Dear Parents,

I hope that you had a relaxing half term and you and your family had time to enjoy the weather and maybe do a little travelling. By the quality of the Halloween costumes I suspect that there may have been a hive of activity in local craft shops and dress-up stores the weekend before school started. Thank you for all the effort that went into making Monday a spooktacular day and to everyone who baked cakes and helped with the cake stall – thank you too!

Movember has started in earnest and the comical sight of Primary students running around with moustaches has been an entertaining start to each day. Thank you in advance if you have decided to join our moustache growing campaign. Fear not, there will be other ways to get involved – I believe that there is talk of a GES Strava challenge to cover 60 km in a month. Stay tuned for that one!

Thank you to those of you who spoke to Mungo Dunnett and his team before half term. I have received a summary of the report and was so proud to read the comments and acknowledgements of the great things that happen at GES and the improvements that you have seen across the school. We have clearly heard the demand for further French at Primary and are starting to work on curriculum changes around this for next academic year.

A reminder to our Year 6 parents that we will open up Year 7 places to non-GES families on Tuesday morning. Once the remaining places in the first class are filled, we will then start a waiting list for a possible second class. Your 1000 CHF deposit is due by the start of the day (9:00) on Tuesday.

Finally, thank you to all our Year 11 parents who attended the session last night on A Levels and preparing for GCSEs. It was great to see so many of you and to talk about your children’s plans as they start to think about options after Year 11.
Our current Year 13 have now completed or are waiting to hear back from their university applications. With Cambridge, Sheffield, McGill, USC, University of Geneva, LSE, Warwick, Stanford and University of the Netherlands included in their choices, our students really are aiming towards fantastic international university destinations. We look forward to celebrating their successful offers.

Have a great weekend,

Matt Williams
Head

Dear Primary children,

This month we are celebrating Non-Fiction books and hope that you will enjoy reading information books and researching the topics you are interested in.

For this month’s reading challenge, we would like you to choose either an animal or historical character to create an illustrated fact file. Fact files should be presented on one side of A4 paper. Please be as creative and illustrative as you like! Please submit your completed fact file to your class teacher by Wednesday 30 November.

Winners for each age group will have their fact files put on display in the library for everyone to read and enjoy. Happy reading and best of luck!

This week was an exciting week in the Primary Library, as we welcomed children from Key Stage 2 during lunch time.

The Year 6 Pupil Librarians have had a great first week helping other children to choose books and enjoy the library space. Next week the Librarians will be launching their first ‘Story time’ on Wednesday break time with Key Stage 1.

On Tuesday 15 November, our own Usborne ambassador Susanne Zavratsky will be holding an Usborne book fair at the Primary campus (outside the Library).

Children from Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 will visit the fair with their class teachers during their lessons between 13:20 and 15:20.

Susanne has kindly offered to stay until 17:00 for any parents wishing to come with their children after school, especially Pre-School and Reception.