I was immensely proud of all our school this morning during our beautiful Harvest Festival. Nursery, Reception, Form 1 and Form 2 performed two fabulous Autumn songs – ‘Mr Scarecrow’ and ‘In My Trolley’, Junior String Ensemble performed ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and Junior Choir sang ‘Conkers!’ I was lucky enough to be invited into the Form 3 and 4 Ukulele ensemble, where we performed Bob Marley’s 3 Little Birds. Luckily I had Benjamin next to me to keep me on track, as he whispered to me half way through – ‘It’s an F Mr Newberry!’
My thanks must not only go to these fabulous performers and music teachers but to all you parents who came to support the children and gave so generously to the collection. Sara Farmer, Manager at Portland Foodbank, was so touched by your generosity and absolutely loved the service. My thanks to her for coming along today, and also to Rev’d Keith Magee. It truly was a wonderful morning.
The performances carried on into the afternoon, with Form 4 performing to their buddies at Glencairn House Care Home. The residents absolutely loved it – and I was again enormously proud of the talent and compassion shown by each and every one of our Form 4 children.
Five Form 5 pupils spent a fantastic day at Sherborne Girls and the Sherborne School as part of their ‘Cracking the Code’ experience on Thursday. The pupils carried out challenging and fun code related activities in maths, science, humanities and languages. They extracted DNA from strawberries, solved maths code breakers, answered tricky geography and history questions and explored African and Pacific languages. A busy but rewarding day – in which our pupils successfully showed their code breaking abilities!
The pupils ended the day with a photograph by the Alan Turing bust- an amazing old boy of Sherborne School.
Form 8 enjoyed a trip to Wyld Meadow Solar Farm today to learn more about renewable energy resources as part of their energy topic. The farm can produce up to 6MW of electricity each day, which can power approximately 1,500 homes! The class were led by Tracy from Earth Energy Education and also had some engineers from the site who were able to answer all of their thoughtful questions. They also had the opportunity to investigate the biodiversity of the site using quadrats and id cards to identify different plants and invertebrates. The children were fascinated with the career possibilities in the renewable energy industry.
Tracy will be coming into Sunninghill School on Monday morning so that the children can experiment with solar cells and light meters!
Due to the Harvest Festival, our Celebration Assembly was a little shorter than usual but we did of course have time to celebrate those children who won Good Work Certificates – Aiden, Oliver, Ivy, Beau, Rosie and all of Form 4 for their fabulous efforts at their residential last week. We also celebrated with our Academic Excellence winners this week – Juliet, Elsie, Hussain, Zachary, Joni, Coco and Will. Our TT Rockstars also gained their certificates this week.
Beau received his medal for the Weymouth triathlon he did a couple of weeks ago, and we were also very proud of Sasha-Mae who won an unbelievable 6 gold medals, 1 silver medal, and 2 trophies in one swimming gala! An absolutely incredible achievement!
Our Senior Gardening Club went to Dorchester Town Centre this week with Liz to meet Phil Gordon, Project Director The Dorchester Bid and Carl Dallison, Head of Parks and Gardens for Dorchester Town Council. The children’s task is to design and plant up one of Dorchester’s wonderful town planters and care for it during the coming seasons. The school are being sponsored to provide plants and other materials for the next 3 years. All the children are thrilled to be involved in this exciting new venture. The school and local community will be working together to create something unique and of visual interest to the town. Asked why they were excited about the project, Manu (Form 5) said ‘It will make the town look beautiful’, Shayan (Form 5) said ‘It makes you feel special doing something for the town’, and Louis (Form 6) said ‘It is nice doing something other people will enjoy!’
Our Open Morning is tomorrow, and our school is looking beautiful. We have a lot of new families coming to visit us tomorrow, and we are thrilled that so many of the children are able to be here to show off their lovely school.
Next week look out for our Form 8 prefects who will be helping myself and the SLT on the gates in the morning. Please do say hello to them, and do ask them if there is anything that they can help with.
Finally I was delighted to hear from one of our reception parents today that their daughter is absolutely loving her time with her Form 4 buddy – not just in their lesson ‘buddy’ time together but whenever she sees her around school. This kindness and compassion is exactly what I love seeing around Sunninghill and what makes this school such a very special place.
Have a wonderful weekend.
David
