Headteacher's Message
This is our final bulletin for the Spring Term. It has whizzed by as we knew it would with only five weeks in this half term and so much to fit in. The trips have included visits to the Natural History Museum for our Wildlife Photographer competition winners, listening to the annual world traders Tacitus lecture for Sixth Formers, attending the Old Operating Theatre to support the history of medicine unit for Year 10s, a theatre trip to see ‘Our Town’ for Year 12s, conferences for Sixth Formers – Maths in Action, Medics Conference, the Candle Conference and a Community Safety Conference. This has all been in addition to departmental events such as the talk with feted playwright Ava Pickett, the Independent State Schools Partnership (ISSP) music day, Richmond Music Trust’s Choirs Connect and our wonderfully fun Waldegrave Bake Off!
I’m not quite sure how we have fitted it all in but the students have certainly excelled as this week’s termly celebration assemblies demonstrated. These events recognise the achievements of the term for each year group and this week we celebrated with Year 9, Year 10, Year 11 and Year 13 all marking their successes.
Congratulations to 8PCO this week’s winners of the Year 8 Bake Off Challenge. Their chocolate and strawberry cupcakes with a chocolate curl were a real standout but everyone of the entries was thoroughly enjoyed by the judges at breaktime today. Well done to runners up 8PFO and 8FGC.
Today we have also cracked a few jokes for Comic Relief and we are very grateful for all the donations received for today’s non-uniform day in aid of this fantastic cause. We have raised over £1200 and will keep the ParentPay account open this week for any additional donations.
Next week we will honour the achievements of Year 7 and Year 8, as well as mark the start of the Easter break with our Easter Bonnet parade for these year groups. This is always a fantastic display of creativity, imagination and engineering skills and I am sure there will be plenty of surprises on the day.
A reminder that there will be a webinar on Tuesday 24 March at 5:30pm to answer questions from parents and carers about the rollout of mobile phone app, Blackout, following the Easter break. You will need to register your interest to attend this event via our google form. A recording will be made available after the event for those unable to attend.
On a final note please can I ask all parents to speak to your child over the weekend about road safety. Our staff on gate duty at the end of each day regularly need to remind pupils to look before crossing the road, particularly those who are distracted by their mobile phones. We will also be raising awareness of this during tutor times.
Next week there will be no parental bulletin but our termly School Magazine will be published. I do hope you enjoy reading the pupils’ articles covering the events of this past term.
This week has been another busy one for Year 7. They have been voting in the Richmond Youth Elections, in which we have six Waldegrave students standing for a place on the UK Youth Council.
Our students have also continued with their brilliant science experiments this week with 7EVA getting their chance to make some volcanos in class. This all looked like fantastic fun!
Year 7 Basketball team played the league final against RPA on Thursday after school and have been named the League Champions as well as the tournament winners! Read more in the Sports Section below.
This week we held the fantastic Year 8 Bake off. We were overwhelmed by the effort and creative talents of our Year 8 students each representing their form groups had to create 12 identical cupcakes with a surprise filling. Each cake had to be made up of two different flavours therefore using two complementary batters and have a surprise in the centre of each cake! All cakes were required to look the same & be presented creatively.
In first place with some spectacularly presented cupcakes topped with a chocolate curl came 8PCO. Well done to Charlotte, Chloe and Lily for your chocolate and strawberry cakes. They were closely followed by Ella, Nina and Maryam of 8PFO with their honey & chocolate marbled cupcakes (I think it was the crunchy topping that tipped the votes!) in second place. In third Charlotte, Matilda and Grace in 8FGC also wowed judges with the perfect chocolate sponge in their dark chocolate and berry cupcakes.
In form time this week we have been celebrating Neurodiversity week 16 – 20 March. Neurodiversity week is dedicated time to recognise and celebrate our neurodiverse community. The week aims to raise awareness, promote understanding and acceptance while challenging stereotypes and misconceptions. At Waldegrave our school culture promotes empathy and understanding of all members of our community. It is right we celebrate, recognise and learn about members of our community who are neurodivergent.
Today we are celebrating Red Nose Day in support of Comic Relief. Pupils have really got behind this event dressing in red and sharing jokes this week for our school wide competition. Well done to 9STR for their winning joke. All the winning jokes have been shared on our instagram today and will be published in next week’s School Magazine.
This week our rugby, football and basketball teams have all been challenged. First up were the under 16s playing at Orleans Park for a Rugby 7s tournament on Thursday. The team played against four teams, Orleans Park, Reigate Grammar, Grey Court and Turing House, winning three out of these games and coming second in the tournament and winning the shield. Our try scorers were: Phoebe, Eve H, Immy, Kiera and Eve B. Fantastic work team!
Our Year 9/10 footballers also played on Thursday with a 4-1 loss against Teddington. This match was on Teddington grounds with Lara D named as player of the match.
Finally we have a 3v3 basketball tournament this afternoon – you can read more about this and a round up of sports for the whole term in the School Magazine to be published next week.
