It’s been a fantastic week here at Sunninghill this week. Despite the awful weather, our spirits have remained bright and we end the week with a lovely sunny day! Last term we had a visit from the team at Muddy Stilettos. For those of you who do not know about them, they are an insider’s guide to the very best food, walks, boutiques, day trips, hotels and events for people living outside London. They also do very thorough reviews of independent schools. Yesterday we received notification that their lovely review of us had gone live on their website – and we are delighted to share it with you here. We really feel that they got to the heart of our school – and it feels like a very honest and accurate portrayal of who we are.
Last night I was delighted to attend the DOMVS Story House Awards at Shire Hall, with a selection of our pupils and pupils from other local primary schools, whose stories had been entered into the competition. Lord Julian Fellowes, the famous writer, actor and producer, had read all the entries and selected the winners personally. From his hospital bed on a zoom call, (as he was recovering from an operation), Lord Fellowes, and his wife Lady Fellowes, read out the winning stories that began; ‘I cannot remember a time when I felt this cold…’ We are so proud to tell you that Iris (Form 7) won first place and Emily (Form 2) won second place. If you would like to read their winning entries, then they are linked below. Well done to all of the children who entered and as Lord Fellowes said – just keep writing!
Monday saw the first of our Sunninghill Academic Series with a talk by Mrs Moss on Assessment and Tracking. During the presentation we had 3 live polls which showed us that at the start of the meeting, only 8% of parents felt that they knew a lot about our assessment and tracking (72% felt they knew some). After a fantastically informative session by Mrs Moss, this increased to 95% of parents feeling that they knew a lot.
A reminder of the rest of the dates for the series:
Monday 23rd January – Science
Monday 30th January – Maths
Monday 27th February – English – Reception to F2 (phonics and writing) F3 –
F8 (spelling and writing) or Senior English F5-8
Monday 6th March – Humanities
On the subject of academics, this term we launched Spellzone, a programme open to all of our pupils in F3-8 to improve their spellings and therefore their writing. Schools all over the world take part in Spellzone, and they are ranked each week in a league table based on the pupils’ average score. Well done to all those children who are coming in early to school for this and for their extra reading before school, and for all the children who are logging on at home, in their break times and in lessons working on their individualised course pathway. In our first week, Sunninghill came 43rd in the world (only the top hundred schools are listed), Form 4 as a class came 5th and Daisy H came 13th as an individual in the world! Amazing results! Keep it up Sunninghill.
We are very excited as this term marks the return of our whole school show, which this year is Moana! All pupils across the school will be involved on or off the stage and rehearsals have already begun. We have even begun sourcing costumes, as modelled by Albi and Natty, who are the Crab Claws in our play! We will be running 2 shows Thursday 16th and Friday 17th March at 7pm, there will be a matinee at 2pm on Friday 17th for members of the local community to attend, schools, our partner care home etc. Thank you for all your generous support so far, providing pallets and your offers of help. Mrs Nolan-Stone is now on the hunt for some people to help with costumes. If you would like to be involved or you have any questions please contact Mrs N-S.
This morning, Forms 7 and 8 were at AFC Bournemouth as part of the PSHE curriculum. They took part in a workshop which looked into careers at the Football Club and Community Sports Trust. They also had a tour of the Vitality Stadium to witness the various careers. The students behaved superbly, looking smart in their uniform. They asked some fantastic questions and considered the huge number of different jobs and duties that were on show at the football club. Most importantly they concluded that for an organisation to work well, lots of different parts need to be working together as part of a team.
Finally, I wanted to share this lovely piece of work that I was handed yesterday by Sofia in Form 1. ‘I love every single teacher’, it says. This absolutely made my day, and I can wholeheartedly second the fabulous work my colleagues do daily to make your child’s time here at Sunninghill so special. Thank you to each and every one of them.
Have a lovely weekend!
Best wishes
David
