January's Monthly Newsletter

WELCOME FROM THE HEADMASTER, Mr Duncan Giles

I am delighted to be writing the welcome message for the first newsletter of 2022 and my first as Head of Kensington. It is both a pleasure and a privilege to return to the school and continue the excellent work of those who held this position before me.

Despite some Covid related absences we have enjoyed a positive start to the term and are thankful as to how well all members of the school community have reacted and adapted. Both teachers and students are subject to infection and yet we have managed to continue delivering quality lessons with minimal disruption.

Key to student success are learning opportunities outside the classroom and it is good to see that these are continuing to take place. I am excited about the Art department trips in the coming weeks and understandably our students are very excited about the upcoming ski trip. It has been some time since one was last organised and they are a wonderful opportunity for students to come together outside of school.

As we approach half-term, reports will be issued and these will guide and inform teaching and learning, never more so than for those in examination years. I trust all students will reflect on these as well as the feedback from teachers during the Parents Evening later this month. We will continue to work towards improving their academic performance.

The school will also seek ways to improve its performance and we will be sharing the Parent Survey with you in the coming weeks. Your contribution is vital for us to fully understand your needs and find the best way to act upon them.

Finally, I hope you enjoy the contents of this newsletter, it is a faithful reflection of all that we do at Kensington. As before, my thanks for your continued support.

DECEMBER'S NEWS

EARLY YEARS

Our Early Years children learnt how to make delicious warm pumpkin soup in Miss Wendy's kitchen and made some tangy orange and marshmallow icebergs!

J2

Junior 2 students have been studying materials in science and discussing the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling waste. They painted jam jars to create festive candle holders.

J5

Tiansa was the winner of the National Poetry Day competition and received her prize of books in December. Well done Tiansa.

Students had an excellent first term with five students receiving a certificate for 100% attendance. Well done to all students on this excellent achievement.

History

The history topic in Term 1 was Ancient Egypt and J5 students went on a trip to the Ancient Egyptian Museum. They enjoyed a guided tour through the museum where they got to ask questions and see the different artefacts that they had been learning about throughout the term. The trip ended with a mummification workshop where students got to work on a fake mummy. Great fun was had and a special thanks to Ms Hannah for joining us on the day.

Art

J5 worked on three cross-curricular art pieces this term, tying art and our history topic together. Students worked with clay and designed and created an Egyptian cartouche and a pinch pot. They thoroughly enjoyed working with clay and designing their creations using acrylic paint pens.

They also worked on some pop-up art this term where students learnt different pop-up techniques. They went on to create some beautiful Christmas cards for their parents.

ICT

In ICT during Term 1, students were working on improving their Microsoft Word skills along with their research skills. Students worked on creating a poster about their favourite Pharaoh. The quality of posters created was excellent and the students enjoyed linking their knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians into their ICT work.

Tricia Taylor Workshop

In Term 1, J5 completed a workshop with Tricia Taylor about peer feedback. Students worked on giving positive, honest and constructive feedback to their classmates. They went on to practise peer feedback by completing a drawing task in the classroom where they worked in pairs. Students made four attempts to improve a drawing through giving feedback to each other. The students really enjoyed this activity and it is clear to see how much their work improved as a result of encouraging and guiding each other.

The Junior 5 students took part in the Christmas jumper day with lots of colourful Christmas jumpers and some students even designing their own jumper on the day. Well done to all students in J5 for getting involved.

J6

Art

In Art, Junior 6 students have been learning about artist Pablo Picasso; his life and works of art. They were interested to learn about his influence on the cubist art movement and enjoyed creating a rather different self-portrait inspired by cubism.

Science

In Science, J6 have been learning about living things and their habitats. Within this topic they had to learn the complex Linnaean system for classifying living things. Photos show some paired work on creating classification keys to sort bird and butterfly species. This students are starting to learn about evolution and inheritance and are looking forward to finding out about Charles Darwin and his discoveries.

