The English department ran a National Poetry Day competition for KS3 recently and were hugely impressed with all of the entries. Congratulations to the winner, Evie S in Year 8, for her beautiful and moving poem "A New Normal," featured below. We will feature the two runner up poems (by Peter F and Emilka H) in the next few weeks and would like to say a massive well done to everyone who took part!

A New Normal

I can colour the world the way I like 

No object will be alike

That’s how I colour my picture 

I can always see a flicker 

You can see the world in a different colour 

Make it your own

Make your colours known 

Make your voice heard 

Make it soar like a bird 

Don’t let anyone tell you

That the sky has to be blue 

Nor the grass has to be green

That’s what’s been 

It’s time for a new normal 

To make our world enhanced

To make the world a better place

For colours to dance.

Aimed at parents/carers, children and young people, particularly those with SEND, care experienced and LGBTQ+, the Inclusive Digital Safety Hub is a collaboration between Internet Matters and South West Grid for Learning to empower parents, carers, and professionals with tailored advice and insight to make meaningful interventions in the lives of children and young people most likely to experience online risks. It Is the first of its kind.

We would like to encourage parents/carers to explore this useful platform to best support your son/daughter with their use of technology.

https://www.internetmatters.org/inclusive-digital-safety/advice-for-parents-and-carers/

Though we sadly cannot share students' wonderful work this year, we hope that you will join us in wishing everyone the very best of luck for their upcoming performances

Tuesday 20th October - Year 13 Creating Original Drama performances

Thursday 22nd October - Year 11 Devising Drama performances

STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - is celebrated, encouraged and explored at Sandringham with a range of opportunities.

Something you may be interested in is the current proximity of the planet Mars. It is at its closest to Earth about now, and if you look towards the South-East in the evening on a clear night you will see the red planet shining brightly. You can tell which objects are planets because their light is steady. Stars tend to ‘twinkle’ in the thermal air currents in the atmosphere.

In Year 7 Science Club students have been making electric motors and, last week, looking at images of biological specimens through a bioviewer and drawing them. We particularly like the nerve cell by Rhys P (in header) and the measles virus picture by Calum W (below)

Year 12 Computer Scientists will be taking part in the National Bebras computational thinking challenge on the 9th November. Students are asked to use their logical reasoning and problem solving skills to come up with solutions to given problems. The tasks are fun, engaging and require the skills and logical thinking of a computer scientist! The event is organised and run by Oxford university and asks the best minds in the UK to take part. The event is run in 35 different countries and is a global success. Our year 12 pupils will be taking part in the Elite championship. They’ll be competing with schools across all of the UK. They will all receive a certificate of completion. All students will be taking part in the first round and we’re hoping they’ll follow the success of previous years by getting through to the second round and beyond. 

Another appeal to parents: If you have any contacts in science, industry or government whose work is related to biodiversity or STEM, and who might be willing to give a talk to students, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Mr D. Tattersall, STEM coordinator, on tattersalld@mysandstorm.org

Nelson Mandela - Personal Heroes 

Our theme this week came from Deputy Head, Dr Creaby, who wanted to share the story of her personal hero, Nelson Mandela. Students were encouraged to reflect on what they could learn from Mandela’s life long struggle against racial injustice. His character traits of integrity, selflessness and reconciliation were used to ask students what traits they admire in others and themselves. As we go into the weekend we would encourage you all to think about who is your personal hero? And what can we all do to be a hero? 

After last week’s House Quiz totals were added, Hepworth steals the lead from Austen House. Next week will be a big week for the competition as we reach Half Term so we hope to see tutors giving out lots of house points! 

Tutor (Group) of the week =  Mr Tattersall 12 J Well done to 12J who again performed well on last week’s Black History Month Quiz. Their score means they now have the highest mean score across the whole school and have completed all 5 to date. Well done 12J. 

Year group of the week = Year 8 Well done to Miss Richards, the Y8 Tutor team and her Y8 students who were the biggest participants in last week’s House Quiz and have now completed more than any other Year Group.

House of the week = Hepworth Well done to Hepworth who had the biggest leap last week with 226 points to put them back to the top.

A special mention to Shakespeare and Turing who are trailing but have seen a dramatic increase in house participation in the last two weeks, well done!

Next week sees a virtual BIG HOUSE QUIZ as written by myself and Mr Nicholls, including an exciting Sandringham round. This will be released after school on Wednesday via Year/ House Google classrooms in a format to be revealed! The idea is we get as many individual entries as possible in the window of time it will be open on Wednesday afternoon/ evening. I am planning on awarding every entry a house point, in addition to the scores that students achieve. Good luck and thank you for your support with the House Cup so far.

The OLLIE Foundation are offering 30 parents living within St Albans the opportunity to access a fully funded free programme to support increased overwhelm, anxiety or crisis within your family. This programme has been funded by St Albans District Council in response to the Coronavirus pandemic and aims to offer parents emotional support and training during these challenging times. The sessions are 5th November, 10th December and 22nd January. Please contact louise@theolliefoundation.org for more details. 
 

