Is it coming home or going to Rome?
After 55 years of hurt and 16 months of misery, we are looking forward to an exciting final week of term…
Monday 12th July – Football colours dress day
To celebrate the England football team’s achievement at this year’s European Football Championships, we are encouraging all pupils and staff to wear either an England football jersey or a red and/or white top.
Tuesday 13th July 2021 – Annual Dance show 6-8pm
Ironically as Wembley returns to 60,000 spectators, our annual Dance show returns, albeit much restricted. The 162 dancers are very excited and we are extremely pleased that we can end a very difficult year by bringing back their dance show. Although the audience will have to be limited, restricted to areas and wear masks, it will be a nice evening. It’s just sad that we cannot invite our parents for this year.
Wednesday 14th July 2021 – Last day of term arrangements
Our final assembly will be on the school field and year groups will be seated in their own area. We have performances and so much more that we want to share with the girls to thank them and say how proud we are of the way they have coped with the significant Covid-19 disruptions this year.
Appointment of new Principal for September 2021
Ms Marika Farrugia has been appointed as Principal of RGS from September 2021 and will spend time in school on Monday 12th July to meet with myself and have the opportunity to see staff and pupils as we tour the school. Please read the letter from Mr Kearsey, CEO, Thames Learning Trust from the link below.
Jon Gargan, Principal
STEM
Girls were rewarded on their final STEM lesson of Key Stage 3 in Year 8 this week, with a carousel of activities including the STEM Olympics, reflecting on the last two years by making posters in regards to what has been done throughout the year and looking at what the imagination can dream up when science meets fantasy in the final event of the day; the 2016 remake of the classic: Ghostbusters. The girls who have taken Food as an option for their Year 9 options even had a chance to test their early careers in catering by preparing popcorn in the Food Technology room for 160 hungry girls!
Throughout the day girls had a chance to participate in a variety of STEM Olympic games which included: "Pretzel” with one pretzel maker and a number of unpretzelers. The pretzel maker directed the students (with words only) to twist around, step over, and duck under each other’s arms to form a human pretzel. Once they were sufficiently twisted, the unpretzelers were called over they had to try to direct the students (with words only) in order to detangle them. Students could not drop their hands at any time. The first team that successfully unpretzels their group won the match.
The Main Hall also had “Flip the Sheet” – Where all members of the team stood on a flat sheet. The team were then challenged to flip over the sheet so that they are standing on the other side of the sheet without stepping off or touching the ground and then had to compete in “Group Hop” – where students in each group stood in a straight line with their right hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them and their left leg forward so that the person in front of them can hold their ankle. The group then saw how far they could hop along together without toppling over! Once groups got the hang of hopping, they could hold a competition to see who can hop the farthest or longest. A great fun activity which tested coordination.
A "Blind maze” tested trust and team work with one girl directing another around the classroom "maze". Timing was also subject to rigorous testing with “Blind countdown” - where students counted up to 100 seconds and then stood up, if they stood up too early they were eliminated, closest to 100 seconds rounded off won. Communication was subject to inspection with “Sneak Peek” - To begin the game, the structure was revealed (in this case it was wind chimes outside the classroom), and one member from each team was allowed to come up to look at it closely for ten seconds, trying to memorise it before returning to their team. Once they returned to their team, they had 25 seconds to instruct the group on how to build a replica of the structure. After one minute of trying to recreate it, the member from each team could come up for another sneak peek before returning to their team and trying again. The game continued until one of the teams successfully recreated the original structure. A real challenge of patience and wit for all who took part.
The winner of over nine metres this year in the "Airplane” completion was based on solid engineering principles to lead the pack against a tape measure on floor down corridor. We continued the mental gymnastics with "Paper hole” – With a piece of paper teams attempted and make the biggest hole possible. Some were large enough for a girl to step through with ease! This helped with “Paper chain” – where girls had 15 minutes to create the longest paper chains possible and it’s surprising how long we could make them! More of the corridors were used for taking measurements of these long paper constructions.
The last activity before lunch was “Word chain” – Where girls were in a line and with just one student representing a group. Round one was simply using four letter words, when someone says a repeated word or wrong number of letters they were eliminated, then next person did it for 5 letter words, each round has another letter added, until you have a winner. Words got longer as the rounds seemed to get shorter!
The girls had a thoroughly good send off to the end of their course on Tuesday and even though we could not visit Didcot Steam Centre for our steam gala due to restrictions on travel this year, the spirit of STEM was still well honoured at school instead and girls found their last ever lesson of Year 8 highly rewarding.
We wish the girls every success after the Summer in their GCSE courses and hope that the skills that they have learned in their STEM course has prepared them well to tackle the challenges that lie ahead of them in the coming years.
Results Day is fast approaching! here are some links which could be useful:
- Parentkind advice for parents on coping with results day: https://www.parentkind.org.uk/Parents/Exams-surviving-results-day
- We will have staff and a careers adviser on hand to help Year 11 students on the day. They should have their offers and relevant contact numbers to hand and these links may also be useful
- Berkshire opportunities for all you need to know about Berkshire training courses, apprenticeships and jobs: https://www.berkshireopportunities.co.uk/
- Elevate - Reading's Brighter Futures Young People's Zone - including contacts and live chat for careers advice: https://brighterfuturesforchildren.org/young-peoples-zone/careers-service-for-young-people/
School Nursing Newsletter
http://www.readinggirlsschool.co.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=1830&type=pdf
Year 6 Explorer Week
Congratulations to all of the year 6 students who have now completed their 4 day Explorer Weeks. The final cohort finished yesterday and, as with all of the other groups, it was a delight to get to know them!
All of the students were asked to fill in a brief questionnaire about their time on the Explorer Weeks and of the responses so far:
- 100% of girls stated that they made new friends at RGS.
- 100% of girls stated that they feel better prepared for September having attended the Explorer Weeks.
A reminder that the whole day for all year 6 students WILL NOT be taking place on Monday 12th July. Instead Year 6 parents have received a Microsoft TEAMS invite for a meeting on line at 6pm on Monday 12th July.
Increasing Student Participation
“Talking Tokens”
Talking Tokens are issued by the classroom teacher and/or teaching assistant to pupils who participate to questions and/or ask questions during lessons. Pupils are encouraged to write their name and year group on the back of the 'Talking Token' and place them into the relevant 'Talking Token' collection box for their year group. At the end of each term, all 'Talking Tokens' are placed together and a pupil is selected at random. The more 'Talking Tokens' a pupil collects for contributing answers to questions in class, the more chances they have to win a prize.
At the end of this week the following number of 'Talking Tokens' collected by each year group for this year to date are:
- Year 7 – 7808
- Year 8 – 4990
- Year 9 – 986
- Year 10 – 3950
- Year 11 – 1659
- Total number of ‘Talking Tokens’ collected this year across the whole school are 19,393
“Has your lesson been REAL (Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning)?”
Using REAL tokens students have the opportunity to give instant feedback to staff about their experiences within the lesson.
Students are provided with a token and at the end of the lesson, are asked if their lesson has been R.E.A.L. (Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning). Students theen place their token into the 'Yes' or 'No' box, which is in every teaching classroom. Staff then uses this information to make any modification to their delivery of their lesson. These tokens are then collected in at the end of every week and counted.
Results for this week: Monday 5 July to Friday 9 July 2021
YES – 464 tokens
No – 121 tokens
