Spring Term 2020

END OF TERM NEWSLETTER

MESSAGE FROM THE HEADTEACHER Please see the separate letter from Mrs Manning, which has been sent to you with this email.

CELEBRATION ASSEMBLIES Your child's Year group Celebration Assembly (including the Sports Report) will be available on their tutor group's Google Classroom this Friday from 9am. We are thrilled to be able to still share and celebrate the achievements of these students even though we are unable to be together in school, as we would usually be on the last day of term. Given the current circumstances, we have decided it is appropriate to purely focus on the Star of the Term for tutor groups and subjects at this time. Please be assured that all of our other usual categories such as Zero BfL points, 100% Attendance, Music certificates etc will be included in the Summer End of Year Celebration Assemblies (whether we are back in school or have to present them remotely). As families are not present at our assemblies I hope that you will enjoy sitting down, as a family, to enjoy the presentations together and share in your daughter's delight if she is a recipient. It would be wonderful to receive some photos of this happening at home, should you feel that you would like to send me a photo to ruth.cooper@hgs.herts.sch.uk. I would love to be able to share these with staff, as well as tweet some images, if possible, so that as a community we can see how everyone has marked this important tradition at the end of each of our terms at HGS. You child will also receive an email copy of their individual certificate(s) shortly. When we return to school, if your child would like a printed certificate, then they will be able to request one.

GO4SCHOOLS Apologies that you have not received your usual, weekly Behaviour for Learning updates from Go4Schools since we had to close. I am sure you will appreciate that, during such a big and fast time of transition, we have needed to streamline things to make them manageable. I am thrilled to report that, even though we are not together in school, students are still receiving rewards for their excellent contributions to, achievement in, and progress with their learning. To date, we have had nearly 1000 rewards logged since we closed! I would like to say a HUGE well done to everyone and I am pleased to say that, from Friday, your weekly Go4Schools updates will resume so that as a family you can see your child's wonderful achievements.

ART 29 Drawings Later During the Spring term, many students took part in the ’29 Drawings Later’ challenge. Entries showed a wide range of creative responses to the prompts and there were some beautifully presented sketchbooks. Everyone that completed the challenge received a prize, with favourite drawings and images chosen by each member of the Art department.

Congratulations to the overall Key Stage winners: Mia Roberts (Y7), Leilah Hartley (Y11) and Tegan Chinogurei (Y12).

Art Club For those budding artists and creatives who want to keep busy over Easter, Miss Holmes and the Art department have created an Art Club at the home page on Google Classroom. Resources are updated regularly and students are encouraged to share their own ideas and creations via the class stream. The code is e2d65ml.

COMPUTING British Informatics Olympiad In January, Imogen Canell took part in the British Olympics Olympiad – a three hour challenge writing programs and solving problems. Well done Imogen for being the first ever HGS entry! CyberFirst In February, four Year 8 students took part in the semi-finals of the CyberFirst competition, hosted by Tesco at their headquarters in Welwyn. Out of over 3,000 teams nationwide, only 156 had got to that point and the day was spent working hard to solve a number of computing, logic and security challenges. Although the students did not get through to the overall finals, it was an incredible achievement to be invited and a big well done goes to Grace Berwick, Amelie Woolass, Clara Wroe and Maddie Sargent.

Amazon GetIT Competition Since September, three teams have been designing apps for the Amazon GetIT competition. Having attended the Cambridge bootcamp in October, the girls has an online session with their Amazon ambassador, presenting their app ideas and getting feedback before finalising their submission. Entries are now in and we are waiting to hear the results. Well done to the teams involved: TalkBack – Sophie Beach, Priya Chahal, Erin Macfarlane, Ribhya Singh Ada Allegiance – Maddie Sargent, Grace Berwick, Amelie Woolass, Arabella Haines, Kimaya Munilall What About Today – Mae Bushby-Jackson, Emily Fair, Charlie Davis

CLASSICS Senior Society Production

The HGS Classics Senior Society put on a wonderful production of Aristophanes’ ‘Birds’ this term. Students did an excellent of organising the script, directing and putting on an hilarious performance. The play, first performed in 414BC was brought to life by the students and greatly enjoyed by all. The play raised £384 for charity – recipients still to be decided.

THE COLE SWINBURNE CUP Several rounds of The Cole Swinburne Cup were held this term involving Sixth Form students. One such round was Wii games with Hitchin Boys’ School (HBS) winning, The Priory School (TPS) coming 2nd and HGS last. The cake decorating round was particularly entertaining, with Julia Kumar, Phoebe Murray and Gemma Malyon (Y13) representing HGS by producing a wonderful ‘Space’ themed cake. This was awarded 2nd place (missing out by one point on 1st place!). TPS were the winners of this round with HBS coming last. DEBATING This term, the HGS team performed brilliantly at the Houses of Parliament where they were taking part in the inter schools debate trip. A fantastic achievement and memorable experience.

