Thank you to all of the amazing staff who were involved in our Battlefields Trip last weekend. The report below is written by Alice D in Year 9 about her experience:

"I was lucky enough to be able to go on the battlefields trip this past weekend. It was an eye opening experience that I was fortunate to have participated in it. After a very early start, our first visit on our trip was Lijssenthoek run by the Commonwealth Grave Commission where our tour guides explained the causes of the Great War and how many countries had large empires which was why this war went global. We next went to the Hooge Crater museum which was very informative and had a small recreated trench situated behind it. It included lots of information on the first battle of Ypres because it was situated on a British front line where the battle was fought. As the sun was going down we went to Tyne Co Cemetery which is the largest commonwealth cemetery in the world for any war and had almost 12,000 warriors buried and around two thirds of which are unidentified and unnamed.

Following a delicious dinner we attended the nightly service in the Menin Gate where the Last Post was played and some students laid a wreath for Sandringham School which was very moving. After a long day we settled down for a well deserved rest at a hostel between Ypres and the French border. The next morning, another early start, we had breakfast and checked out. We made our way to the first location of the day: Sunken Lane, where the British army used an existing sunken lane as cover before a frontal assault after continuous artillery bombardment leading up to it. At 7:30 on 1st July 1916 approximately 100,000 British soldiers ventured into no-man's land. The first battle of the Somme was the bloodiest battle in British military history with around 57,000 injured, 19,240 of which were fatal on the first day alone, mostly due to machine gun fire. This leads to many metal remnants being left there which are often uncovered by the farmers who use the land today which is commonly known as the iron harvest. We then went to Auchonvillers where we had lunch and our tour guides gave us a talk on equipment supplied to a British soldier and one student had the chance to dress up as a soldier. Our final location was Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, it was a very emotive place as 72,173 people's names, both officers and soldiers, are engraved on the memorial of those who died during World War 1 who sadly did not have a grave.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip and learned a lot. I would highly recommend this trip to anyone who has the chance to go on it."

We are currently looking for a:

• Sixth Form Learning Mentor
• Assistant Operations Manager (advert to be posted over the weekend)

to join our fantastic school. More information is available on our website here.

Please share with friends who may be interested

Thank you to the 71 families who have already ordered their Christmas Trees through Treeasy. This equates to £330.50 of donations to Sandringham School.

If you would still like to order, you can go to www.christmastreeasy.co.uk and follow the instructions. Or for more information call 07710 407149 or email enquiries@christmastreeasy.co.uk.

Please make sure you mention your school in all correspondence to ensure a donation to your school.

For those new to the school, (and for those students who may have not accessed the link in a while) we are pleased to relaunch our Super Curriculum to students. Super Curricular activities take students' learning further, extending the subjects they study in the classroom beyond the content taught in lessons. The activities allow students to go into more depth on something taught up in the classroom, or learn about a new topic altogether. The activities are in a range of forms: reading, writing, watching videos online, downloading podcasts, attending lectures, visiting museums, entering academic competitions and much more. Activities can be found on the website here. There is something for everyone. If students complete a task there can complete the Google form here and students who engage in 3 or more activities will be issued with rewards. We hope that students enjoy the  suggestions and that they enrich their learning experience. 

On Tuesday afternoon, forty Sixth Form students travelled to Imperial College London to attend a series of presentations from 2nd year Mechanical Engineering students. There were a wide range of topics, from ‘how to hit the perfect six in cricket’, to ‘how do Newton’s Laws apply to a star’ and ‘how can buildings be made earthquake proof?’. The students had to opportunity to ask questions following the presentations, and really showcased their passion for Engineering and Physics!

Oscar F said of the day " We were offered this wonderful opportunity to attend physics-based lectures presented by second-year mechanical engineering students from Imperial College London. I was fascinated by the fact that the students took the principles in mechanics and maths we learnt in lessons into a creative approach and applied them into transformative research projects. One of which I found the most engaging was the use of conservation of momentum to power solar sails travelling across the solar system with the momentum of photons emitted from the sun. This can potentially accelerate our advancing knowledge in space and our solar system as its lower cost and improved time efficiency will mean it can be manufactured on a greater scale. From the insightful lectures, we have broadened our idea on the significance of physics on life-changing projects that will boost efficiency and productivity, improving quality of life for humans.  As well as this, the lectures provided students interested in mechanical engineering a brief direction for their university applications."

A big THANK YOU to everyone who attended the Quiz Night on 8th November, hosted by our wonderful Sixth Formers. You helped raise an amazing £1200 towards our Sixth Form Sri Lanka Expedition.

Thank you to everyone who donated towards Children in Need though Sandringham. We have raised £4,456.50 to date- a fantastic total which will go towards supporting families in the UK across 1,500 charities and children’s projects. Should anyone feel they still wish to donate you can do so via ParentPay.

