It’s been a couple of weeks since the last update and rather than give the overall standings- it's a deep dive into the statistics behind our parkrunners. You’ll see from the chart most of out students prefer their local course, Jersey Farm, however we have many students go on tour to places such as, Brundall in Norfolk, Dunstable Downs to the North West of Herts, Leeds in Yorkshire, Grovelands in North London and even Dolgellau in Wales! 

Although most tend to run or walk, parkrun wouldn’t be possible without its volunteers, so a big shout out to our students who help support their local parkrun each week by marshalling, barcode scanning and timekeeping.

We also had a record turnout to schoolrun this week. Although Mr Smith was busy with the Ofsted inspection, regular parkrunner and schoolrunner Xavier H (10E) was kind enough to organise the club this week by timekeeping and recording the results, assisted by Mrs Cracknell. Results here. Come and join in! The club takes place every Wednesday, 3.30pm. Outside K block.

After an amazing week of the Velocity Dance show, Isla C in Year 8 went to a dance competition and came 1st in her slow dance gaining her last grade point to move up a grade to intermediates. Well done Isla- sounds like a busy week and we are impressed with your hard work.

If you would like to nominate a student for the Spotlight after half term, please email Holianm@sandringham.aat.school with any details and/or photographs. We would love to hear about any students who are going above and beyond.
 

We are pleased and proud that our Sixth Form students have started up industry related societies to be part of.  They have set up an Engineering Society, which invited two experts in on Monday. 

Emily D, Year 13 said: “On Monday the 5th, our Sixth Form Engineering Society was lucky enough to welcome 2 guest speakers from the infrastructure firm Balfour Beatty. They gave an inspiring presentation on the technological challenges of manufacturing gravity-based offshore wind turbines. Thank you so much to Louise Colley and Louise Hardy for this!” 

Thank you to Emily for her work on this and to the two Louises for kindly giving up their time for our students.

The whole school theme this week celebrates International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11th). This year will be the 9th time this day has run and it aims to promote the full and equal access and participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality. This week students received an excellent assembly from Science teacher, Miss Jackson. We hope this demonstrates the importance of recognising the different challenges women face in order to better understand and encourage anyone who is interested to get into Science, and for no one to feel excluded from any fields based on their gender.

Do you love languages? Fancy showing off your skills? Enter one of the many Oxford University language competitions here. There are competitions for French, German and Spanish across various age ranges. If you want to ask about these, please speak to your languages teacher.

We were pleased to welcome our lovely Year 9 students and parents to the 9 into 10 options evening last night. We hope that everyone found the evening informative. A link to the booklet can be found here. Please note important dates for the process are as follows:

• Thursday 29th February 2024: Year 9 Parent Teacher Consultation (in person)
• Friday 8th March 2024: Final deadline for return of the options form online
• March - April 2024: Options interviews with Deputy Headteacher
• June 2024: Year 9 options confirmed 

We are delighted to announce that our Young Enterprise Company, Arista Crafts, were awarded Runner Up – Special Recognition in the regional logo competition. They were competing with over 30 other companies. The company meets weekly and spent a number of hours designing and refining their professional logo. If you would like to support Arista Crafts, you can buy their eco-friendly beeswax wraps, bracelets and phone charms online here.

As you may be aware, there has been a rise in vaping across society, and particularly amongst young people. Our experience at Sandringham School, like many schools both locally and nationally, certainly reflects this pattern, although we do know that we are dealing with a minority of students in our school. We recognise that this is not an issue specific to any one school but rather a risk that exists within the community and local area impacting on all schools. We continue to educate students regarding the dangers of vaping and the legality surrounding this through our Personal Development curriculum, assemblies and targeted work from external agencies.

As part of our commitment to working in partnership with our families, we are delighted to announce that Richard Boxer, Healthy Lifestyles Lead from LINKS Multi-Academy Trust will be running an evening workshop on vaping and how to talk to your child about vaping and smoking. The evening will be held on Wednesday 6th March from 6.30-7.30pm in the Main Hall.

This will provide an invaluable opportunity to learn more about vaping in terms of its accessibility to young people, signs your child may be vaping, what addiction might look like and how to discuss the topic of vaping and smoking with your child. Please use this form to confirm your attendance at this 'in person' event - https://forms.gle/3RcMwiLt23VghJv38.

