Message from the Headteacher

Southend High School for Girls Termly Newsletter

Highlights

Alden Biesen

Paris Trip

2

The History Boys

Children Helping Children

Becoming Independent Learners

3

Vocab Express

West Leigh Infants visit SHSG

English Conference

4

Cultural Ambassadors

Cyberbullying Awareness Play

5

Harry Potter Night

World Book Day Author Visit

6

Jack Petchey Spring Term

Winners

Music Department News

7

Charity Week in March 8

Spring 2015 Issue 12

Year 4 Reading Mentoring Scheme at Hamstel

Southchurch Boulevard

Southend-on-Sea

Essex SS2 4UZ

Phone: 01702 588852

Fax: 01702 587181

E-mail: aslater@shsg.org

www.shsg.org

Southend High School for Girls

an Academy Grammar School

There is something on our calendar almost every day of the year and the students have fantastic opportunities both in lessons and beyond. Highlights and the Weekly Gazette give a glimpse of what goes on at SHSG. For example this term we have had a geography field trip to Scarborough, Spanish exchange visitors in school and our German students have been to Germany on their exchange. Everyone, through the House system, works to ‘give something back’ and this term the school has given over £2000 to Essex and Herts Air Ambulance and over £4000 to Teenage Cancer Trust. During Charity Week a further £2000 was raised for charity. On the back page you can see some images of fundraising activities which raised the money for Make-a-Wish Foundation and The British Heart Foundation.

The School Council has been busy and students attend Senior Leadership Meetings to talk to myself and the deputies about their concerns or wishes. The School Council has now embarked on the STARS project and has a notice board on which to put their ideas about learning and what constitutes outstanding learning, good learning, satisfactory learning and emerging learning. Students at SHSG are keen to think about and take responsibility for their education and we wholeheartedly support them in developing their knowledge of the learning process. The Easter holidays are upon us and for students with external examinations on the horizon the two week break is revision time. The forthcoming weeks are anxious times for years 11, 12 and 13. We will do our best to balance the pressure which examinations bring with the need for relaxation and anxiety reduction; examinations are important but so is student wellbeing. This is a fraught time in terms of finance and budgets. Please be assured that whatever cuts we have to make, the high quality education of our students is paramount. Ms Brierley

Inside this issue:

Miss Midwinter’s Year 8 English students have been taking part in a reading mentoring scheme with Key Stage 2 students at Hamstel Junior School. Our girls have been paired up with a Year 4 reading ‘buddy’ and have been listening to them read and helping them to develop their reading skills. Our students have also been reading Fleur Hitchcock’s book ‘Shrunk’ to their buddies and discussing the characters and plot. This has been a fantastic opportunity for the students to share their love of literature, build their confidence and also to develop leadership skills. Charli Connor said ‘It was very exciting to be able to read with the students and see them engaging with the story’ whilst Lianna Hooper added ‘I would have loved this experience when I was in year 4. I think they really enjoyed reading with us!’. We look forward to Year 4 visiting our library in the near future. Miss Midwinter Key Stage 3 English/ EAL Co-ordinator

In February 44 students with Mr Smith, Miss D’Auria, Mrs Page and Miss Cuvilliez spent 5 days in Paris. We visited the Louvre, the Sacré Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, the Cité des Sciences and had a boat cruise along the Seine. We walked a lot too! This is what one student, Holly Mepham in 9N wrote about our Saturday in Paris: Le samedi, nous avons visité le Musée du Louvre. J’ai vu la Joconde. J’ai aimé la Vénus de Milo parce que mon chat s’appelle Milo. Le Louvre est très grand. L’après-midi nous avons

visité La Notre-Dame, Le Sacré-Cœur et Montmartre. J’ai préféré Montmartre parce que c’est très beau et j’ai aimé la forme du Sacré-Cœur. A Montmartre j’ai acheté un béret – j’ai toujours voulu acheter un béret à Paris ! We all returned exhausted but having had a wonderful five days and cold, but good weather.

