During that week, Year 12 students will be undertaking Work Experience placements which will provide valuable experience as they head towards higher education and eventually starting their careers. Year 13 students will be in school on Core Focus Week, with a particular emphasis on putting the finishing touches to their Extended Essays.
On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, we welcomed Mr Nicholas Mahanat from the Juilliard School for two days work focusing on Drama. We are well underway in our journey to embed Juilliard learning into our Drama teaching using concept-based learning, and Mr Mahanat conducted demonstration sessions, a professional development session as well as seeing some of our Drama classes in action. Next week we have another visitor, Andrea Lee, as part of our collaboration with the Juilliard School, who will be working with our music teachers.
I have written previously about the great work the students on the Team Tie Tuesday project have undertaken. They have designed and marketed ties in the colours of the four houses with their profits going to school charities. The first Team Tie Tuesday will take place next week and we will be inviting our students to show off their wonderful new ties.
This is one of a number of great initiatives that come from our student body and another thing that students are working on is a themed day to raise awareness about breast cancer. October is internationally designated as Breast Cancer Awareness month and the colour pink has been used as a theme for this movement. We will therefore be having a ‘Wear Pink’ day on Friday October 26th in support of this event and to raise money for charities. Students may wear clothes which fit this theme and are asked to donate 10RMB in order to do so.
In today’s assembly, we introduced our newly formed Student Leadership Committees. Each of the four committees (House & Sport, Internationalism, Service and Arts & Culture) now has a representative from each year group and will be working throughout the year on planning events, fundraising and raising awareness of issues. This will be an excellent opportunity for those students to gain valuable leadership experience. Those students who are not directly involved in those four committees will still have multiple opportunities to develop similar skills by getting involved in individual projects.
Academic Review Evenings are coming up soon with two next week for Key Stage 3 (Tuesday 16th and Thursday 18th) then one the following week (Tuesday 23rd) for Years 10 and 12. You should have already received details of how to book appointments and we look forward to seeing you on those evenings. I would like to reiterate that the learning conversations that take place at these events are much more effective if the student is there as well, so please do bring your children along with you.
We have recently welcomed a new secondary school secretary into our school community – her name is Caddie Zhuang and I’m sure that many of you will benefit from her work over the coming years.
I wish you a very pleasant weekend and hope to see many of you at the End of Summer picnic on Sunday.