Mr Spanswick's Words Lent 2

I am very pleased to officially announce the birth of Mr Barber’s baby girl, Lily Olivia, over the Christmas break. Mr Barber is enjoying some paternity leave at the moment (although we cannot keep him away from the football field and I saw him reffing the Under 10’s on Wednesday!) and he will be back with us in the middle of next week. I am also delighted to announce the birth of Susan Payne’s first grandson, Frederick Henry, several weeks ago. Grandma has been proudly showing lots of pictures of Frederick around the staffroom. Susan continues to recover from her illness and will be working with us throughout this term albeit on a part time basis. It is wonderful to have her back.

Thank you to so many of our boys and parents who have donated toys to charity this week. The Link Foundation, our wonderful local charity group, are helping to distribute them to worthy causes in the area, and thank you to Thomas Scargill who inspired the school to give in such a generous way.

As Mr Butterfield will elude to in his words, we had our first football matches of the season against Oratory Prep School earlier in the week, and although we came second more than we came first, the boys have nevertheless enjoyed their maiden run out onto the slightly boggy pitches. Very well done to Dan Greenwood and Ben Babcock in Year 6 who both enjoyed tremendous success in the Under 11A team, with Mr Goddard telling me their goals are genuine contenders for ‘Goal of the season’. They also contributed two assists in their fiercely competitive game against Oratory. I watched some of the under 9 games on Tuesday and must say that Jack Toker, Oscar Griffin and Ishraj Samra stood out for me with their excellent attitude and their skills.

On a slightly different note, please do ensure that your sons (of all ages) have their tracksuits with them for every sports lesson - the weather does not seem to be getting any warmer!

Our assemblies this week have focused on Pupil Voice matters with a little snowy poetry thrown in for good measure!! I also explained to the boys the history behind inaccurate weather forecasts!

More importantly I was able to award several of our boys with their music exam certificates for piano, violin and guitar…..very well done to Noah Olikara, Fraser Jones, Kerim Yilmaz and Junwen Liew. I would like to wish the best of luck to all of our chess players for their matches on Saturday, and the Key Stage 2 General Knowledge quiz team who are competing against lots of schools on Monday in a tournament at Davenies. Very well done to Aidan who has made exceptional progress with his reading, writing and Maths

Our Year 6 pupils have been concentrating on Persuasive writing since we started back, and Mrs Vine has been delighted with the outcomes - it would appear a number of our older boys are very good at compiling letters of complaint and persuading local councils to part with money!!!! This is a very useful skill!!

I hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend break.