Mr Smith, Head of French

Page 2 Highlights Alden Biesen

We have been fortunate in previous years to be invited to the prestigious European Classes at the castle of Alden Biesen and we were invited back again in 2015. Eight students (Ellie-Mae Bowman, Harry Britten, Cara Dobinson, Janvi Karia, Zahra Khan, Alya Omar, Georgia Schmincke and Elly Walters) and two members of staff (Mr Smith and Mrs Valencia) travelled to Belgium on Sunday 11th January to spend the week in the castle with schools from Angers (France), Livorno (Italy) and Westmalle (Belgium). On the Sunday evening each school presented information about themselves and their local area as well as providing examples of local specialities to taste. Then, on Monday, the main tasks began. Each school had to give a lecture on their chosen topic and lead a discussion in multi-lingual groups about the key elements. Both the lectures and the discussions took place in French and English and a report on the discussions was given to the whole group. The topics dealt with across the week were measures to reduce European unemployment (Italy), promoting European identity in schools (France), creating a European defence force (Belgium) and ways of increasing social integration (UK). 3 proposals on each topic were put forward by each school and the final element of the week was a grand European Council of Ministers where the proposals were debated at length in French and English and voted upon over a 4 ½ hour period. Work on the proposals was carried out by the students; research done into the other proposals; arguments and counter-arguments prepared and work went on until 11:30 pm on two of the nights with some vigorous lobbying of the other schools as well. It was not all work however – students had excursions to Maastricht, Aachen and Brussels with the visit to the European Parliament a real highlight. Students from all schools mixed together well on the excursions as well as at Alden Biesen during the meal times and by the end of the week there was a real feeling that we were leaving many good friends behind – although there are already plans among the students to meet up at Easter.

This trip is, in my experience, one of the most beneficial to students in so many ways. We were extremely fortunate to have a French partner school so in both formal and informal situations our students were exposed to a high level of authentic French. In addition, the information about the topics (Social integration, European unemployment, the creation of a European identity and the creation of a European Defence force) was of a very high intellectual level from all students. Our students researched European policy, found examples of socially integrated housing, provided definitions of what is meant by Social integration and took a stance on the benefits offered by Grammar School education which they had to defend against very fierce attacks. Our 8 students all delivered lectures in French and English, led discussion groups on the issues in question and took notes and fed back the results of the discussion on another occasion. They worked together as a team late into the night and provided support for each other during the four hour formal debate that brought the week to an end. Apart from the formal interaction they were able to meet and get to know young people from Italy, France and Belgium and it was real

delight to see the way in which the different national groups became blurred at the edges, particularly at meal times and on the excursions.

Mr Smith

Paris Trip

Page 3 Issue 12

All students in KS3 and KS4 spend one language lesson a week in the computer room, where they have the opportunity to use a number of programmes to practise the work they have been doing in class. But how can they become more independent in their language use and acquire greater understanding of the language and the culture of the countries where the languages are spoken? They can use many of the programmes we use in school at home.

1) Activelearn in French has been introduced for Years 7 and 8. Homework is regularly set from the book but students can also revisit material they have completed as part of their revision programme.

2) In German the school has a subscription to the www.klar.co.uk website which allows students to practise new language through presentation and games.

3) There are a number of sites which allow focussed practice of particular grammar points or games to extend their language learning. These include www.languagesonline.org.uk, www.funwithlanguages.vacau.com and www.memrise.com 4) Lots of Year 11 students have found www.quizlet.com a useful resource to revise vocabulary for their GCSE exams.

5) Task Magic is another programme which is used across the languages. For Task Magic teachers write the material for students to use and upload it to Fronter. Students can also access this material on home computers if they download the

software from www.mdlsoft.co.uk 6) Finally there are lots of websites which allow students to access news items in the target language of the country. Among these are http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo for Spanish, www.tivi.de/fernsehen/logo for German and http://1jour1actu.com/ for French. Mrs Hughes, Director of Languages

How can students become independent learners?

