March's Monthly Newsletter

A WELCOME FROM THE HEAD, Mr Michael Bayes

In my introductory comments for the February newsletter I mentioned the enthusiastic preparations which were underway for the virtual performances of Sachar's Holes (Form 1), and Shakespeare's Macbeth (Form 2) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Form 3). Our Key Stage 3 pupils displayed wonderful teamwork behind the scenes and remarkable talent on stage in overcoming all the Covid disruptions and technical hurdles to present a series of memorable performances. I believe young people learn so much through the process of live drama and many congratulations to them all – they will never forget these experiences.

There have been many memorable events at Kensington this month. Never before have we witnessed a fencing exhibition on the pitch and our thanks go to David Sagardi Diaz, our elite level fencer in Form 4, and the leading French coach, Yann-Herve Guinhut. Yann also introduced fencing to many pupils during PE lessons. Post-pandemic we plan to offer this olympic sport as an after-school activity.

In the past week we have celebrated two internationally themed events: World Maths Day and Global Recycling Day. The energy of both the maths department and the eco committee ensured that these days had a real educational impact within the whole school.

The charity committee have also been active and are planning a non-uniform day for the end of term in aid of La Fundacio de L'esperança - a local charity who are raising funds for a new children's library in the city.

The Senior Leadership Team is keen to enhance our student support provision, especially as growing-up in a pandemic is presenting young people with exceptional challenges. With this in mind, we welcome Ms Williams as our new appointee in charge of Pastoral Support. She is already well known to our senior students as a most experienced and effective tutor. Passionate about counselling, she is looking forward to implementing a number of proactive support initiatives in the coming months.

Two other new posts are being created. We appreciate that the move from Juniors to Seniors has always been significant, even in such a small school as ours, so Ms Hewitt has been appointed to oversee this step from the primary to secondary phase. As Transition Coordinator she is looking forward to working closely with our Junior 6 class next term.

With the ever increasing reliance on electronic devices and young people spending more time indoors, Mr Kelly, our new Outdoor Learning Coordinator, is keen to give our pupils more opportunity to acquire new skills in the natural environment. From next term he will be launching projects in both the junior and senior schools.

Whilst we are keen to encourage extra-curricular activities and further develop our pastoral support systems we realise that our core activity is helping every student, irrespective of natural ability, to develop their academic potential to the full in the classroom. Our Learning Support Team, led by Miss Joanna and ably supported by Miss Jenna and Miss Hannah, is therefore active in offering in-class and one-to-one assistance.

Our senior students have also benefited this month from further workshops from cognitive specialist Tricia Taylor, with whom we continue to work closely, thus ensuring that Kensington students gain from recent research in learning techniques.

On behalf of everyone at Kensington I wish you a peaceful, relaxing and safe Easter.

A NOTE FROM THE HEAD OF JUNIOR SCHOOL, Mr Steve Evans

Although we are still living with the restrictions of the global pandemic, it is incredible to think back to a whole year ago when education changed forever and the school began classes online. The panic that ensued over a few days to ensure that all pupils were set up with Gsuite accounts, and that they knew how to access them, paid off and by the end of the school year, it had become second nature for many.

Upon reflection it is wonderful to see so many positive outcomes from the experience and teaching and learning has evolved significantly as a result.

On this anniversary month, I again take this opportunity to thank all parents who acted as classroom assistants, our dedicated teaching staff and the pupils who all pulled together to make it a success.

Congratulations to Ekaterina Kostyleva, the winner of the world maths day competition and to Daniel Torres Gray and Miu Endu for their creative posters to celebrate Eco day.

Teachers have continued to provide creative opportunities for learning despite the pandemic as seen in J3 who had the chance to interview a real archaeologist via video call as part of their Anglo Saxon project and another fantastic dance from J2 to commemorate the end of the Chinese New Year.

This month has also seen the return of the charity committee who announced their return with a casual clothes day, raising 725€ towards the children’s library project. Thank you all for your generous donations.

We are delighted that our annual J6 egg-drop challenge was able to go ahead and all Junior children watched in amazement as the devices, designed to protect an egg from a three storey drop, landed on the patio. Well done to Dima for his winning design, making the best of air resistance.

Thanks to all who decorated eggs to brighten up our garden area with Easter cheer, a safe adaptation of our usual ‘eggshibition’.