F1

On the 23rd of November the Spanish Department organised a trip with Form 1 to know more about "la Barcelona romana y gótica". They visited some interesting places in the city center and then completed a questionnaire about the visit.

ART

F3

Here are some fantastic skateboard deck designs made by some of our F3 students in their mock art exam in December. Using their knowledge of Street art and showing influence from at least one street artist studied during the Christmas term, and some imagery from the city of Barcelona; they designed some colourful and very imaginative skateboard designs! They did an amazing job, well done!

F4

Ashlee in Form 4 explored the work of Wayne Thiebaud to develop her Christmas 2021 mock exam oil painting. Her theme is order and disorder and she worked hard to produce a skilful and yummy outcome, well done Ashlee!

F5 & L6

Form 5 and Lower 6 students have been working hard refining and developing their Christmas mock exam pieces this term. They had the opportunity to explore a range of media and themes inspired by different artists and designers of their choice and developed a range of lovely outcomes. Take a look at their beautiful paintings!

Zhi Shan, our F5 Fast Track GCSE Fine art student, worked very diligently to create this fantastic and surreal self-portrait inspired by the work of New Zealand based artist Henrietta Harris. Zhi Shan used photo editing techniques to develop her ideas and completed her portrait on canvas using acrylic paint. She is currently exploring the theme of Order and Disorder and decided to focus on mental health and the loss or destruction of identity and is working towards completing this personal project by the end of the Spring term.

Nanya, our Lower Sixth Fine Art student has been busy finishing her abstract mixed media Landscape canvas inspired by British artist David Tress this month. She worked hard to take risks and work more intuitively when making this piece, using a range of media and techniques such as marble dust, a glue gun and modroc to add texture. She also made some lovely Collagraph prints with the art department's new printing press!

SENIOR HOUSE GAMES

On Thursday 16th December the Senior School celebrated the House Games.

All classes participated in 6 different activities:

• Futsal
• Ultimate Frisbee
• Floorball
• Netball
• Races
• Team building activities

Students started off with grey skies but that did not stop them from immediately giving their best effort. The energy and atmosphere was so positive and powerful that eventually the clouds disappeared and the sun came out.

They finished their morning full of sports and fun with a very close end score:

SCORES

VICTORIA - 950

LANCASTER - 660

MIDDLESEX - 800

VIRTUAL KENNY SHOW

You may remember from our November newsletter that we were hosting 'The Kenny Show' on 16th December. Our Kensington students brought us so much talent and it was lots of fun!

It was very hard to choose the winners as all participants were spectacular.

And the winners were:

J4 - Jinbeng - Music video

F5 - Teresa - Singing and guitar

F6 - Aya - Cartoon

ECO COMMITTEE

Beach clean up

The F1, 2 & 3 Eco Committee organised Kensington’s first ever beach clean-up on Friday 12th of December in Castelldefels.

More than 31 students and 6 parents happily invested nearly 2 hours (11:00-1:00pm) of their time in cleaning. In total 11 bags of trash were collected which was then properly separated and recycled in the containers.

After all that hard work they all deserved a break with hot chocolate, snacks and, what else, a competitive beach ultimate frisbee match.

Kensington’s first ever beach clean-up was without any doubt a huge success. It has set the standard for the many other beach clean ups to come in the future.

CHRISTMAS RAFFLE

The Kensington School Christmas Raffle proved to be a huge success, with the live draw hosted by Charity Committee members Julia Ocharan and David Sagardi just before the end of term. Thank you to all parents and students who donated prizes and bought tickets - your generosity helped to raise an incredible 885 euros. This money will be donated to the wonderful cause of helping the construction of the new Children’s Cancer Treatment Centre at the St Joan de Deu Hospital. Members of the Charity Committee will soon have the chance to visit the project firsthand and see how their hard work is helping children from Barcelona and beyond.

CHRISTMAS CARD COMPETITION WINNERS

As Christmas approaches, one of the most keenly anticipated events is the Christmas Card competition. As always there were a huge amount of wonderful entries from budding artists across the school using a variety of techniques from sketching to watercolour and acrylic paintings.

