Welcome back! We are absolutely delighted to welcome back all the children after the Easter Holidays. They all look wonderfully refreshed after a good break. We have had a fabulous start to our new term, with the publication of our most recent ISI inspection report. There are two elements to the inspection; the first relates to compliance and, as a school, the requirements are either met or not met, and I am pleased to say that we fully met all the compliance requirements.
The second element of the inspection relates to quality of education and schools are awarded a judgement as being excellent, good, sound or unsatisfactory in the two areas of academic (and other achievements) and personal development. We are exceptionally proud to share with you all that we have been awarded the highest possible judgement of excellent in ALL areas.
This is the highest accolade any independent school can be given and this excellent rating reflects the hard work and commitment of all the staff at Sunninghill and the incredibly supportive wider community – and of course the pupils themselves who work so hard to make our school such a fantastic place.
Over Easter, we held our Holiday Clubs which were a huge success. Our thanks must go to Stuart Holland and Lesley Nolan-Stone who ran the Holiday Club and Music Holiday Club. Also thanks to all our specialist teachers, VMTs and assistants who worked so hard to make it as much fun as possible for each child. We have done some surveys and had some fabulous responses:
Tilly, Flo & Ren have attended 3 different play club settings now and this has been their favourite. All 3 had a great time and all came home having made friends that they could not wait to see again. This has made for the easiest drop offs for me before I headed in to work. They are eager to return for the Summer holidays and cannot wait to see what fun you have planned for them.
Alice absolutely loved holiday club and looked forward to everyday. For her the experience was about being in a musical environment, playing with others, and taking part in a wider performance and this was all pitched perfectly. I felt it was run perfectly, no recommendations.
Pupils summed it up as:
Great, unimaginable (FTY Lab) and perfect.
Loved doing a mixture of things such as music, roller blading and art. They are all things I like. I hope Mrs Nolan-Stone can do the music club again because it was so much fun.
Holiday club was very creative. We did lots of fun things such as Art and morning activities. My favourite part was using the boom whackers in the Music Club.
Next Friday, Maddi Tarrant, a double mini trampolining world championship athlete from Poole, will be visiting us as part of Sports for Champions UK. She will be demonstrating her trampolining to the children, who in turn will be taking part in a sponsored circuits challenge. You should all have received your sponsorship form, and all monies and forms need to be in by Wednesday morning at the very latest. This is because Maddi will be awarding the following prizes for sponsorship raised to the value below:
Bronze (A6 Postcard) Raises between £5 and £14.99
Silver (Signed A4 Poster) Raises between £15 and £34.99
Gold (Photo with athlete presented in a signed keepsake wallet) Raises £35+
Please note; you can either bring cash in with your form or pay using the QR code on the sponsorship form. Again the deadline in Wednesday 26th in the morning. 40% of the money raised will go to their athlete fund and 60% of the money will go to our school, which we are going to spend on new play equipment for break times. Please give generously and support your child’s challenge!
This term we welcome a new Head Boy and a new Head Girl. Congratulations to Felix and Flora – we know you will do a wonderful job and be excellent role models for the rest of the school.
We are very excited to let you know that the video for Moana is now live on our Sunninghill Prep YouTube channel. We are so very grateful to Duncan Sleightholme who has spent so many hours over the Easter break putting this together for you all. It really is wonderful. We hope you enjoy reliving the Moana magic!
I am delighted to provide you with some information from Sophie Blair, one of our Learning Assistants and an ambassador for car seat safety. She has put together some very useful information for us, and I have to say I have learnt a lot from the attached.
Form 6 have started to develop their coding skills beyond images on a computer screen to controlling robots; brand new robots! They are miniature versions of those found in industry, transporting packages around factory warehouses, and those in robot vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.
Our fleet of :MOVE MOTORs has begun to move forwards, go into reverse and even spin round and round. One or two have already worked out that the :MOVE MOTOR can also play tunes; it won’t be too long before they also notice that they have lights.
But this is not quite as simple as it sounds and what seems intuitive does not always achieve the desired results. Their next task is to program them to negotiate a known path, then the pupils are going to be using the plug-in sensors to ensure that their robot follows a line marked on the ground (an AGV – automated guided vehicle) before enabling proximity detectors to ensure that they don’t bump into any other robots on the way. Quite a challenge; and they are all very keen to be the first to work out how!
Alongside the numerous trips and residentials we have for the children this term, we have some exciting events coming up this term that you might like to put in your diaries:
Friday 5th May – 9.30am – 12pm – Open Morning
Friday 5th May – afternoon – Coronation Tea Party
Friday 12th May – 7pm – 9pm – Wine Tasting Evening
Friday 9th June – 7pm – 9pm – Sunninghill’s Got Talent
Monday 26th June – afternoon – Grandparent Day
Saturday 1st July – Summer Fayre
I wish you all a very happy weekend and I look forward to seeing you all next week.
Best wishes
David