DUKE OF EDINBURGH This term also saw some past students receive their gold Duke of Edinburgh certificates at St James Palace in the presence of Prince Edward. A huge achievement and congratulations to Maia Rainey, Lauren Murray and Amy Rowe! THE ELLIE SWANTON PRIDE OF HGS AWARD We are still taking nominations for this Sixth Form award within the three categories (Charity, Community and Selflessness). Students can be nominated for more than one category, with no limit on the number of nominations. A winner is selected for each category and an overall winner receives the award. The link to a short survey to nominate is: https://forms.gle/WTbzeRruqyCpHzvN9

ENGLISH Y11 had a great time at GCSE Poetry Live! in Cambridge at the beginning of the year. Students thoroughly enjoyed listening to poets such as Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Daljit Nagra and many others from their Poetry Anthology.

FOOD AND PERIOD POVERTY DRIVES This term saw an incredible response to the SGLI Food and Period Poverty Drives, with collections to coincide with International Women’s Day. HGS parents, students and staff donated so very generously and a big difference was made to our local community in need.

GEOGRAPHY North Herts Teaching Alliance Quiz

Our Year 11 Geographers formed four teams this term to compete in the NHTA Geography quiz against The Knights Templar School, Hitchin Boys’ School and Barclay Academy. Fourteen teams took part in total. One HGS team won the title, bringing home the shield! Congratulations to Delphine, Maria and Ella. A third place win was celebrated by the team of Rosanna, Hetvi, Ilyssa and Imogen.

LIBRARY World Book Day The Library held a very successful World Book Day this term, celebrating the event with a Book Fair, run by David’s Bookshop (school receiving 20% commission on sales) and a Big Booky Bake Sale to raise money for Book Aid, an inspiring charity. A total of £362 was raised. Y7-11 also took part in the reading of ‘The Children of Loki’ taken from ‘Norse Mythology’ by Neil Gaiman – split into five parts with the first read during Period One and so on.

There were also some incredible winners of the World Book Day competition in the English department. Mrs Sinclair was very impressed with all of the entries (above, far right)! Well done to everyone involved.

North Herts Schools Book Award With the cancellation of the North Herts Schools Book Award event, due to be held at Hitchin Boys' School on 17 March, all the participating schools held their own in House events. Here at Hitchin Girls', 20 students (members of Reading Group from Y7 – 10), met in the library during the morning. They discussed the three shortlisted books in each category - younger and older - using questions prepared by librarians. Votes were combined with those from the other schools, with the winners being ‘The Girl Who Speaks Bear’ by Sophie Anderson and ‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’ by Holly Jackson. The second part of the morning was spent creating stories in groups. Each group wrote a beginning and passed it on for the middle and finally, the end to be written. The stories were read out to great hilarity. We were disappointed not to be able to join with others at the Boys' School but look forward to going later in the year to listen to Frances Harding, winner of the award last year, with ‘A Skinful Of Shadows’.

Mrs Goose would also like to say a big thank you to the Library Monitors for all their hard work during our last week in school. The library shelves were completely decimated with students borrowing books. The queue to borrow nearly went out of the library! Special thanks to the Library Goblins, newly named, in 10A.

MATHS Trips and Visits This term, the Maths department engaged in many events and school trips, including a Year 10 visit to both the University of Cambridge and Hertfordshire where students took part in investigative tasks, competitions and lectures which looked at Maths beyond the regular school curriculum. A number of professional mathematicians including Matt Sproggs and Ben Sparks were present and workshops covered topics including the controversial origin of numbers. Hopefully, those involved will be inspired to continue their Maths education into Sixth Form and beyond. Intermediate Maths Challenge In February, we received the results of the Intermediate Maths Challenge. HGS achieved some very good results: 29 bronze, 19 silver and 3 gold awards! Erin Richards, Sarah Nichol (both Y11), Jade Stokes (Y10), Jess Blade and Phoebe de Santis (both Y9) all went through to the next round. Well done to all who took part. Hertfordshire Mathematics Team Challenge In March, four Y7 students competed in the Hertfordshire Mathematics Team Challenge, pitting their wits against 18 teams from schools across North Herts. They finished a very creditable 3rd and qualified for the regional final. The HGS team were credited by the organisers as being the best Memory Test round challengers that they had ever seen. Well done to Lily Broughton, Lucy Dock, Milly Price and Hannah Turner.