Mr Smith and Mr Cracknell are back with Sandvent 2024. Four years after their previous charity event, the pair will take on a running challenge each day in December to raise money for our schools’ Gambia trip. You can enjoy the challenges they set themselves using this interactive advent calendar https://bit.ly/sandvent2024. Bookmark it ready for December 1st. They’d love you to get involved, by completing the challenges yourselves and/or donating using the link which will be on ParentPay in the next week.

One of our fantastic Enterprise Groups, Renaura, held a hot chocolate stall yesterday to raise money and awareness for their company. Renaura are a sustainable clothing brand which aims to reduce water usage in the fashion industry by recycling old clothes and reprinting them for new use. It takes 2700l of water to produce 1 cotton t shirt, so Renaura's aim is to raise awareness of the impact of fast fashion and encourage people to think about sustainable clothing instead. The team is made up of twelve Year 12 students and the £85 from sales will go towards items to help the next steps of their business. You can come and meet the team and buy items from their stall at the Christmas Fair on Saturday 7th December and watch this space for more fund raising events. 

Well done to Hepworth who keep their lead with an impressive 6,128 house points. Turing are not far behind on 6,051 points and Austen on 5,845. Special mentions this week go to Anike G (7A) for the most house points (13), Shakespeare for winning this week's house points 377, Newton for leading this month's house points - 1329 and Sergey N (7A) for  leading the school with 108 points.

UPCOMING EVENTS   

• Year 9 & 10 House Rugby – Wednesday 11th December
• Year 7 & 8 House Rugby – Monday 16th December
• House swimming- KS3 boys- 25th November, KS4/5 Girls 9th December, KS4/5 Boys 16th December.
• Fawcett & Hepworth Charity week – 2nd -6th December (Including disco, cake sale, clothes donation and food donation)
• Staff bake off – Tuesday 10th December
• Sixth Form Quiz – Thursday 12th December

This week’s whole school theme is Politics Week. Political awareness is often defined as: ''the extent to which an individual pays attention to politics and understands what he or she has encountered '' (Zaller 1992, 21). To help students encounter more political ideas we focussed on the recent Trump Vs Harris election in the United States, with students discussing this in one of their form times, reading an article which broke down the possible implications, and looking at polling data. As well as this students received an excellent assembly from Assistant Headteacher Mr Leat. We hope this experience has encouraged our students to be more engaged in politics and to pursue opportunities to get involved and have their voices heard. 

Article by Miss Willmott

The A Level Dance students enjoyed a trip to Sadlers Wells on Wednesday evening to see Akram Khan's Gigenis. As well as enjoying getting to see one of the practitioners they study in person, they took lots of inspiration for their choreographies! 

On Tuesday, we held our SLT Training Conference, with over 100 SLT members and House Leaders gathering together for the day.

Following a session on “The Magic of Leadership”, featuring an actual magic trick(!), students worked in their Project Teams, completing team building activities and starting to plan their Impact Projects for the year. The enthusiasm and energy in the room was palpable as around 15 different project plans took shape in the morning. The students also completed their Staff Interview Panel training and gave detailed feedback to Mr Cracknell on issues linked to Rewards and the ePraise platforms.

Project teams will be starting to work together more regularly over the coming weeks and we will share news of the projects and the achievements of the SLT as the year unfolds. A huge thank you to everyone who attended the day – Mr Davis is so excited to see what the students can achieve!

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?

 A final plea for any helpers for the Christmas Fair being held on 7th December 11am - 3pm at Sandringham. It features a lovely Christmas market to do some Christmas shopping, tombolas and interactive games for the students, plus festive food and drinks. If you cannot volunteer/donate- please do pop along to support the event! 

Volunteers are needed to help cook, serve food and drinks, run the tombola, plus help clear up afterwards.  If you can spare an hour or more of your time you can sign up through the link below, which splits the jobs by time slots volunteersignup.org/AHAQY

Donations for Tombola and Raffle:  All donations of sweets, chocolates or drinks would be very gratefully received.  You can either drop off your donations to the main reception  or you can donate to our tombola money pool and FO$S will purchase items to go on the tombola. You can do this here. Any prize donations from companies would also be most welcome.

We are trialling a new service called eplatform for the next few weeks here in the LRC as a way of enhancing our reading for pleasure culture by offering audio books and a wider selection of ebooks. Eplatform can be accessed through the library pages link of My Sandstorm or directly here.

An ebook can be loaned for an initial period of two weeks and students can use the display settings to change page colour, line and word spacing, font type (and size) and can read their chosen book in the language of their choice.

Reading takes many forms and whilst we have a very well stocked library we recognise that students may prefer to listen to a story from time to time. The audio book collection includes modern classics such as Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter and Lockwood and Co.