Year 12 students take a trip back to the 80s to interview the cast of The History Boys!

On the 28th January, our English Literature class arranged a visit to see The History Boys on stage at the Palace Theatre in Westcliff, performed by the Sell a Door theatre company. An odd combination of 80s pop music, spontaneous outbursts into song and a motorcycle suspended in mid-air, the 2 hour long play was full of laughter from the audience and even a tear or two! With such a limited set, the actors excelled at bringing Alan Bennett’s script to life, adding their own charm and liveliness to the play, and combining elements from both the West End and the classroom perfectly. Each actor was perfectly selected to portray the cheeky yet intelligent Oxbridge candidates as well as three very different and very memorable teachers, each with their own eccentric teaching style. To add to the brilliant evening, we were lucky enough to meet the cast before the show, holding a Q&A to help us gain a deeper understanding of the play for our studies. The boys were just as funny off stage as they were on it, and the chemistry between them made it obvious as to why they played their parts so well! It was such a great experience to gain an insight into how the actors themselves interpreted the play, and to top it all off we managed to get a selfie with most of the cast, thanks to Evie and her selfie stick! Lucia Freeman, Year 12

Children helping Children

Well done to Piper Carter (7D) who, on Saturday 31st January 2015, performed in the ‘Children helping Children’ concert at Cadogan Hall in London. The concert happens every two years to raise awareness of Hemiplegia and money for the charity HemiHelp. In the interval, Piper attended a reception with HRH Princess Alexandra, HemiHelp Royal Patron, and met Sascha Kindred, a Paralympic swimmer. The highlight of the day for her, however, was meeting the compère of the concert, Dr. Chris, from Operation Ouch on CBBC. She spoke to him about becoming a neurobiologist and he gave her some valuable advice: "try really hard at school and get good grades".

Over the past twelve months we have been collecting for Teenage Cancer Trust and Harriet Bradley, who was the force behind the fund raising, presented a cheque to TCT for over £4,000.

West Leigh Infant School visits SHSG and we ‘let them eat cake’

On Wednesday, 25th February around 60 year 2 girls from West Leigh Infant School visited SHSG for a morning of Maths activities. I have been working with WLIS on a Wednesday morning, delivering problem solving Maths sessions to groups of boys and girls and Mrs Imbush thought it would be a good idea to invite the girls along to work with us here. Mrs Imbush wowed them all with a treasure hunt around the school, ensuring they visited areas such as the library (to find facts about famous mathematicians), sports hall (to look at Olympic maths and shapes), the Geography department (to change time zones), Media and Food Technology. They were ably and kindly assisted by Mrs Pilkington’s Year 9 Maths class. The highlight apparently, was using ratio to calculate a recipe for a microwave chocolate cake in a mug and then making the cake, which everyone was able to try. Everyone from both schools thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the bus back to WLIS was buzzing with the fun they had had and how much they wanted to be like the ‘big girls’. Many thanks to Mrs Imbush for organising such an extravaganza and to 9Y0 for being such super helpers. Mrs Hill, Maths Teacher

Page 4 Highlights

Year 13 Students meet Language Guru David Crystal OBE

After spending two years learning about the well-known British linguist, academic and author David Crystal, Year 13 English Language students had the privilege this term of attending a conference at which Crystal was a key speaker. David Crystal is the foremost writer and lecturer on the English language, with a worldwide reputation and over 100 books to his name. In 1995, Crystal was awarded an OBE for services to the English language. His latest book, You say potato, is a celebration of the countless ways in which the English language is spoken - and how our accents, in so many ways, speak louder than words. Crystal’s presentation was entitled ‘The Final Frontier’ which he believes to be pragmatics – the study of the choices we make when we use language, and of the factors governing those choices. He argued that it has taken language scholars a long time to realise the centrality of pragmatics and his talk effectively illustrated the way pragmatic factors enter into everything we say and write, and are a crucial factor in explaining why people use language in the way they do. As he entered the stage, the atmosphere was electric; he has a huge following in the linguistic field. Students also had the opportunity to meet Crystal and ask him questions on their studies in English Language. Amazingly, some months earlier, he had replied to one of our student’s tweets on Twitter about grammar and he happily obliged to sign the tweet on the day. It was a truly valuable experience for our students and one we are sure they will remember. Mrs Osborn

