STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
Commendations
Year 7
Eshan Chatwal 70, Alexander Jackson 69, Andrew Garrido 69, Ace Mfoafo-McCarthy 68.
Year 8
Daniel Sherlock 79, Jason Obiri-Yeboah 64, Aaron Akpojaro 63.
Year 9
Connor Powell 51, Henry Ludlam 47, Andrew Sinclair 46.
Year 10
Ajay Tirumalai-Adisesh 47, Timothy Aaron 39. Krisanth Ragudhas 38.
Year 11
Jack Ashton 43, Faraz Bukhari 40, Jan Memedovic 39, Batu Okten 39.
Lower Sixth
Harriet Forsyth 33, Usmaan Umar 22, Tom Diamond 20.
Upper Sixth
Edward Stedman 23, Joshua Heath 23, Hannah Mirsky 20, Amal Vaidya 17, Samuel Kong 17, Tom Wainford 17.
SPORT
Netball We are looking to organise more matches to include mixed matches. The inter-house netball competition will be organised next term. Thank you to everyone who has helped to make netball such a success and so enjoyable and good luck to the staff when they play against the 6th form girls on Wednesday 15th December! Mrs E. Ferguson Year 7 Assault Course My father used to go to the school so he told me what the obstacles were. They had removed one, which was where you had to climb over a brick wall. The reason for this was that someone fell off the wall and broke their arm! He told me, like many other people, everyone remembers the position they finished in. When the day came I managed to wriggle my way to the front of the start line. What was quite funny and amazing was Mr Bean’s speech before the race which was about us turning into men when we cross through the finish line. Before the race I had a rush of adrenaline and nerves. I just wanted it to start and finish quickly, but that was never going to happen! I ran well, managing to finish first followed by two other Mandeville runners Nathan then Samuel. The whole day was fun and my auntie, cousins, parents and brothers came to support me as well. Ben Charnock In the assault course I saw the sad demise of my glasses. They fell in the river and I have not seen them since. Lucky I had spares! In the second river crossing I fell right in (making myself thoroughly wet) and when crossing, my face and clothes were coated with mud. All this and I still got a pathetic position, of which I ashamed to tell! It was great fun though and our house came first. Yippee!! Talha Ahmed At the beginning of the race, I was feeling quite nervous, but the thought escaped from my mind when the race started. It was a great experience running the assault course as it benefitted me in many ways. I gained stamina and also experienced the feeling of running in a competitive cross-country race. I enjoyed it because we ran through rivers and ponds. The assault course is a fun race and is the first step to becoming a Wallington Boy! Regan Atuahene As a Mandevillian I am very pleased with the effort everyone has put in and the results for this spectacular event. As we should all know by now, Mandeville got 5 people out of the first 7. This is very impressive and the runners were: Ben Charnock (1st), Nathan Eves (2nd), Sam Hansen (3rd), Sean McCoy (6th) and Oshotse Idaewor (7th). It was a very exciting moment when we all lined up at the starting line, waiting for the whistle to blow. The tension was high as all the good runners were nervous from wanting to do their house justice. Around the course it was quite cold and we had to run through the river Wandle five times and up and down many hills. However, we Mandevillians were strong and fought our way to victory! Sam Hansen DRAMA “Henry V” by William Shakespeare Tuesday 23 November – Thursday 25 November 2010 25 actors played 46 parts between them, with several actors having to play three or four parts, involving quick costume changes and different accents – and even different languages. Particular mention has to go to Gabriel Nicklin, who had to master the huge part of King Henry – a role that required him to learn over 5,000 words and deliver some of the most famous lines in Shakespeare. I would like to pay tribute to every one of the cast (full list below) who committed him or herself to ten weeks of rehearsals and three energy-fuelled performances. Most of the cast were on stage – or, at least, in full view of the audience - for the whole of the performance. Every member of the cast demonstrated a thoroughly professional attitude to their work, and I was not only delighted by the standard of their performances, but I was also thrilled by the way they worked together as a real team, determined to give their best, and demonstrate just what a high standard they could achieve. If you didn’t see the show – well, shame on you for not supporting your school - but the loss was yours, because you will never know what you missed. But thanks to everyone who did join the audience at one of the performances and helped make the show such a success. Tackling a play as complex as “Henry V” showed just what students at our school are capable of achieving – which, in this case, was simply outstanding. Mr C. Williams Cast Callum Blackford - SALISBURY / NYM