And finally thanks to J6 and parent volunteers- not only did they manage to keep it a secret for so long, but their flash mob performance was inspired, original and took everyone on the playground by surprise.

We bid a sad farewell to two Kensington superstars this month - Dima and Hiro are two of our most enthusiastic and knowledgeable characters. I am sure they will go on to great things and we thank them for all they have contributed to our school.

What a term! Enjoy a well-deserved break and see you all after the holidays.

J1

In science, Junior 1 students have been looking at materials and their properties. They read the story of the Three Little Pigs and then in groups we made the houses and tried to make them as strong as possible so the big bad wolf (a hairdryer) did not blow them down.

They also made puppets from wooden spoons and performed in the puppet theatre. We designed it first and then made it using fabric.

As Russian dolls are also made of wood, in art they painted one very carefully paying attention to detail.

As it is Easter, students have been busy making Easter Baskets and Easter cards!

J2

On Monday, when the Junior 2 children went to water the beetroot that they had planted, they made an amazing discovery.....a very large egg!! We are not sure what animal it may belong to yet. Dragons have been known to lay eggs in the outdoor learning area before, although this egg looks different from the European Dragon eggs found other years.

The children wrote letters to a biologist at the university, Christina, describing what they had found and asking her to come and examine the egg. They are now excited to write their own stories about who laid the egg and what might happen when it hatches!

The students also went on an Easter egg treasure hunt. They walked to the local Rubio i Tuduri Gardens, stopping on the way to admire the beautiful spring blossom. The children had to look for clues that were hidden in the bushes, plants or trees, which led finally to the place where the treasure box, full of chocolate eggs, was hidden.

J3

March has been a very busy month for Junior 3 students. They started the month by celebrating St David’s day on the 1st of March and made Welsh flags and modelled daffodils from card.

History

In history they have been learning about the Sutton Hoo ship burial as part of the Anglo-Saxons topic. They pretended to be archaeologists to find out what treasures were buried inside the burial chamber. Students each found a picture inside the mound that had been cut up as a jigsaw puzzle. After solving the puzzle, they had to guess and then research the treasure that they had found. Students then made masks of the Sutton Hoo helmet.

English

In English lessons they have been learning about the lives of people from Ancient Pompeii and had fun role playing different characters. The students interviewed each other in order to write a newspaper column. Miss Dooley helped the class to present their work as an exciting newspaper in ICT lessons.

Science

J3's science topic has been finding out about magnets, they worked on a number of investigations to discover which magnet was strongest and whether magnets work through a range of solids and liquids.

They also had a very exciting live question and answer session on Google Meet with archaeologist Dr. Carol Lewis who told them all about her job and answered our questions.

To discover more about archaeologists and a recent topic about the Romans, they visited the Roman Museum in Badalona where students walked around the ancient ruins of the town buried underground and visited a Roman town house.

To finish off the month we celebrated Easter by making Easter cards and baskets.

J5

Junior 5 students enjoyed a trip to the CosmoCaixa museum, where they were able to experience a virtual reality tour through our solar system and beyond, in the museum's planetarium. A perfect ending to their 'Space' science topic, which they have been studying throughout the Spring Term and gave the students the chance to learn about different star constellations and planets visible from Earth.

After the planetarium, they enjoyed a tour around the museum, including a quick trip through the amazon rainforest section where some of the students befriended one of the resident birds!

A NOTE FROM THE HEAD OF SENIOR SCHOOL, Ms Viv Canwell

Warm congratulations to everybody on another very successful term. From the virtual drama performances to the maths day competitions, the recycling initiatives to the Student Voice project, the Charity Committee to the buddy scheme, so many students are contributing to the vibrant life of the school.

I have taught at Kensington for many years and continue to enjoy teaching every one of our students who really are a credit to themselves and their families. Reading all of their end-of-term reports is a real privilege as their impressive effort grades show how hard the majority of our students work.

The GCSE and A level pupils will no doubt be thinking about the busy term ahead. Whilst the two-week break is a good time for them to plan their revision it is also important that they give themselves a much-needed break.

I wish you all a safe and restful holiday and look forward to seeing you next term.