MEDIA In January, Dean Harmer of Aitch Creative, a Hitchin based design company, visited HGS to give a talk to our Y13 Media students. Dean talked about this company, how they manage a design brief, the process by which a product is taken from idea to completion and why design is an important part of the UK economy. Students were given an insight into, not only how they may find a future career in media production, but also how exciting a creative career can be with hard work and effort.

MFL ‘Why Not Languages?’ Event

In January, some of Year 9 visited the University of Cambridge to take part in the ‘Why Not Languages?’ event where they gained much information around the benefits of learning languages at GCSE and in higher education, speaking to current modern foreign language university students and taking part in translation workshops.

French Spelling Bee In February, Year 7 students participated in the HGS round of the French Spelling Bee competition, organised by Routes Into Languages. The competitors learned 100 French words, spelling them out using the French alphabet as quickly and accurately as possible. An exceptionally high standard and level of dedication was shown by all who took part. The three students with the highest scores, Evie Bywater, Isla Campbell and Hannah Woods, went on to represent HGS at the East Region Final.

MUSIC Congratulations this term to Lorna Thompson (Y13) who performed her own composition at the Royal Albert Hall, accompanied by a pianist and string quartet. This was the second year in a row that Lorna had been invited to perform her work live at the RAH.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION We have had an action packed term, which continues despite the current circumstances. It has been wonderful to hear about all the physical activities you have been up to at home! Keep up the active and innovative ideas! We are delighted to share with you many successes in our fixtures and activities in the PE department this term. Trampoline At the beginning of this year, students travelled to Cardiff to compete in the Zonal round of the National Schools Trampolining Competition against schools from the East Region, East and West Midlands and Wales. Ruby Daniels (Y7) competed admirably as an individual and finished 10th overall. Isabelle Elms (Y9), Eve Spencer and Lola Barton (both Y8) and Chloe Lawrence (Y7) won the Y7-9 Inter Competition while Jenna Edwards (Y12), Mollie Jervis (Y11), Isabelle Davies and Erin Walker (both Y10) won the Y10-14 Inter competition. Both teams qualified for the National Final in Hampshire in March. The Year 7-9 team finished in 2nd place and the Year 10-14 team finished as National champions. An outstanding achievement!

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Cross County Athletes from a variety of years competed in the County Cross Country championships in February in Verulamium Park, St Albans. Evie Heather (Y7), Imogen Rose (Y8), Lara Davis (Y8) and Kirsten Morley (Y8) all produced very creditable performances. Lucy Storey (Y10) finished in 11th place in the Inter girls and was selected as a reserve for the Herts team at the English schools competition. Abigail Manson (Y8) and Holly Hodgskinson (Y12) both finished in the top 8 in their respective age groups and were selected to represent Herts in the English Schools Championships for which they travelled to Liverpool. Both girls finished mid table amongst the hundreds of runners, Holly contributing to a very creditable 4th place finish for the senior Herts team. Well done! Indoor Athletics

Our athletes trained and competed this term in the District Sports hall athletics where Y7 were runners up and Y8 became champions! Well done all!

Netball Lunchtime and after school netball clubs have been well attended with approximately 50-60 Year 7 and 8 students regularly attending one of the weekly sessions, many of whom played in at least one inter school fixture. Although most tournaments were not able to be played, it was fantastic to host the B team netball tournament at HGS. Playing well despite the downpour, both Year 7 and Year 8 were winners of their respective tournaments. Congratulations! Dance Mel Simpson from Strawberry Dance led a workshop for GCSE dancers to perfect their set phrases.

Additionally 35 HGS students, past and present, performed to over 1,200 people at the Gordon Craig theatre in Stevenage in March with local dance school, Dance Steps Academy, run by two former HGS students.

Swimming Well done to the swimming teams who competed in the district swimming gala. The junior team came second, the intermediate came first and the seniors came fourth, resulting in being overall District Champions! Well done, also, to Isabel Dean, Ellie Cox and Tia Peek who were selected to represent the North Herts District team at the Herts Schools Swimming Gala. Congratulations girls!

Hockey With January come the indoor hockey tournaments! Year 8 B team came fourth and the A team were district champions! The Year 9 tournament was extremely close, with the B team becoming runners up to the A team who came first overall! A fantastic result for both teams in a district tournament! Well done! Unfortunately, the Year 10 tournament wasn’t able to be played, but in a very close competition, with some great matches – the Senior A team came 3rd and Senior B team came 4th. In the outdoor district tournament, the Year 9’s came runners up, with the number of short corners deciding between first and second place! After a very close match in the Year 10 tournament, they won in the penalty knock out with Lucy Carr making some great saves, and Lucy Storey scoring the winning penalty in the top left corner! Well done!

