I can’t believe that in just over 2 weeks we will have broken up for the Christmas break – it seems to have flown over. In preparation for all the festivities, a number of Year 7 students entered the Christmas card competition and were runners up. Well done to Naina Jaiswal (7A), Angelina Nazarian (7C), Lindsey Ren (7C), Mia Dajani-Keenan (7B) and Karlijn Gabrielse (7C). Please see the photos of the brilliant cards they created. Some of these cards were then printed and sold at the Christmas Bazaar to raise money for the charities that our school supports.
MIT
Congratulations to Phoebe McLuskie (7A) who has won a place to go to MIT in Boston following an amazing Hack with her tube. She actually made a working trombone from it! I’m sure Phoebe will be brilliant and will represent our school in the best possible light.
Global Campus
CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION
Students who want to take part in the Creative Writing competition need to join via the online space on Global Campus Online. When they join they receive a certificate that celebrates their participation in the competition. They are also able to download a template for their entry.
Housepoints
In this newsletter, I must congratulate Emma Lubrano (7B) and Grace Shen (7B) for achieving 50 housepoints so far this term. This is a fantastic achievement – well done! Both students were presented with their certificates during today’s assembly.
House Update
The House System got off to a flying start this term with the opening ‘Teamwork Thursday’ house competition. Students across the Secondary School competed in many different team-based activities in which house point were awarded to teams who collaborated the best. Dao were the winners of this competition and led the leader board for about a week until the Dodgeball competition, where De house took the overall win that boosted them to the top of the leader board!
De also won the Internationalism Quiz that was run by the Senior Student Leaders; however it was Li house that pushed into the lead. Reason; well, it’s not simply the big competitions that put house points on the board. Students are constantly achieving House Points in class, in and around the school for good work, on an individual basis. These House Points are totalled every two weeks and added to the accumulator. Students in Li house were doing a great job inside the classroom and edged into the lead because of it!
De house soon pushed back into the lead with a win in the Perfect Pylons MIT competition. Though, once again, the battle at the top bounced back to Li after a big win in the Xmas card completion. After the count from Form Tutors this week though, it seems that De house have edged their way back to the top.
Who can predict what will happen next as students will battle it out for the best decorated Christmas tree in the house Christmas Tree competition. Over the next two weeks, students will have the chance to bring in their decorations and place them into the house box. On Friday 9th December, students will have 20 minutes to decorate their tree. The winners will be judged by Mrs Wallace, Mr Lawrence and the Senior Student Leadership team. Good luck to all! Here are the latest scores on the doors:
1st Place De 4529 points
2nd Place Li 4374 points
3rd Place Qi 4095 points
4th Place Dao 3913 Points
View from the classroom
This week the year 7 Science teachers have shared some amazing pictures of the students finding out how much energy there is in different types of food. They loved doing this practical; it’s not every day you get to set food on fire all in the name of Science!
Student Reporters
These are from 7C this time, who have given us an insight into some of their lessons.
Chiyi Kong - Spanish
In Spanish we learnt some adjectives and did a revision table. It was a serious lesson because we would soon be having a test, but it wasn't boring. The adjectives we learned were to describe different teachers, like if they were strict, boring, funny and nice. We also did mini listening activities to recap what we just did. It was great help for revising and now I feel more confident in it.
Harry Lin – Maths
In Maths we had to revise for out Maths term 1 test paper. We also studied about linear equations for graphs. After the term 1 test paper, we checked our results. I found it fun and I learnt a lot of what I needed to improve on and what I was good at.
Lindsey Ren – Music
In Music we learnt about different orchestras for example in the baroque period the orchestra was really small and as time went along the orchestra got bigger and bigger. I really enjoy music for we are learning a language that a whole world speaks. I was really surprised when I found out that violin strings were made out of cat's guts in the olden time but luckily in now days they are not.
Kathy Liu - Mandarin
In Mandarin we learnt about the golden bamboo hat. It is really fun when we act out the story. We played games that helped us to learn the different sentence and phrase patterns. We love Mandarin!
Yigit Unal – German
In German we have been learning about Family members and writing a description about ourselves and we also learned about pets. It was fun then we looked at days and months. Then after we learned about numbers, then we had exams.
Jisu Kim – English
In English we've been learning about myth and legends. We read different myths and discussed what is the setting, what feature does the character have and more.
I really enjoyed planning my myth because we got to choose a card for setting, hero, weapon, creature and a villain than note some of the ideas we could add into.
Coming up in the next newsletter will have student reporters from 7A. We look forward to reading their highlights.
Upcoming dates are:
9th Dec – CCA’s finish for Term 1
16th Dec – School closes at 12pm for the holidays.
9th Jan – School re-opens for Term 2.
With best wishes,
Paula Alderson
Year 7 Leader