Vocab Express

At the start of March we took part in the annual Vocab Express Global challenge. Over 25,000 students from 157 schools answered over 12 million questions about vocabulary in 13 different languages. As always our students played their part with gusto, monitoring their progress in the various league tables and responding to efforts from other schools to overtake us! At the end of the completion we attained our best ever results finishing 5 th in all languages, 8th overall in Spanish, 9th in German, 17th in Portuguese, 11th in Mandarin, 16th equal in Urdu and 2nd in French! In total 265 girls took part in all 13 languages and contributed to our success but our top students were Alicia Peacock with 42,000 points, Emily Aylott with 47,00 and Savani Kale with 54, 295. We look forward to further success in future competitions. Mr Smith, Head of French

Page 5 Issue 12

A recent statistic from the NSPCC reported that 45,000 children spoke to ChildLine in 2014 about bullying. Many of these bullying incidents would have involved the use of social networks and mobile phones. We feel that it is very important to raise awareness of cyberbullying and to educate the girls about the help that is available to them. For this reason, Years 7 and 8 were invited to watch a play performed by students from Southend College earlier this term.

The play told the story of a young student who suffered long-term online bullying from two of his peers. He eventually sought help and turned his situation around. The messages were clear: you are not alone and speak to someone who can help. Please do keep an eye on your daughter’s/son’s use of the Internet and report any suspicious activity. The NSPCC offer useful advice for parents to help keep their children safe online, as well as the signs and symptoms of cyberbullying (www.nspcc.org.uk). Mrs Osborn, Year 7 Learning Manager

Cyberbullying Awareness Play

Cultural Ambassadors

The Cultural Ambassadors from local secondary schools have participated in a number of activities this year. They began with involvement in the Black History month celebrations and activities at Southend High School for Girls. As part of the Cultural Ambassadors project run by SETSA and the Royal Opera House Bridge, on 14th and 21st March students from SHSG, SHSB, Shoebury, Belfairs and WHSB came to SHSG. They took part in a two day work shop on stop animation film. The sessions were run by award winning animator and film maker Emma Curtis http://www.emma-curtis.co.uk/. Students began the day watching some of Emma’s work and learning about her inspiration. They had all brought in their favourite books and joined forces with students from other schools to discuss their ideas. They worked really well and made friends quickly to devise three ideas of interpreting the starting theme of ‘The Joy of Reading’. After brainstorming Emma explained how storyboarding works and the students started getting their ideas on paper. A character, ‘Bob the blob’ was made out of plasticine and he embarked on his first adventures climbing the pile of books. Students quickly got to grips with industry standard animation software, ‘Dragon’ connected to computers via digital SLR cameras and the more user friendly, istop motion on ipads SHSG library had loaned for the sessions. The summer term will see our ambassadors visiting High House in Purfleet to see for themselves the backstage work and community projects that are developed in the Thames Gateway. Ms Casson

Harry Potter Night

On February 5th SHSG celebrated the first every Harry Potter Book night by transforming the school into Hogwarts for the evening. Young wizard, witches and muggles sampled classes in Potions, Divination and Quidditch and were able to buy magical items from our own Diagon Alley.

Mrs Wakeman, School Librarian is now preparing for the next fiction based event and is currently collecting the following items:

Long cardboard tubes

The plastic shells from your Easter eggs - all sizes

Big pieces of cardboard about a meter long, varying widths

Old rubber gloves with or without holes

Old tights all colours with or without holes

Polystyrene pizza bases

Small cardboard boxes and egg cartons.