F1

Geography

Form 1 students have been learning about urbanisation. They have been exploring urban land use patterns, transport issues and shopping habits in urban environments. Students were assigned the task of designing a shopping centre and researching the benefits they provide shoppers. See Form 1 student, Zhengyu's shopping centre below.

F2

Art - Surrealism

This term Form 2 students researched the work of Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and many other surreal artists. They produced a surreal collage composition using images from magazines and they then developed the collage into wonderful, imaginative paintings, using a variety of different skills. They also created their own imaginative surreal rooms using Surreal techniques such as exaggerated scale and the juxtaposition of found objects in unusual settings. See some of their work below.

F3

French

Form 3 students have been working on the topic 'holidays'.

After having learnt the vocabulary to talk about holidays (places, activities, accommodation etc.), and how to use the conditional to express wishes, they made a poster about an ideal holiday. The instruction was to be as creative as possible, reusing the new vocabulary that they had learnt.

Geography

Students have spent the past few weeks learning about countries in Asia, with a strong focus on China. They have learnt about China's special economic zones and how they attract foreign direct investment, the country's population structure and the former one-child policy, as well as the country's iconic man-made landmarks.

The students were then tasked with researching a country of their choice and exploring its physical and human geography. Students chose to focus on countries where they have previously lived or where they have family or a place they would like to visit in the future.

Annual Drama Performances

2021 kicked off with a rather unusual drama unit in the English department. Covid restrictions, double-booking of rehearsal space and, in a terrible stroke of bad luck, an enforced 10 day quarantine for Form 1, meant that we had to get very creative with how we put on this year's performances. Thankfully the flexibility and creativity of our students in Key Stage 3 shone through and they were very much unflappable throughout, presenting a calm and collected front (even as their teachers were panicking!).
Bravely taking the stage first on Monday 1st of March was Form 1, who, in spite of adversities, put on a great performance of their version of Louis Sachar's novel "Holes". As opposed to feeling defeated when an almost 2-week-long quarantine was imposed upon them in the midst of rehearsals, Form 1 took advantage of that time to tweak their script (written entirely themselves), learn drama skills such as soundscaping and the importance of enunciation and create high quality props and costumes. On the day nerves were racing, but in spite of a few hiccups, the performance was a great success. With many students playing multiple roles, the final performance was a testament to how hard they worked this term.
Form 2 were tasked with taking on the onerous job of presenting Shakespeare's "Macbeth" - a tale of tyranny, greed, paranoia and MURDER. Having to learn the script in original Shakespearean language was just one of the difficulties Form 2 overcame to pull off their production. They rose to the challenge and, on Thursday 4th of March, presented a smooth performance of how Macbeth, spurred on by his wife, kills his king and spiralls into madness. Particularly inspiring was how members of the group worked together, particularly on the day of the performance when one key performer was off ill, to help one another.
While Form 2 were undertaking the dark tragedy of "Macbeth", Form 3 finally had the opportunity to play the clown with their comedic performance of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The biggest challenge for Form 3 was for them to let go of their embarrassment and truly be funny on stage - a task they took on with gusto. Sadly, without a live audience, it was hard to gauge the parents' reaction online to Form 3's performance on Friday 5th of March, but if the guffaws Mr Voller and Ms Hewitt reluctantly held in were anything to go by, they certainly lived up to their challenge and then some.

With drama season now over, we can reflect happily on three wonderful performances from our Key Stage 3 students and hope that next year we can, once again, invite a live audience to enjoy them with us. We hope you enjoy the short clips and photographs below.

Physical Education

Fencing

During this month we had the privilege of having Yann-Hervé Guinhut, a high level international fencing coach, teaching every class an initiation fencing lesson.

This all has been made possible by José Antonio Sagardi (Form 4 student, David Sagardi's father) and David's top level fencing coach Yann-Hervé Guinhut.

The lessons were instructive, fun and full of clever exercises and games.

Yann and José Antonio brought in foam sabres, metal sabres, fencing masks, fencing vests and even a competition fencing mat for the students to see and even use some during their lessons.

What an experience for the staff and students at Kensington! Thank you to José, David and Yann for bringing this fantastic sport into the school.

House matches

We have finished our first round of house matches in Key Stage 3 and we’re half way through the junior school house matches.

The current house scores are:

Everything is still possible though as we still have to play 5 matches in the junior school and 6 matches in the senior school.