After a long and difficult decision, the judging panel decided on three worthy winners, which were then professionally printed and sold, with the money raised going towards the Children’s Cancer Treatment Centre at the St Joan de Deu Hospital.

The winners were:

Infants: Kilian Grasa Hewitt (J2)

Juniors: Ekaterina Kostyleva (J6)

Seniors: Riko Kobayashi (F4)

TERM 1's HOUSE POINTS TROPHY WINNERS

Congratulations to Lancaster House, who were this term’s winners of the Junior School House Points Trophy.

JANUARY'S NEWS

A NOTE FROM THE HEAD OF JUNIOR SCHOOL, Mr Matthew Kelly

Firstly, I would like to wish everyone a happy new year and I hope you were all able to enjoy time with friends and family this Christmas, even though it may not have been as originally planned.

A new year is a great opportunity to both reflect on lessons learned and also to look ahead to new challenges; two things that are inextricably linked. As the Roman philosopher Seneca (or more recently, Semisonic in their song Closing Time) said, ‘Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.’

Looking back to the end of 2021, December is always an enjoyable month in the Junior School, as the Christmas excitement amongst pupils (and staff!) builds with each passing day. Every class put together some wonderful Christmas performances on film, in between end of term assessments, excursions, forest schools and of course, a visit from Father Christmas himself for the Early Years and KS1 classes. After a term of hard work earning merits and house points, in our final assembly we were able to say congratulations to Lancaster, who won the Junior School house points trophy.

Leaving school after a particularly busy December, we could all be forgiven for hoping that the return to school in January would offer us all a new beginning and maybe even a return to some sort of ‘normality’. However, the first few weeks of 2022 have proved to be some of the most challenging of the last two years. Throughout this time, our aim remains simple; to strive to have our pupils in school, learning face to face with their teachers, as much as possible. Thanks to the hard work and collaboration of parents, teachers and students we believe that we are succeeding in delivering this.

The topic of new beginnings has been evident in Key Stage two this January, where pupils have been encouraged to look forward and set their own ambitious resolutions for 2022. Further down the school, Miss Wendy’s kitchen has taken on a seasonal twist with the Early Years pupils making penguins out of olives, mozzarella and carrots as part of their winter topic. The landscaping of the new outdoor area by the Early Years playground has also been completed, offering all classes a wonderful new space that, thanks to our Mediterranean climate, can be used year-round for gardening and small group work.

As we all look forward with hope and expectations to what 2022 has to offer at Kensington, it seems hard to believe that it is almost two years since words like quarantine, isolation and pandemic became part of our daily vocabulary. I hope that if nothing else, this year will give us all a new appreciation for simply being in school with our friends, spending time with family and even travelling; things that we used to take for granted but now seem even more important.

EARLY YEARS

Every week early years make topic themed edible treats and this week they have been studying winter. They made some snowmen into edible treats.

As they have been learning all about winter they also made some very jolly penguins and bouncy snowmen.

J1

Junior 1 students have been working on a winter project and have wrote an acrostic poem on winter.

Take a look of one of the very creative poems.

Art

They have also made some beautiful winter trees in art.

Here are some photos from the winter project they have done this term:

J3

Science

Junior 3 students have been studying volcanoes around the world as part of the Rocks and soils topic in Science. For homework they were asked to research a volcano of their choice, create a poster and present their work to the class. Here are some photos of the children presenting their work.

J5

Target Setting and Resolutions

J5 have been setting their new targets for Term 2. Students work on setting an academic, social and extra-curricular target at the start of each term.

J5 students also created a poster focusing on things that they would like to achieve this year and their wishes for the world during 2022.

Students have also chosen an individual word which they have designed and coloured during art class. The word represents something that they would like to focus on for the year ahead.

Junior 5 students thought of a word that represented something that was important to them and that they would like to focus on this year and then created a design during art class.