OTHER NEWS
Applied Learning Challenge Days Mr D. Jones Sutton Maths Challenge
In the Sutton Maths Challenge there were three challenges: George James - Yr 8 Cashless Catering & the Dining Hall By and large, the system has been introduced successfully, and the uptake by students and staff has been good. The system has lived up to most of our expectations and what system glitches we have encountered have been resolved swiftly. There are two areas however that do need to be addressed, and we are proposing to make the following changes with effect from the beginning of next term. Firstly, the initial spending limit of £5 is proving inadequate for some students as once they have bought food at breaktime, there is often not enough credit available to buy a lunch. The situation is also likely to be exacerbated by the introduction of a Breakfast service from early next term. With this in mind, we have decided to raise the limit to £10 per day for each student. If you prefer that a different limit is set for your child, we would be grateful if you could email us at wcgs-parentpay@suttonlea.org and we will arrange this for you. The second change is necesssary to ensure that no student is unable to buy a hot meal due to insufficient credit on their account. We will allow the students to access an overdraft facility to a maximum of £3. When this facility is used the student will be told by Catering Staff that this has happened and they will be expected to take measures to ensure that their account is back in credit prior to attempting to purchase further items. Money can be credited to a ParentPay account very quickly so we would expect that this action is taken promptly. If a student attempts to purchase food without bringing their account back into credit, they will not be able to do so and this may become an issue for discipline as we wish the students to take responsibilty for managing their accounts personally. We propose to carry out a survey of students and staff in the early part of next term to seek views as to how we might improve the service that we offer in the dining hall. We are aware that we need make some changes to ensure that we are meeting our customers needs and we would encourage you to give input when we do send the survey out. ParentPay Starting in the new term, we are going to use the system to request payments for School Trips and visits, and possibly other items as well. With this in mind, it is necessary to ensure that all parents have activated their account using the letter that was originally sent out earlier in the Autumn term. Obviously if you are already using ParentPay, you will not need to do anything else as you will just see the activities appear under “My payment items” along with access to any information relating to the activity in question. If however, you have not activated your account, you will need to do so to pay for these items going forward. We recognise that the initial letter that we sent out may have got lost by now, so we would be grateful if could let us know, via wcgs-parentpay@suttonlea.org, if you need us to resend this information so that you can activate your account. Finally, if you have any comments or questions about any of the items above, again feel free to contact us on the same email address. We would like the systems that we have in place in the school to work effectively and efficiently, and we welcome any feedback and suggestions for improvement. Mr R. Baker, Finance Manager
Christine Diesel and Ella Brimelow have worked hard this term to get netball established as a serious option. Each Wednesday afternoon we have had up to 28 students participating in the sports hall starting with a varied warm up programme before playing matches and also learning about tactics. The boys have joined in enthusiastically and with skill, once they realised that they couldn’t dribble the ball or throw over a third in distance. The progress has been impressive. Thanks to Christine we had our first match away against Wallington Girls. Although we lost our girls netball team played very well considering how little experience they had against a team used to playing together for some years.
On the last day of the first half term, the entire school assembled in Beddington Park for the legendary Year 7 initiation that is the ‘Assault Course’. 7 Mandeville stormed to victory on a sunny afternoon and they have written about the experience as below.
For the first time in a decade, we mounted a Shakespearean production as our School Play this year. A modern-dress, traverse presentation meant that we had a huge acting area to work in and our new tower scaffold was used as a multi-purpose prop to represent Henry’s ships crossing the channel, the walls of Harfleur and a platform to raise actors to a high level.
