Jessica Heynes and Flora Scurr who have both been awarded an Academic Scholarship to Cheltenham College.

Coco Haycraft Mee who has been awarded an Art Exhibition and a Drama Exhibition to Cheltenham College.

Ella Carnegie-Brown who has been awarded an Art Exhibition to Cheltenham College.

Lyra O’Carroll who has been awarded an Art Scholarship to Cheltenham College.

What an incredibly moving, professional Declamation finals for our Years 5 to 8. Verse after verse of so much intrigue, humour and thought provoking prose, from Thomas Hardy to Spike Milligan and Carol Ann Duffy to Roald Dahl, made the audience spell bound and enthralled.  Mr Brough Girling, the founder of Readathon and author was on hand to adjudicate. He was amazed and would have given all our finalists first place, which made his job even harder!  Whilst he deliberated, our winners from the earlier final for the Year 3 and 4 children declaimed their poems with great aplomb.  The winners were Lois, Lily, Honor, Edie and Evie and the overall winner was Honor whose rendition of The Three Little Pigs was outstanding!  Well done to all the children as the Declamation journey they have all taken has been incredible.

Jane Walker MBE, the founder of the Purple Community Trust, came with some colleagues from the Nailsworth Rotary Club to inform and education the children about the importance of our ring pull collection.  The Purple Community Trust helps the incredible children and adults living in the most notorious dangerous slums in the Philippines. The ring pulls are sent out to the project and are made into bags, purses and belts by the adults and sold. All the profits are reinvested in the scheme, providing incomes for families and education for the children.  Jane spoke passionately about her work and experience of living on the dumps with the children, so that she really understood their plight. Thanks to the Purple Community Trust there is now a school and many families have been brought out of poverty. Beaudesert has been supporting this wonderful cause since 2014.  One man’s rubbish is another man’s gold.

We know the children are inspired to save any ring pulls from fizzy drink cans – we hope they will ask friends, neighbours and family to save, for this worthwhile cause.

The children were shown the clip below:

Purple Community Trust Film

It has been another busy five nights in the boarding house. Lots, as always, has gone on and so much fun has been had in this penultimate week of the term.

On Monday, it was the final Monday Night Football of the term and of the season as next term our attentions turn to summer sports such as cricket and tennis. The children had yet another fun week playing with the other children from Minchinhampton. We will look forward to hopefully hosting them again from September where the boarders can continue to benefit.

On Tuesday, the Years 5 and 7 had another game of Spotlight, whilst is still dark enough to do this! For those that were not up for the rigours of the game, they were happy to stay inside and have free time in the ICT room.

On Wednesday, the Year 8s shared their night with some Year 6 netballers, who needed to board as they were taking part in the IAPS tournament and had a very early start the next morning. They all had a great fun time playing a large game of Virus together. A true reflection of how everyone was mixing together and enjoying each others company, whatever the year!

On Thursday, the Year 6 boys were eager to play down on the astro and the girls had fun creating their own iPad Movies. Different nooks and crannies around the school were used to try and create a horror scene in one particular film! As well as the astro and the movies, the sports hall was put to good use by the Year 8 boys who practised their basketball skills.

There are still spaces available for certain nights next term, but be warned as there is limited availability on others. If you are keen to have a go at boarding next term, please do get in touch and we’ll see if we can squeeze you in!

Eddie The Penguin Saved the World in the Pre-prep this week, with the Year 1 play. The children performed wonderfully whilst telling us about environmental issues, from recycling to saving water and energy.

This Thursday, the children in Years 4 to 8 were able to meet the author Virginia Clay who had travelled all the way from Kenya and was touring with her book, Warrior Boy.  The children in Years 4, 5 and 6 then had workshop.

Jake said, “On Thursday we met an author called Virginia Clay who taught us how to write stories and all about her life in Kenya. She gave us great tips on how to not make a book boring, but how to write exciting stories! It was funny and we all enjoyed it.”

Thank you to everyone who has made suggestions to help the School Council team on its mission to reduce the school community’s impact on the environment – with a particular emphasis at the moment on the use of plastic. The children have continued to gather ideas and to set about galvanising people into taking action, including inviting Carl, who runs the catering team, to a council meeting.  There he told them about all the different ways his team have tried to reduce single use plastic.  The council also came up with the idea or recycling pens.  Starting next week many classrooms will have an additional homemade ‘Terracycle’ tub (in association with Bic pens), into which stationery can go when empty or broken, and from where they will go off to be recycled. Any more ideas, do pass them on!

Many congratulations to everyone who performed in the lunchtime concerts this week. An excellent standard of performances in both concerts, from children from Years 3 to 8.

The Reception W class assembly was an interesting mix of performance and presenting some of their mor unusual findings as part of their ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ topic.  The children have been honing various skills right across the curriculum, whilst studying all sorts from nocturnal creatures to Noah’s Ark and, at last … dinosaurs.  Not many in the audience could have known that the bony back plates sported by the stegosaurus were used not for protection, but to absorb heat from the sun which the otherwise slow-moving herbivore used to generate energy and so get around at least a tiny bit quicker!  They also had a brain the size of a ping pong ball.