Here are some pictures of J5's Affirmation Words for 2022.

A WELCOME FROM THE HEAD OF SENIOR SCHOOL, Ms Vivien Canwell

First of all I would like to wish you all a very happy 2022. As we welcomed in the new year covid cases were increasing rapidly across the world and it was inevitable that the school would be affected in the first weeks back. I can only praise our students' mature response to the situation. Our small class sizes have allowed us to continue with very little disruption to our students` learning and we look forward to things hopefully returning to normal in the coming weeks.

An event that we are all excited to see return is the ski trip. We have had an incredibly positive response and are looking forward to taking a large group of students from all year groups to Espot in February. In addition to this we are delighted that the Ultimate Frisbee tournaments are resuming and we wish our students luck in this inter-school competition.

This month the English department are busy rehearsing the plays they will be performing next month, the maths department preparing for another maths challenge and the biology, geography and art departments organising field trips for their exam students.

In this newsletter we highlight some of the work that has taken place this month and I hope you enjoy reading about it.

F1

L'Hospitalet Nord

Everyone was very excited to go to L’Hospitalet Nord to start athletics this term. These are photos of F1 doing high jump, showing different jumping techniques. The most famous one being the Fosbury Flop.

Enjoyed by all!

SIXTH FORM

EAL

EAL students in the Lower and Upper Sixth have been preparing for their IELTS exam - an external English language examination which is a requirement for many to access university places in the UK, Ireland and a growing number of universities in the EU and across the world. The exam consists of four equally weighted sections - writing, reading, listening and speaking - and is sat at the British Council headquarters in Barcelona. Upper Sixth student Richard achieved a Band 8 mark (the highest mark is 9) in the November session and has some tips for other students who are about to sit the exam in the coming weeks.

"Read widely - anything from novels, newspaper articles and blogs to scientific journals - and talk to as many people as you can, as often as you can. I found getting involved in online debates really helped too. Most of all - don't get too stressed!"

We wish all the IELTS students who are doing exams in the February session the best of luck.

MORE INFO

ECO COMMITTEE

The Eco-Schools programme (www.ecoschools.global) is the ideal way for Kensington to embark on a meaningful path towards improving the environment in both the school and the local community while at the same time having a life-long positive impact on the lives of students, families, school staff and local authorities.

Last year (2020-2021) we carried out an environmental survey and we mainly focused on WASTE by making sure that all classes and common indoor and outdoor areas were equipped with coloured recycling bins. We also focussed on WATER by installing three more water fountains in addition to the two we already had and providing all of our pupils and staff with a reusable metal water bottle which has eliminated the use of one-use plastic water bottles completely.

This year we had so much interest from students that we formed various Eco-Committees, one in each key stage. We are currently carrying out our action plan with our primary focus this school year (2021-2022) on WASTE and SCHOOL GROUNDS. We want to do this by turning all school events (Halloween, Christmas, Carnival) into zero-waste events, organize school and after-school eco-activities and make our school grounds as green as possible.

With so much exciting Eco-work to be done at Kensington we have no time to waste to make our school and wider community a better place for all.

If you would like to form part of the Eco-Committee as a student, alumni member, parent or other collaborator please contact us via email at [email protected]

J3-6 term 2 Eco-Committee

The newly elected J3-J6 Eco-Committee members for this term are:

J3: Abdul & Olivia

J4: Noah & Jinbeng

J5: Jee-Min & Daniel

J6: Abdur & Eytan*

CONGRATULATIONS !!!

F1-3 Eco-Committee - new member

The F1-3 Eco-committee is proud to welcome their newest member: Erika

Lost & Found

The Eco-committee is proud to present the return of the lost & found section. The section is now published in both English and Spanish to make it easier for everyone to retrieve or deposit clothing items. The eco-committee would like to stress the importance of labeling all items (especially school jumpers and sweatshirts) to make sure they are returned to the owner in the briefest of times.

Next Monthly Newsletter Issue - Friday 25th February