Below is an extract from a fantastic article written by Nia V about her experience of Battle of the Bands. You can read the full article here. We hope that it inspires others to get involved with all of the wonderful musical opportunities we have here at Sandringham School- 

"The variety of music engaged and energised the audience as they clapped along to many familiar tunes such as Red Violets, Blue Roses’ performance of Vous-les-vous. The trumpet, paired with the dance actions of the charismatic lead singers, perfectly captured the party euphoria associated with ABBA.  Furthermore, The Musical Six's innovative use of instruments such as vocals, drums, guitars and a violin added a folksy twist to the well-loved song Riptide by Vance Joy. Ed Sheeran was favoured by both solo singers, V G and ‘Big Bull Belly’, Sheerans infamous Perfect and Thinking out Loud being stripped back and thoughtfully personalised to emotive vocals and a guitar.

The crowd were stunned by many of the bands’ incredible voice control and instrumental accuracy. For me personally, this particularly stood out in the Mondays’ performance of Valerie. The four instrumentalists of the band on drums, piano, trumpet and guitar exhibited a palpable energy with their lively performance and matching sunglasses, furthered by the female vocalist's entrancing voice. Likewise, the lead singer of JADE captured Adele's distinguishing vibrato beautifully in Rolling in the Deep as the male backing voices and instruments added a warm depth to the timbre of the sound. Moreover, in an interview, Trinity expressed their admiration for the vocals in the girl group Destiny’s Child. It was rather appropriate therefore that the band member Destiny, began Trinity’s a cappella rendition of Immature. The band's communication and stage presence was striking as they passed the melody between the three female singers while moving around the stage with an unmatched confidence."

This week, we welcomed Caroline D, a Sixth From student from a German comprehensive school who was visiting Sandringham School as part of her work experience. She spent time in the MFL department and was brilliant supporting the Year 8 and 9 groups in their in learning of German. She was also fantastic with the A Level group, highlighting the importance of political engagement for young people in  Germany. A huge thank you to Caroline for all of her amazing work, and also to the teachers and students in the A Level classed that she shadowed for making her feel so welcome. As you can see from her write up below- she really enjoyed her experience here and we wish her every success in the future. 

"Mein Aufenthalt in England an der Sandringham Schule war wirklich großartig. Sowohl die Lehrer als auch die Schüler waren unglaublich nett und hilfsbereit, was meinen Aufenthalt sehr angenehm gestaltet hat. Nichts machte die Lehrer so nervös wie der Besuch der Inspektoren. Ich habe gesehen wie sie ihre Kaffetassen umklammerten als würden sie die Tage mit den Inspektoren schneller vorüber gehen lassen. Am Ende des Tages haben es sowohl die Schüler als auch die Lehrer mit einem Lächeln gemeistert. Ich habe jede Minute genossen und würde ohne zu zögern wieder die Sandringham Schule besuchen. Von meinem iPhone gesendet." 

Well done to Turing who maintain their lead this week

1. Turing 13,973
2. Shakespeare 13,093
3. Newton 12,745

Special mentions this week also go to:

1. Elsie D (7T) 10 points
2.  Harriet N (7T)  9 points
3.  Alvin L (7F) 9 points
4. Julia E-C (8F) 9 points
5.  Rachel C (9F) 9 points

The Puzzle of the Week is a Mathematics challenge run weekly. This week's puzzle is shown above. For every entry you will receive 1 house point, if you answer correctly you will win 2 house points and if you are the fastest person to answer the puzzle correctly then you will win 5 house points!  To enter, simply scan the QR code and fill out the google form.  Good luck! Why not play at home and see who is the quickest to get the answer?

Our Year 12 House Sport second round took place last week week with competitions in table tennis,football & bench ball. Well done to everyone who took part! The results were as follows:

• 1st - Austen
• 2nd - Johnson
• 3rd - Hepworth
• 4th - Fawcett & Shakespeare
• 6th - Elgar
• 7th- Newton
• 8th - Turing

Tuesday night saw our annual Battle of the Bands in our wonderful Sandpit Theatre. There was a fantastic turnout, and the event was ably hosted by our senior students who took the lead on sound and production. Pictured above are the winners but a huge well done to everyone who took part! We now we look forward to the Spring Concert in March.