Using Talk for Writing techniques, an innovative approach to story-writing and story-telling which was created by Stroud-based, but now internationally acclaimed, Pie Corbett, the the children took the old favourite ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ story, broke it down into its component parts, reworked it and then transformed it into the hugely engaging ‘We’re Going on a Dinosaur Hunt’ which they performed.  Well done 1W on a fine assembly.

This Wednesday it was La Journée Internationale de la Francophonie – an annual global celebration of all the parts of the world where French is spoken, and an event which aims to bring French-speaking communities together.  As a result, there has been a distinctly French frisson to some of the proceedings here at school this week.  On Wednesday itself the Year 8 scholars took a Francophonie-themed assembly which included, to the delight of the audience, singing the first verse of the rousing French national anthem, ‘La Marseillaise’ and an entertaining rendition of the song ‘J’aime les fruits‘.   There was also a quiz and some sharing of interesting, unusual facts, such as:  Did you know that there are more French speakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo than there are in France?

Of course nothing French-themed would be complete without some serious culinary delights in the mix, and so on Tuesday the Year 6 children were treated to chocolat chaud and croissants al fresco French café-style at morning break.   This was followed up with some aplomb on Wednesday when the clever kitchen team served up a gorgeous lunch featuring the likes French onion soup, boeuf bourguignon, cassoulet and crêpes with chocolate sauce.  Bon appétit!

Some of Year 8 children were given a taster of the six week module offered as part of the Downe House Elective Programme.  The children were introduced to how to analyse films as though they were literary texts. This involved learning entirely new techniques and concepts specific to the world of films as well as discussing and analysing various famous clips. They then had the opportunity to create their own short film, putting into practice what they have learnt.

Children in Year 7 have been taking part in a citizen Science project called ‘What’s Under Your Feet?’  Over 600 schools are taking part, digging soil samples in their grounds and recording the soil invertebrates they find. This is done three times a year in different seasons. The data collected will be reviewed by scientists at the British Trust for Ornithology whose aim is to try and understand how climate change is affecting bird food sources and bird populations. The number of worms in this month’s survey was nearly double that found in October, with the record longest worm still standing at 23cm! The school will be named in the scientific paper published when the study is completed, showing how important it is for schools to be taking part.

The children in Year 2 have been creating some impressive examples of unaided writing recently.  To get the creative juices flowing, they were shown a picture of the Blitz, and from that they were tasked with producing an independent piece of creative writing.  Below are some of the evocative excerpts:

She also told me that I was going to have to be evacuated to the countryside in the morning. That’s when I started crying as I felt sad and anxious. In the morning I was taken to the platform and put on the earliest train to the countryside. I tearfully waved at Mummy until she was no more than a speck of dust in the distance.”  An excerpt from the writing done by Otis.

I waited for a long time. Eventually I heard the All Clear siren. I got out of my shelter and saw lots of rubble and destruction. I saw a little bit of fire. Rather than being sad everyone was mad. “When will it stop?” I thought.   An excerpt from the writing done by Hugo.

“We have to escape!” I said in a panic. “I know,” replied mummy. “Go and get Emi, then we can go!” said mum. I got Emi and we both ran outside. Suddenly we heard another bomb go off. We looked behind us and saw our house was just a pile of rubble.  An excerpt from the writing done by Harry.

On Tuesday our hugely knowledgeable Year 6 nature quiz team took a trip to Woodchester Primary School where they went head to head with similarly nature-obsessed opponents in the first round of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s annual primary schools wildlife quiz.   It was a tough contest in which each of the teams demonstrated some truly impressive nature knowledge.  At the end of the contest our team was level pegging with another team, which then saw both teams go into an eight question tie-breaker.  Both teams scored the maximum eight out of eight, at which point competition rules dictated that whichever team had scored highest in the earlier ‘specimen identification round’ would be declared the winning team.  Rather frustratingly, this was the other team.  BUT, the Beaudesert team’s excellent performance still gives them a good chance of going through to the next round as the highest scoring losing team.  Watch this space, and well done to Amory, Eliza, Sophie and Esmé!

With Easter almost upon us, one of the Year 1 parents has created a gorgeous miniature Easter garden for Reception C’s classroom.  Thank you Mrs D-S.  All of the Pre-prep the children (and staff) love it!

Although the Science department feel that Science at Beaudesert is continually being celebrated, they would like to mark this year’s National British Science Week with a photo competition.  Over the Easter holidays the children are encouraged to take a photo of something scientific and describe the Science in no more than 50 words.  This could be a germinating seed, a rainbow, rock formation, tricks with mirrors, or something that simply celebrates the awe and wonder of the planet. The  list is endless and posters are displayed around school with other ideas.  Closing date is April 26th and there will be year group prizes. Good luck everyone, and enjoy getting out and about with a camera.