As the weather starts to get colder, a polite reminder that students are permitted to wear

• Plain black, navy or dark grey top coat, without logos or fur trims. No leather, leather look or denim coats. Bomber jackets are NOT acceptable. Scarves and hats should be plain black or red with no logos. 

 This is in line with our school uniform policy. Thank you.

This week we report news of two fantastic House Events. 

Our first ever House Swimming event was a huge success with 44 students taking part. The standard was high, enjoyment levels through the roof and teamwork spot on! The final results were: 1-Shakespeare 2-Johnson 3-Newton 4-Austen 5-Hepworth 6-Fawcett 8-Turing & Elgar.

There was also the re-introduction of a classic house competition "The Spelling Bee" for Year 8. This ended with Johnson taking the WIN! Well done to all involved in what was a very enjoyable event.

FRENCH: Le mot de la semaine: Félicitations

GERMAN: Das Wort der Woche: alle Achtung 

SPANISH: La palabra de la semana: Felicidades

Thinking Question:

• Given that ‘kudos’ is often used to give someone praise in an informal way, is it more accurate to translate 'kudos' using the modern words above favoured by AI tools rather than the more formal translations such as  ‘Anerkennung’, ‘gloire’ or ‘honor’ found in some old paper dictionaries we discovered while clearing out the MFL office a few weeks ago? What does this tell us about how language changes over time?

Nothing ruins summer vacation like a secret . . . especially when that secret is a dead teacher.

I Know What You Did Last Summer meets One of Us is Lying in this fast-paced suspense thriller following five teens who must cover up the suspicious death of their teacher.

Evie R has recently read the book and wrote a very perceptive review: “This book focuses on the story of children who all face the same scenario however have completely different lives. It shows me that even though one person may look perfect and happy not all will be well. They may just be peeling over a mask so that no one can see them or their feelings about what is truly going on.”

K is for ... kudos [noun]

Definition: Praise and honour received for an achievement.

Example: Ella received kudos from everyone on her performance.

Synonyms: prestige, glory

Antonyms: obscurity, infamy

Etymology: From the Ancient Greek κῦδος/ kûdos meaning praise/ renown

The Senior Boys football team progressed into the Last 32 of the national cup this week after beating SJL. Our best performance of the season so far with goals from Chiemena C, Tommy E, Tomer C & Noah B. We look forward to the draw next week.

Well done also to the Year 9 boys who scored an impressed 7 goals in a 7-5 win against Stanborough in the County Plate. 

And amazing work by the Year 7 boys who secured a place in the quarter final of the County Cup with a 3-1 win vs Marlborough. Goals from Rasmus, Seb and Nico.  MOM- Sam.

Our Year 7, 8 and 10 rugby teams enjoyed competitive fixtures against Roundwood Park on Saturday. Year 7s had a brilliant morning with 31 students taking to the field. The A’s drew 4-4 in a very good game whilst the B’s took the win!! Finlay H & Max G/Shaun C take MOM awards. The Year 8s battled hard and showed some high quality rugby but eventually lost out 3-6. Tries from Henry Y (2), and Alex N. And finally our Year 10 put on a good display but lost out to a well organised RPS team. 

Well done to our U12 Netball girls achieving a win against SRA tonight! Some excellent play shown from everybody on court…despite the cold!!

Award winning production company, Limitless Productions, are back in St Albans and this time they've got backup!

Welcome to the wild streets of 1920s New York, where gangsters run the show in Bugsy Malone! Join the charming Bugsy as he dives head-first into a thrilling turf war between rival gangs - Dandy Dan’s slick crew and Fat Sam’s lovable misfits. With whipped cream pies flying and laughter echoing, Bugsy navigates chaos while trying to win the heart of the dazzling showgirl Blousey Brown.

As the stakes rise and friendships are tested, Bugsy must step up to save his pals and outsmart the competition. Bursting with catchy tunes and high-energy dance numbers. From the team behind 'Little Shop of Horrors', 'Grease' and 'The Addams Family', this musical is a rollicking adventure not to be missed!

Tickets are on sale here and cost from £17.00

Following the fantastic success of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ & ‘Rapunzel’ our creative team are back with a Brand New pantomime adventure based on the classic tale.

 Puss In Boots and the Pea Green detective agency are ready to save Pantoland from a terrible threat!

The Hickory Dickory Dock clock has been stolen and someone is messing with the pantomime timeline. The police are struggling to sniff out a suspect and things are getting stranger by the hour! Join Puss In Boots on their epic quest to bring the time thief to justice. This sword-swinging, paw-scratching, time-stopping pantomime is an action packed treat for all ages!

Tickets are on sale here and cost from £10.00