If you would you like some extra practice with your French, German or Spanish, then Mary Glasgow magazines are a great way of increasing your vocabulary and skills. The subscriptions include language learning magazines and resources delivered straight to your door. If you are interested in this service, you can find out more here: www.maryglasgowplus.com/uk

Next week, we are focussing our whole school assembly on the themes of sustainability, and in particular on the global climate emergency. This is the main drive behind the sustainability agenda as we seek to reduce our carbon footprint across the school. The assembly will focus on four aspects of the issue;

1. It is happening - the global warming trends over the last 140 years, and the increased warming rates over the last 50 years.

2. It is caused by us - the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change.

3. It is serious - the implications for the planet with only a few degrees of warming.

4. There is hope - there are many things that we can do as individuals and a community to have a direct impact on reducing climate change.

It is this last point that we want to focus on going forward, and in The Sandprint next week, we will be highlighting some simple ideas which individual students and their families may consider. Form groups will also be looking at making a pledge next week after the assembly, to consider a small change in reducing the carbon footprint. We look forward to hearing about ideas and actions as we all seek to take action together!

Hello to everyone from Fo$S. One of our main priorities is to organise fun and social events throughout the year to bring the Sandringham School community together. We are sorry that we have been unable to host anything face to face but we are hoping to arrange a virtual Christmas event after half term – watch this space! Our other aim is to raise funds to support the school and students and this has been on the back burner since the Covid Pandemic. We are continuing with second hand uniform sales and hope to have another one soon.

There is still one way to support Sandringham and raise funds for our school and young people. We are all shopping more on-line and when we do, we can also raise donations for Sandringham with easyfundraising. If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s easy and completely free. 4,300 shops and sites will donate to us when you use easyfundraising to do your shopping – at no extra cost to you. If you haven’t already signed up (and thank you if you have) please sign up here and share today.  

Easyfundraising

We have raised over £2,000 from this so far. Every penny counts and it really does make a big difference to the school.

Thank you, The Fo$s Team.

Calling all students, mums, dads, carers, grandmas, grandads etc. Please send in your completed squares for the quilt project by next Friday 23rd October. If you know anyone who has made a square and hasn’t sent it in yet then, please give them a nudge!

Please send in your contributions with students to hand into their art teachers in their lesson if possible, and don’t forget to add your name.

We will be putting everything together after half term and can’t wait to see the finished quilt!

We have two students to feature this week.

Congratulations to Samuel V (Yr13) who came second in the Trinity College, Cambridge ‘Robson History Prize’ competition.  A fantastic achievement winning £200 of book tokens for himself and £200 for our LRC.

Also well done to Clover M (9A) who worked extremely hard during lock down to pass her Grade 5 Violin exam.

If you would like your son/daughter to be featured, please email melissa.holian@sandringham.herts.sch.uk

F6, in the Art and Music Block, is named after Ella Fitzgerald who we believe is an inspiration for overcoming discrimination in order to reach her goals.

Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917 and after a troubled childhood- she turned to dancing and singing in the hope of earning money. By chance, she was selected in a weekly draw at the Apollo Theatre in 1934 and it was not long after her debut, that her wide-ranging voice was recognised.

She went on to become the first African-American woman to perform at the Copacabana (the most famous club at the time in midtown Manhattan) and in 1958 made history as the first African-American woman to win a Grammy Award. Before her death in 1996, she was also awarded a NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Over her lifetime, Ella recorded over 200 albums and with 14 Grammy Awards under her belt (selling over 40 million albums) she is more than worthy of the title, "First Lady of Song."

"Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong."

What Career Live? & What University Live? will be held virtually on 6 & 7 November. It’s an ideal event for students aged 15-19 to learn more about their post-school options. Students can explore opportunities with top employers and leading universities and find out more about the apprenticeship and degree options on offer.

For further information about the event: https://www.whatcareerlive.co.uk/virtual-november-2020

To register for free access: http://bit.ly/wclvirtual

We are ‘Tenacity’, a collection of students from Year 12 who are partaking in the Young Enterprise 2020 competition. As our first product, we present to you Tenacity Tuck shop! For only £1.99 you could revive the Halloween spirit, and receive a Halloween themed sweet bundle to ‘bring Halloween home’.

If you would like to congratulate your child for the brilliant work they have done this half term, what better way to show it than with our sweet bundle, which you can choose to add your own personal message to! The sweet bundles will include a mixture of  Lolli-pops, Haribo's, Twix, Mars, Snickers and much more- giving a Covid-safe Halloween experience for £1.99 only. Each treat bundle will be handed out in form groups, a little bag to celebrate your child's hard work and to bring them a bit of Halloween fun, which has unfortunately been tainted by the pandemic.

We are unable to handle money on school site due to COVID 19 precautions, so to ensure safety during these times we ask that you purchase our product through pay-pal, using the link below and completing the google form for your order.

