Weekly News - Friday 13th September 2019
Posted on: 13/09/2019PA Welcome Event For New Families
The PA and staff look forward to welcoming all of our new families (including children!) to their Welcome Event which will take place in the Evans Hall and Windsor Garden from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow.
Meet The Teacher Evening - Year 4 and Year 5
We are looking forward to seeing our Year 4 and Year 5 parents on Tuesday evening for the Meet The Teacher evening. Drinks will be served from 6.45 p.m. in the Windsor Garden and then the classes will split into the Evans Hall and the Upper School Hall.
Year 4 Pupils Discover Ancient Greece!
The Year 4 children have begun their history topic on the Ancient Greeks in style on Tuesday. They were treated to a full day of fun, immersing themselves in the Ancient Greek way of life through an interactive show in the morning and two follow up workshops in the afternoon. The show saw the children become assistants to a trainee time traveller who went back in time for her 53rd attempt at passing her final trainee mission. The trainee found herself at the house of Jocasta, an Athenian housewife. As part of the mission the children learnt about many aspects of Ancient Greece from Jocasta, including the gods, the Olympics, Greek architecture, democracy and the role of women.
The workshops further developed the children's historical knowledge. In the first, the children had to think about the legacy of the Greeks in order to help the time travellers set up a new history TV programme. In the second workshop, Jocasta set up a scene in her courtyard depicting life in the household, with the children taking on the various roles. Then the children re-enacted her wedding.
It was a busy day, and thoroughly enjoyed by all who took part. You can see photographs on our Galleries page.
uTalk Language Challenge
This year, Upper School children will be participating in the uTalk Language Challenge as usual. In a change to past year's routines, the competition final will be within this academic year, which means that Year 6 children may enter, so the competition is open to all children in Years 2-6.
Registration costs only £5 per child and gives each participant access to 12 topics on the uTalk app for the rest of the school year (2019/20). Every child will be provided with a unique username and password which they can use to login to the uTalk app as well as view their scores, progress and achievements in their very own online dashboard. Teachers will also get access to the same 12 topics as the children.
This year there will not be a national final. Instead, children will take part in regional finals. Round One, Spanish, will start in September and run until 10 a.m. on Friday December 20th 2019. Children can start scoring points as soon as they have downloaded the app and logged in using the username and password with which they will be supplied.
Pupils who score 500 points (out of a possible 3,960) will go through to Round Two, which will run from 10 a.m. on Monday 6th January 2020 until 10 a.m. on Friday 27th March 2020. Children will be learning the same 12 topics in French with the 30 highest scorers in each region going through to their regional final where they will compete against the clock and each other to be named uTalk JLC Champion for that region. In the event of more than 30 children in each region achieving full marks, extra French topics will be unlocked for them to learn to help select the top 30.
If you are interested in registering your child, please email Mrs. Stark at tstark@sthelenscollege.com as soon as possible.
Engineering The Future
Many of our pupils and parents were inspired by the speech given by our Guest of Honour, Josh Valman, at last night's Prizegiving. Josh is an Old Helenian, now in his early twenties, who has built a multi-million dollar engineering business. His company, RPD International, helps major multi-national companies as well as smaller entrepreneurs bring products to market more quickly. We were extremely lucky to hear from him last night about why engineers are crucial to our planet's future. For any budding young engineers or families interested in following this up with further exploration and education, we would recommend looking at the forthcoming events, talks and family workshops at the Royal Institute:
STEAM Day
We are very much looking forward to our exciting STEAM Day which will take place on Friday 20th September. Thank you in advance to all those parents and staff who have already volunteered to run workshops or assist on the day. It will be a wonderful day of community collaboration and creativity.
Co-Curricular Clubs
Thank you to parents for selecting your child's co-curricular preferences via SchoolsBuddy. Allocations have now been made and you will need to follow the instructions in your allocation email and make payment promptly to secure your club places. Clubs begin from Monday (16th September).
We still have a few places on the following clubs, which will be allocated on a first come, first served basis now. Please email Miss Walker at swalker@sthelenscollege.com if your child would like to join one of these clubs:
Art Y1
Yoga Y1
Taekwondo Y2/3
Taekwondo Y4/5/6 â
Hockey Y4/5/6
Printing Y4/5/6
Football Y5
Coding Y5/6
We look forward to another enriching and exciting term of co-curricular activities.
