period 3. It was interesting to hear how Highworth compared to their schools in Japan and to discover what impressed them most: “We were really impressed with the way your students interacted and freely discussed their opinions with each other.” We look forward to welcoming them back next year.