Year 8 Indoor District Tournament (left) (A and B team)

Year 9 Indoor District Tournament (right) (A and B team)

Year 10 Outdoor District Tournament (left)

Football It has been fantastic to see 50-60 Year 7 and 8 students attending football club this term, using both the outdoor and indoor facilities to accommodate them all!! There have been some great matches, including a fantastic Year 7, 9-0 win against Knights Templar, and Year 7 also came out winners of the District Tournament. Well done to Holly Nichol (Y7) for being a fantastic Captain, leading and organising the team throughout the year and scoring over 10 goals along the way!

Sports Leaders Year 11 Sports Leaders have been busy this term leading 60 Year 3 children at Whitehill Junior School. Well done for your fantastic leadership skills and for being amazing ambassadors for HGS!

Individual Achievements It’s great to hear about all the sport and physical activities you do outside of school! Do email (Miss Evans) to let us know! Here are some individual achievements to celebrate. Congratulations to Olivia Machin (Y10) who won the silver medal in the Eastern Counties Gymnastic Competition in January. Her trio were against 13 other groups in her category and they just missed gold by 0.02 points. Lily-Rose Chandler (Y7) competed in the Letchworth Rink Hockey’s under 13 team this term to win the Eastern Counties league, earning a place in the National Final in June. Congratulations Lily-Rose! Well done also to Ella Ruggles (Y11) who continued her success with Cyclo Cross competing in the UK championships as well as other trials. Congratulations to Annie Johnson and Chloe Taft (Y10) who achieved great success in the UDO Street Competition and will now compete in the European Final in Germany. Sophie Barker (Y7) attended trials in Warwickshire for the England Pony Club Mounted Games team. She was successful and will compete in the Home Nations competition at the Royal Windsor horse show in front of the Queen! A fantastic achievement Sophie!

2019 was an extremely successful year for Leona Lee with numerous U15 and U17 titles in international competitions. Badminton England has now promoted Leona to play in U19 internationals and a senior international. Congratulations Leona! Isabelle Lacorte played at the second Women’s British Table Tennis League meet this term. She won all six of her matches, and her team won their division! Congratulations Isabelle!

Staff Successes Congratulations to Mrs Maydom for completing over 100 hours of work to achieve her Teen Yoga Teacher’s Award! What a privilege to have a qualified Teen Yoga instructor in school, taking weekly yoga classes as part of our extra-curricular programme. Mrs Johnson and Miss Evans were pleased the sun was out as they completed the Cambridge Saucony half marathon at the beginning of March!

Sport Relief Thank you to Miss Deegan for organising a fantastic dodgeball tournament and for the 20 teams that entered and played their socks off! We raised £100 for Sport Relief! HGS staff took on HBS staff in a charity netball match for Sport Relief. In a close fought match HBS unfortunately narrowly won 5-4. We’ll get them next time! Thanks to all the students who came to watch! We raised £83 for Sports relief

Thank you again to all who have attended clubs and participated in fixtures, tournaments, competitions and performances this term. We are thrilled and very proud of your achievements. A reminder that throughout this time at home, we are sending varied physical activity ideas every Monday and Wednesday to respective year groups. Please do get involved in these! Take care and keep active! From Miss Evans and the PE team

SCIENCE Science Live This term, Year 10 attended the Science Live event in Cambridge where they heard from Professors Robert Winston, Andrea Sella, Jim Al-Khalili, Alice Roberts and Doctor Maggie Aderin-Pocock to name a few. Much knowledge, insight and enthusiasm was shared with our students.

GSK Twilight Tour Y12 students attended a twilight GSK tour this term during which they had a talk on Biocatalysis and Eco Experiments, as well as a tour of the Biology and Chemistry laboratories. Students particularly enjoyed visiting the Cell and Gene Therapy department, looking at revolutionary equipment which will allow bespoke therapies in the future. It was very useful to speak directly to apprentices, industrial placement students and PhD students about career paths in Science. TECHNOLOGY Rotary Technology Competition

Earlier in the year, four winners from our local Rotary Technology competition went on a visit to a couple of local engineering companies. The students had competed against other schools from our area to design and build a flashing, rescue beacon, working to a specification to sketch, build and test their creation. As part of their prize visit, they were given demonstrations of structural steel

fabrication techniques and the precise engineering of ultrasonic welding. Congratulations to Sophie McKrell, Hana Williams, Isabelle Lacorte and Lucy Carmichael (all Y9).