Google form for order:

https://forms.gle/tCRAEmt7CiTpLWKB9

Paypal link:

paypal.me/YEtenacity

Thank you in advance in supporting our company and we look forward to delivering your young person a Halloween treat! 

Bronze and Silver Arts Awards

The Bronze and Silver Arts Awards were well underway when school closed in March this year. This meant that some of you that were working on your portfolios may have not quite finished. I would like to collate all the completed portfolios over the next few weeks and provide some catch-up opportunities for students that may have one or two sections left to complete. If you have completed your arts award portfolio, please can you bring it in to Mrs Beaton in the music faculty for moderation. There will be some after school/lunchtime catch up sessions after half term for any students that would like support in finishing off these awards.

Sandringham School is a member of  the Alban Federation partnership that works in the area training teachers. Each year the Federation trains a large number of adults (55 trainees are currently following the programme in 2020/21), either straight from University or as career changers, and places them in a host school for the year to enable them to complete their training. All applications are submitted through UCAS (the University Admission System) and the application window is now open for courses starting in September 2021. Courses are available in both Primary and Secondary programmes, with salaries or bursaries available for suitably qualified candidates in many subjects.

If you are interested in becoming a teacher and would like general advice or specific guidance as to how to apply, please feel free to contact the Alban Federation team via afgtpenquiries@sandringham.herts.sch.uk or by phone on 01727 799560 Ext217.

FRENCH: Le mot de la semaine          effronté

SPANISH: La palabra de la semana      descarado/a

GERMAN: Das Wort der Woche            dreist

Thinking questions:

• Why does the Spanish ending have two options?
• The words are all very different this week – why could this be?
• How do languages change over time? What things influence the development of languages?

A gentle reminder for parents that we cannot accept any items dropped off at students services (this includes books, sports equipment, devices etc.) This is to minimise the number of people we have on site during the day and to ensure the safety of staff and students. Please encourage your child to check their bag in the morning in order to avoid being given a C1 for missing equipment. If a student does forget their device they are able to borrow one from our IT department. Thank you for your understanding and co-operation in this matter. 

B is for… brazen [adjective]

Meaning: Bold and without shame.

Example: He went about his illegal business with a brazen assurance.

Synonyms: Audacious, Bold, Shameless

Antonyms: Humble, Meek, Modest

Etymology: Comes from the Old English ‘bræsen’ meaning made of brass.

Following its critically acclaimed opening in London earlier this year, Uncle Vanya was abruptly halted as the world went into lockdown.  Uncle Vanya’s exquisite ensemble overcame the considerable challenges of working in a global pandemic, returning to the Harold Pinter Theatre to film the ‘perfect’ production, which is currently nominated for four Oliver Awards.  Full of tumultuous frustration and hidden passions, but brimming with hope and optimism for the future, Uncle Vanya is a must-see event for our times.  Tickets £16/£13

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake comes to cinemas with a fresh look for the 21st century and is “as bold and beautiful as ever”. This thrilling, audacious and witty production is perhaps still best known for replacing the female corps-de-ballet with a menacing male ensemble, which shattered convention, turned tradition upside down and took the dance world by storm.  Collecting over thirty international accolades including an Oliver Award and three Tony’s on Broadway, Matthew Bourne’s powerful interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s beloved tale is still original and still unmissable.  Tickets £13.50/£10

Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella is a thrilling and evocative love story set in London during the Second World War.  The internationally acclaimed choreographer’s interpretation of the classic fairy tale has, at its heart, a true war-time romance.  A chance meeting results in a magical night for Cinderella and her dashing young RAF pilot, together for just long enough to fall in love before being parted by the horrors of the Blitz.  Matthew Bourne’s vivid story telling has never been more heart-stopping and touching and will take the audience into the heart of Prokofiev’s magnificent score.  Tickets £13.50/£10

This highly engaging film takes us on a journey through the life of one of the most prevalent female icons: Frida Kahlo.  She was a prolific self-portraitist, using the canvas as a mirror through all stages of her turbulent and, at times, tragic life.  Guided with interview, commentary, and Frida’s own words, EXHIBITION ON SCREEN uncovers that this, however, was not a life defined by tragedy.  Tickets £7/£5

We hope everyone is keeping well.  Through October, November, and December we have lots of exciting screenings coming to The SandPit.  Including, Frida Kahlo, Uncle Vanya, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella.  We look forward to opening our doors again safely and to seeing you all again.

Following Government guidelines, you must wear a face covering while attending The SandPit Theatre unless you are exempt as stated in these guidelines.  If you do not wear a mask you will be refused entry and your ticket will be forfeited.  Our café will be during these screenings for drinks and snacks but please note we will only be accepting card payments.

The box office is open from 11.30am – 3.30pm Monday to Friday.  Alternatively, you can call us on 01727 799565 or visit www.sandpittheatre.co.uk