The winners were:

Junior:            Winners - The Musical Six -Rose McK, Carine M, Sophia V, Carmel F, Rebecca T, Hannah E

Intermediate: Runners up – Red Roses, Blue Violets - Hazel B, Sara E, Rose O, Emma S, Ollie S, Stefan C

                       Winners - The Food Fighters- Max McC, Jaiden W, Jamie H, Eddie H,  Leo L-O, Jimmy D                         

Senior:          Winners Plate Breaker : Lexi F-W , James O , Soraya E, Max B

The below article is written by Emmi T in 7T about her experience of the House Bingo night event. "On Wednesday evening we went to a House event which involved bingo, singing and comedy. It was so much fun! Firstly, we got all of our snacks (like sweets and crisps) and then we started the bingo. You had to get one line across to win first, then two lines, then a full house. It was exciting to listen for when your numbers came up- but the Sixth Formers had to check if there was any cheating! Mr Clarke was really funny reading out the numbers and making rhymes. There was also a rubber turkey and whoever flung it the furthest got to keep it! There was music in between to keep us entertained and everyone was singing to lots of cool songs. People got up to say jokes on stage and the Sixth Formers and teachers voted for the best ones. This happened with dancing and singing as well. It was a really fun evening and everyone had a great time. It was nice to be with people who you wouldn't normally sit with in your year group but also good to get to know new students from other years and to meet some of the Sixth Form. I'd definitely recommend it to other people!" 

FRENCH: Le mot de la semaine: sordide

GERMAN: Das Wort der Woche: unmoralisch

SPANISH: La palabra de la semana: sórdido/a

Thinking Question:

• How does a language reflect a culture?

When the ghosts of two young children start to haunt a local school, trainee ghost hunters Eve, Clovis and Tom are invited to help investigate the case. But before long they realise there is more to this haunting than they first realised. Could it be that the ghost children are victims of Jack the Ripper? And is the evil Ripper of Whitechapel about to unleash a new campaign of terror from beyond the grave?

Logan H in 7H has recently read the book and wrote a fantastic review. He feels that the descriptions in the book make it “really easy to help you imagine the setting and how all the characters look and how they act….The characters are all really brave and all work together which in turn really brings the whole story together into a good book.”

S is for…sordid [adjective]

Definition: Dirty and unpleasant. Also used to mean something immoral or dishonourable actions and motives; arousing moral distaste.

Example: They stayed in a sordid hostel and complained to the management.  

It was a sordid story of betrayal and dishonour.

Synonyms: Unsavoury, Unclean

Antonyms: Respectable, Immaculate

Etymology:  Sordid comes from the Latin word ‘sordes’ meaning dirt.

Please see above for our upcoming fixtures. You can follow all of the results @SandringhamPE

Our U18 boys had a good win in the @bballengland National Schools Cup this week with a 64-47 win over Perse School. This sees us through to the next round- well done team!

Last week, our Y11 basketball team also won 77-55 win over Westcliff High to see them through to the National Quarter Final. Amazing work!

And finally, two losses to end the week. A very competitive game in the county league for our Year 8 boys against St Columbas. A 60-46 loss but with some impressive displays from Harry R, Alex C & Sam W. And our u15 girls lost to a strong Beaumont side in the county league. A great effort from all involved however.

A huge well done to our amazing cross country runners who all put in a brilliant race on Saturday. Special mention to Toby P who put in an outstanding performance to finish 3rd and make the Hertfordshire team for the English Schools Championship in March. Everyone was brilliant however, and you should be very proud of yourselves. 

The indoor season is upon us and Margot K has started off her campaign superbly with a high jump PB of 1.60 which ranks her 9th in the country. Amazing work! 

The 1st Xl travelled to play Hitchin Girls’ School last week. The Sandringham team was a mixed upper school team with both boys and girls representing the school. The Hitchin Girls’ team were an athletic team of 6th formers, many of whom were playing at their home astro, Blueharts. The Sandringham team were missing their main defenders and with a number of players playing out of position, it was a tough match. However, the team quickly gelled and adapted to their positions. There was some tremendous marking and defending but the clinical finishing of the Hitchin Girls’ team proved too much for the Sandringham defence. In the later stages of the game, Sandringham made an excellent attacking move down the pitch with Jacob scoring an excellent consolation goal. Well done to all players involved

An evening of Fleetwood Mac and Cheese performed by Big Love UK!  Featuring a 5-piece tribute to Fleetwood Mac, plus some familiar cheesy dance floor classics!

Tickets are on sale here and cost £20

Sandringham School presents their annual concert.  This features all their choirs and instrumental clubs, including the ever-growing show choir, the famous jazz band and sinfonia orchestra.

Tickets are on sale here and cost £5 / £4