Eco Committee

Eco challenges

J5 and J6 students have continued to participate in weekly ECO challenges.

From monitoring the recycling in the dining hall at lunch time, to making recycling boxes for pens until sticking explanatory posters on the bins on the patio.

Staff are now able to recycle their broken/empty pens and markers in the red recycling boxes. The junior eco committee has made and placed on each floor in strategic locations.

When the boxes are full, the eco committee will take them to the recycling centre down the road from school.

Global Recycling Day

On 18^th March we celebrated global recycling day with an online quiz, a recycling poster competition and the creation of a robot made out of 100% recycled materials.

The quiz contained 20 questions related to recycling and was taken by 43 people in total. 70 points could be earned and the highest score was obtained by Olivia in J4, 59/70.

The winners of the recycling poster competition were Miu in J3 and Daniel in J5.

Junior students, senior students and staff have decided by popular vote that the name of the robot made out of 100% recycled materials will be, BOBBY JACKSON. Bobby will be placed in a prime location where he can be seen daily by all pupils and staff members.

World Maths Day

World Maths Day is celebrated on 14th March as this date is 3.14, the first three digits of Pi. This year the 14th March was a Sunday so we decided to celebrate on Monday 15th March.

Poster Competition

Our first competition was to design a poster about a mathematician from your country or a country you are closely connected to. We received an amazing 35 entries celebrating mathematicians from 22 different countries, with four mathematicians being honoured with two posters each. The oldest was Pythagoras whilst almost half were mathematically active in the 20th century. Of all the mathematicians only 4 are currently living and 6 were female, including our winning entry from the Senior School, a poster of Katharine Johnson.

Thank you to all the students from J5 to F5 who took part and a big congratulations to Rafia in Form 3 for her two winning entries.

Prime Number Competition

In the two weeks leading up to World Maths Day numbers were mysteriously appearing around the school. They all seemed to be odd numbers until the number 2 appeared! They were of course PRIME NUMBERS. On Monday 15th March students from J5 all the way up to Upper Sixth got involved in a school wide competition: who can identify the most prime numbers? The students were shown one number at a time and had to state whether the number was prime or not with the winner being the pupil who could sort the most numbers in 60 seconds. However, one wrong answer and their go abruptly stopped! The tension really was high but we ended up with some amazing scores throughout the school. Some standouts were David in Form 2 sorting 22 and Christian and Zhengyu in Form 1 sorting 21. The two highest scores were both in Form 3, where Jee ho and Peter both sorted an amazing 23 numbers!

Here is a link to the game for you to try at home. https://isthisprime.com/game/#

Well done and thank you to everyone for getting involved and helping us celebrate World Maths Day! The two winners received their prizes at the end of term assembly on Friday 26th March.

Final school-wide leader board:

23 Jee ho ,F3 Peter F3

22 David F2, Nikolay F5

21 Christian F1, Zhengyu F1, Rebecca F4, Liam F5

Results of the Intermediate Maths Challenge

The challenge was sat in very different circumstances this year as it was sat while schools in the UK were closed. As a consequence of this the students based over there did it at home without invigilation. Our students did it under strict exam conditions. We always stress to students that whilst we take the invigilation of it very seriously, it is most definitely NOT an exam. It is a chance to tackle some interesting and challenging maths problems WITHOUT the stress of an exam and to see how they match up against over 200,000 other students of their age.

We are very pleased to announce that nine of our students achieved certificates this year.

Rebecca and Harry in Form 4 both achieved the Silver award, with Rebecca being agonisingly close to the coveted Gold. Winners of the Bronze award were David and Misha in Form 4 and Liam, Ananya, Leo, Nikolay and Emre in Form 5.

Sixth Form

Our Lower 6th physicists have been calculating the force of friction on a ramp by making careful measurements and doing multi-step calculations

This month they have been studying mechanics, in which energy and efficiency are important ideas. This was a synoptic practical in which they brought together lots of ideas about energy and forces to mathematically calculate the force of friction on the ramp. The two groups got very similar answers.

End of term assembly

On the last day of term both the Senior School held two assemblies on the patio. As well as celebrating the achievements of the term. The senior students found out who has won the coveted bronze and silver commendation certificates.

Well done to everybody involved!

Next Monthly Newsletter Issue - Friday 30th April