Mrs Wakeman is happy to take items in the library as and when you have them up until end of May. She is also looking for plastic sheeting and/or old white or clear shower curtains, a plastic paddling pool, oh and a parachute, anyone know anyone who has a parachute silk with or without holes?

World Book Day Author Visit

Popular children’s author, Sue Hampton, visited the school on Friday 6th March to help celebrate World Book Day. The author delivered an inspirational speech to Year 7 and Year 8 English students. She explained how the character of her book ‘The Waterhouse Girl’ is based on her own experience of growing up with alopecia. Students learned how to get their own writing published and some girls had an opportunity to work with Sue as part of a Creative Writing workshop. The day was a huge success and it was fantastic to hear one student say ‘I really enjoyed it when Sue told us her story. It was very inspirational. I want to write my own book now!’ The English Department are very grateful to librarian Mrs Wakeman for organising the day.

Highlights Page 6

Highlights Page 7

Jack Petchey Spring Term Winners

Megan Richardson Year 10 Megan was awarded the Jack Petchey award for her calm and brave response following a car accident during the Duke of Edinburgh hike and supporting an injured fellow student.

Charlotte Sheern Year 8 Charlotte has been awarded the Jack Petchey award for the way she dealt with an injury crisis involving her 2 year old sister who had fallen and split her head open catching an artery meaning massive blood loss. Charlotte managed to keep her sister calm all the way to hospital by singing to her. Her sister received stiches for the deep gash and Charlotte remained with her throughout.

Naomi Smee Year 12 Naomi has received this award for her commitment to every possible ensemble in the music department

over the years and for running the highly acclaimed ‘Highly strung’.

News from the Music Department

The Spring term is traditionally a quieter time for the Music Department, but there have still been a lot of performances to keep us busy - in and out of School! We finished the Winter term with two fantastic Christmas concerts which featured every Year 7 pupil performing their class’ Christmas song; two new ensembles – Beginner Strings and Beginner Wind, which gave students the opportunity to learn a new instrument for free; alongside our established ensembles such as the Orchestra, Wind Band and Big Band. As usual, the term drew to a close with the Carol Service at Holy Trinity Church – it was a squeeze fitting in the ever-growing choir, which included some returning old-girls and boys who like to remain involved in SHSG’s traditions, but the sound and ambiance on the evening was marvellous and kick-started the Christmas period for all involved. In January we had a visiting practitioner from Eastside Educational Trust to work with Year 9 on a Creative and Performing Arts curriculum day where students composed music for a short dramatic sketch. The work produced was excellent and certainly showed off our students’ creativity and teamwork.

Many students, parents and staff were present at Prizes at the Palace Theatre where Chamber Choir set the mood for the evening in the foyer, and Highly Strung later provided a musical interlude to the proceedings. Chamber Choir returned to the Palace Theatre only a month later in March to perform in Southend Makes Music – four nights of music making from schools and extra-curricular ensembles across the borough. Our Choir’s performance was exceptional and singled out by many as the most impressive performance of the evening.

Our term has been brought to a close with our A’ level recital evening which accounts for 30% of our students’ final marks at AS and A2 level. This was a particularly impressive concert, as all six of our Upper 6th musicians are hoping to study music at University or Conservatoire in the future, making for some very mature and accomplished performances. Coming up in the Summer term we have four concerts planned, tickets can be purchased from the School Bank one month before each event – we would love to see you there! Wednesday 22nd April, 7pm: Soloists’ Concert Thursday 25th June, 7pm: Chamber Choir Fundraiser Wednesday 1st July, 7.30pm: Summer Concert Monday 13th July, 6pm: Big Band and BBQ

All money raised will be donated to Make-A-Wish and British Heart Foundation. The non-uniform money will go to Comic Relief. Events during the week included a talent contest, benchball competition, leg waxing quiz (male sixth formers) and wet sponge throwing to name but a few. Students declared it “the best week ever”.

www.make-a-wish.org.uk www.bhf.org.uk www.comicrelief.com/

Charity Week 6th-13th March