James Collyer - WARWICK / BATES / SOLDIER 2
Nick Dennison - JAMY / ORLEANS
Daniel Dobrowolski - BOY
Danny Gibson - GOWER
David Gordon - CAMBRIDGE / HERALD / BRITAINE
Joe Gray - SCROOP / FRENCH KING
Chris Hagen - ELY / CONSTABLE / GOVERNOR
Josh Heath - CANTERBURY / ERPINGHAM / BURGUNDY / SOLDIER 3
Raphael Jackson - CHORUS 2
Andrew Mayer - MONTJOY / AMBASSADOR 2
Martin McMorrow - PISTOL
Hannah Mirsky - AMBASSADOR 1 / KATHERINE
Wesley Nash - CHORUS 1 / FRENCH SOLDIER
Gabriel Nicklin - KING HENRY
Callum Reid - CHORUS 3
Devan Sadasivan - GLOUCESTER
Sujitha Selvarajah - HOSTESS / ALICE
Anthony Sowole - GREY / WILLIAMS / SOLDIER 1
Charlie Spittle - MACMORRIS / DAUPHIN
Freddy Thomas - FLUELLEN
Tom Thompson - BARDOLPH
Charlie Whiteside - BEDFORD
Alice Williams - MESSENGER / ISABEL
Joe Wilson - EXETER / COURT
Following on from the ‘Challenge of Management’ which the Y12 students participated in last term, this term saw Y9 students test their entrepreneurial skills whilst designing a new Fairground Attraction. The day was run by the Young Enterprise Company and offered the students an opportunity to combine different elements of their learning from across the curriculum. Presentational skills learnt in English were utilised to convey key aspects of marketing strategies that students studied in Business Studies.
Following the success of the day we have gone on to have further success in Enterprise related ‘Applied Learning’ events throughout the Borough – the highlight being a group of Y10 students, mentored by Miss Troke, reaching the semi-final of the ‘Design a Subway’ competition.
Senior Maths Challenge
On Thursday 4th November all 141 Sixth form students took the UKMT Senior Maths Challenge. Well done to all those who took part in this extremely taxing feat of problem solving. Congratulations are due to all those who gained a certificate (8 Gold, 21 Silver, 33 Bronze) and particularly to the 3 students, Tom Wainford (U6Ru2), Patrick Chea (U6Ma1) and Shuhan Sun (L6Ma2) who, coming in the top 1000 nationally, qualified to take part in the British Mathematical Olympiad. Shuhan was Best in School!
Miss G. Bird
Challenge 1: Actuary - Cars & Drivers
We were tasked with working out the cost of insurance for four drivers however after trying as hard as we could we didn’t make the top three.
Challenge 2: Transport for London – Regenerate Wallington
For this task we were given 80 million pounds and a list of materials to see how we would redesign Wallington District Centre, and because we do this in geography in year 8 we had a very good idea of how to do it. This time our efforts were rewarded beating Nonsuch & Tiffin, we came first.
Challenge three: Glaxo Smith Kline – Tablet Manufacture
“TastyTab” is a 500mg headache tablet. In our final challenge we were given the cost to import 15 & 10 tonnes of a new drug. We were asked to work out how much was needed for 60000000 tablets, the cost of each tablet and also which place to import it from. Having worked as hard as possible we felt we had done well and just came second to Nonsuch. We collected the trophy for having won the second challenge and waited to find out who had won. It was then announced that Wallington County Grammar School were the overall winners. We brought home two trophies.
Anti Bullying
On the 6th December, members of SLT, Heads of Year and the House Captains met to discuss the current situation of bullying within the school and to establish a working group in order to try and recognise where the school stands in terms of punishment towards the problem.
Forms of abuse, such as racism for example, have been well addressed over the years within the school, allowing for the correct punishment being handed out, and it was agreed that it was now time to focus on other forms of bullying and abusive behaviour which may not be as commonly known or dealt with as easily. It was decided that homophobic bullying is the most important issue which requires this attention as many teachers are unaware as to how they would address the issue; showing that training is needed to help the pupils who are subject to this behaviour.
Over the coming year, the House Captains are going to play a leading role in educating pupils on how any form of bullying will not be tolerated and the damage that bullying can have on the recipient. This will take place through assemblies, PSHE lessons and individual year meetings. Every term the group will meet to discuss if progression is being made and what other areas there are that need improving.
Will Thornton (Captain of Ruskin) and Tom Harrison (Captain of Bridges).
Having almost reached the end of our first half term operating our cashless catering system, we are looking at what could be improved and what changes will need to take effect next term.
ParentPay was initially introduced to facilitate our cashless catering initiative, but as many of you may be aware, it can also be used for many other activities as well.