Message from the Head
Dear Parents,
I hope you and your children had a wonderful half-term break.
Along with our new website which we launched earlier in the year, we have now also rebranded the GES Newsletter and hope you like the new format. Any feedback would be very welcome.
Even though this is only the first week after the holidays, the enthusiasm and dedication for learning and teaching is palpable across the school. The lovely weather has meant that we have been able to open up the school field at primary and it has been lovely to see the students enjoying the sunshine and learning and playing outdoors again.
At Secondary, we had parent presentations explaining our KS3 assessment process as well as attainment grades and are now in the process of our regular Parent-Teacher-Student meetings to discuss the result with you in more detail. At Primary, the Parent-Teacher meetings will happen in a couple of weeks as well, so we look forward to sharing your sons and daughters’ progress with you then.
You may remember that we took advantage of the ‘Women in Science’ day earlier in February to give the students in the older classes an exposure to female scientists via a variety of Zoom sessions. This week it was our youngest pupils’ turn to celebrate the fascination Science can hold. Together with our very own Primary Science ambassadors, Kerry Cesmat, Head of Primary Science, organised an exciting and fun-filled morning of STEAM activities in Lower School. I wish you could have been here to see the excited faces and great questions of our youngest students.
Please have a look at Ms Fortune’s note below regarding the upcoming sessions for Primary children around the topic of safeguarding. This is an incredibly important topic and will obviously be addressed with the children in age-appropriate language. I suspect some of you may hear a song related to this as well and if not, just ask your Primary children what the ‘Pantosaurus’ song is.
We are holding another Whole School Open day via Zoom next Wednesday, 3 March, and would appreciate it if you were able to share the details with anyone interested.
Matt Williams
COBIS COMPETITIONS
Primary Poetry
Congratulations to this year’s House Poetry Competition winners, Cook!
This year the theme was ‘Connections’, which the children interpreted in varied and creative ways. The resulting poems ranged from emotive to political and were filled with friendship and hope.
Some of the wonderful poems written by children across KS2 have been submitted to the annual COBIS Poetry Competition.
This year we were able to enter six poems from Primary across two different age categories, so well done to Molly in Year 5, and Marisa, Saiari, Nathan, Bella and Evie in Year 6, who all received a Head’s Commendation.
We will now wait with bated breath for the results in March to see if any of their poems have won a prize!
Emily Crucerey
Head of KS2 English
Secondary Art
The students at Secondary have produced some beautiful artwork this term and we have entered a small selection into the annual competition organised by COBIS, which set the theme “Connections” this year.
Sadly only 3 pieces are allowed to be submitted from KS3 (Y7, 8 and 9) and it was very difficult to choose. The selected works are by:
- Jena in Y8 for ‘Connections: Traditional to Digital’ – an observational drawing carefully rendered in graphite and then traced to create a stylised digital version in Procreate for iPad.
- Lauren in Y9 for ‘Connections Online – Learning at Home’ – a beautifully drawn and wonderfully detailed memory of Zoom lessons from last year.
- Freya in Y9 for ‘Connections Matter’ – a personal response to the Black Lives Matter movement created for our Protest Posters project in the Autumn term.
We hope to post a full range of the work created by all the KS3 students over the coming weeks to show you their fabulous, varied responses. In the meantime, keep an eye on the school’s social media channels where you regularly can find a selection of students’ art work.
Message from the Primary Deputy Head
As the safety and wellbeing of all children at GES is our highest priority, Miss Fortune will be leading safeguarding sessions with each year group over the next two weeks.
These will be age appropriate and based around the NSPCC’s Underwear Rule, using the PANTS resources.
Following these discussions with the children, Miss Fortune will hold a parents information and discussion session on Friday 12 March at 12:30 via Zoom.
This session will enable parents to see what we have discussed with the children and to learn more about the best ways to safeguard our children.