The tree is up, our fire in reception is lit, holly and ivy adorn our mantlepieces and I have even dug out my Christmas ties. Yes it really is beginning to feel like Christmas!
Last night we held our fabulous PTFA Christmas Fayre! The evening was so well attended with parents, new and old, and their friends and families enjoying mulled wine, hot dogs and shopping with our fantastic stallholders who were selling the most beautiful things. Thank you to our PTFA who worked so hard to make the evening so festive and fun, to our staff who prepared the food and grounds and to the Senior Prep children and their teachers who ran some brilliant stalls of their own with cakes, games and crafts to entertain the children. It really was a fantastic event, which has left us feeling very Christmassy!
This week was Antibullying week at Sunninghill. Form 8 led a fantastic and informative assembly, with support from Form 7 who acted through some scenarios to show the school what bullying might look like.
Antibullying week this year is based on the theme of respect, which reflects our 4Cs value of compassion. We have thought about what respect means to the children and to others. Respect as having due regard for someone’s feelings, wishes or rights. It means you consider those feelings before saying something or acting. We discussed in assembly and class the idea that bullying sometimes happens when we don’t have enough respect for others.
Bullying is:
- When someone deliberately and repeatedly hurts some else.
- Where it involves an imbalance of power like a group picking on an individual.
- It can be physical like hitting or kicking, verbal like name calling or threats or bullying can be doing something like leaving someone out or spreading rumours.
- It can also not only be face to face but online too.
In PSHE this week we have thought about some pledges, or promises that we can make. If we do these our school will be a better place. We also reminded children that if they are having problems at school or at home they can talk to a number of people including our child protection team, tutors, sports coaches, the admin team – in fact they can talk to anyone! If children are having problems at school and don’t want to talk to someone they can write a note and drop it in the problem shared box on the top floor outside the wellbeing room. The box gets checked every day. In every tutor room and on every tutor board there is a sheet with information on that tells children what to do if they have any problems.
We are also doing anonymous questionnaires with the children to give us a picture of levels of pupil relationships and wellbeing and where we need to focus our energy.
It was a very busy assembly this morning, with lots to celebrate! All of the performers from our Junior Prep informal concert received a well done certificate, as well as all of Form 1 for their fabulous Rangoli patterns. We congratulated Gabriel, Rosa and Natty for their good work this week. Our Academic Excellence winners were Juliette, Hamo, Alice, Agatha, Joni, Vira and Sofia. We also congratulated Natty and Amelia for their work for the Barrington-Stokes Young Editors. Daisy also was awarded a prize and certificate for gaining her bronze reading challenge.
This week Bea R and and Mila won the Compassion Award, Beau M and Louis C the award for Commitment, Tabitha and Amelka the award for Courage and Aiden and Harvey the award for Creativity.
Finally, we were delighted to celebrate the achievements of some of our children who attended the School’s South West Regional Biathlon Championships on Sunday, held at Millfield School.
The children had to compete in a competitive swim and run across the day. They earned points for how well they did in each event which were then totaled to give them their overall placing in their year groups.
For a lot of the children, this would have been their first competitive event and they competed fantastically and represented Sunninghill brilliantly. Special mentions to Tabitha, who achieved 3rd place overall in her year group with a fantastic 1st place in the run and Amelka who finished 2nd place in the swim. We also need to congratulate our Form 3 boys, Logan, Frank and Oliver, who won the bronze medal for their combined event. We couldn’t be more proud of all the children who took part. Thank you to Mr Cracknell who organised for our children to attend, and looked after them on the day.
On Wednesday we were treated to the first of our Junior Prep informal concerts. The idea of our informal concerts is to give the children a chance to perform in front of a small and supportive audience, to build the children’s confidence and improve their performance skills. We were so impressed tonight by all our performers who played and sang so beautifully. Some of our performers are very young, with Ivy and Elsie just in Form 2. Bea in Form 4 performed this evening after only having 3 lessons on her flute. Truly remarkable! Thank you to Mrs Nolan-Stone and her incredible team of music teachers who work so hard with all our children to help them achieve their music potential.
I am sure many of you will be putting up Christmas decorations this weekend – I know that we are! If you are, have a lovely festive weekend and we look forward to seeing you next week for our very exciting Nativity performances – I can’t wait!
David
