Month: March 2017
On Friday 3 April, a team of four junior mathematicians; Nina Varadarajan and Henry Waldron (both Y8) and Hal Ottley and Saif Toubassey (both Y9), represented Woodbridge School at the Regional Finals of the UKMT Team Maths Challenge 2017 at Framlingham College. Pitted against some very strong competition from a whole host of schools from Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, these four students did amazingly well to achieve 2nd place, pipped by the narrowest of margins by the favourites, Colchester Royal Grammar School.
Reception children have enjoyed travelling to far off places on their magic carpets this week. They have woven their own carpets, written postcards from places they have visited and painted carpets mixing the colours themselves. They will be exploring the different continents over the next few weeks and comparing different environments.
All at Queen’s House took part in World Book Day dressing up in a wide variety of characters including Superworm, the BFG, Saint George, Stick Man and Katie Morag. The children loved sharing their favourite stories and are all looking forward to visiting a bookshop with their tokens! Thank you to parents for such a great effort.
Our cross country athletes close the season with three National Cross Country Fixtures – Competition at the highest level.
The Saucony English National Cross Country Championship – Entry through your club and the largest event with over 8000 athletes competing in 10 Age Group races.
British Athletics Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships where our students selected will represent Suffolk County ( Loughborough on Saturday 11 March)
New Balance English Schools Cross Country Championships where our students selected will represent Suffolk Schools (Norwich on Saturday 18 March)
Last weekend, Saturday 25 February, a group of seven travelled to Nottingham to compete for Ipswich Harriers in the first of the three Nationals with some fantastic performances.
To give the results some context, junior races typically have 400 to 500 of the fastest cross country athletes in England competing. If you consider that in team sports an England Squad is typically around 30 strong before the final match day side is selected, in cross country it is widely recognised that top 100 takes some doing and top 50 is knocking on the door of National Standard.
Our individual results were as follows:
U13 Boys –
Charlie Turner – 38th – a fantastic second half saw Charlie storm his way into the top 50 pacing his race perfectly
George Wharam – 58th – again a powerful finish saw George closing in on that top 50
Kit Evans-Lombe – 118th – A first National event for Kit and not far away from that top 100. Such is the level of competition in fact that Kit was only 6 seconds behind 100th.
The boys helped Ipswich Harriers to 6th place in the team competition against the very best clubs from around England.
U13 Girls –
Amy Goddard – 215th from 467 finishers. A first National for Amy and she was our only athlete on the day running a year up. 48 seconds between 100th and 215th shows the depth.
U15 Girls –
Sarah Barker – 42nd – an outstanding run saw Sarah power through to finish first for her club as well as break into that top 50 on a National stage for the first time.
Amy Graham – 136th – closing in on that elusive top 100, just 15 seconds ahead. A good return to form for Amy.
Amy and Sarah helped Ipswich Harriers to an incredible 4th place at the Nationals. The Clubs best result of the day!
U15 Boys –
Nathan Goddard – 18th – A top 20 finish at Nationals !
Nathan’s highest ever finish at a National Cross Country fixture and just a tantalising 9 seconds from top 10. Another mature performance moving from 26th to 18th in the final 500 metres.
Congratulations to everyone that competed and we wish you well for the remaining fixtures.
Congratulations to our mathematicians on another fine haul of certificates in this year’s Intermediate Maths Challenge, a challenge sat by thousands of pupils across the country.
Top this year for us was Brendan Bennett with a very impressive score of 106, earning him a place in the top follow-on competition for Year 10s – the Hamilton round. Our other winner of a gold certificate was Saif Toubasey of Year 9, scoring an excellent 82 to earn a place in the Grey Kangaroo follow-on for Year 9s. Joining him will be Saffron Holliday and Maddie Cheshire, also of Year 9, who achieved top silver awards and made the Kangaroo hurdle as well. Our other pupils to gain silver awards were: Ashlyn Feng (best in Year 11), Sophie Little, Zara Lye, Freeman Lok, James Phelan, Danny Cai and Ella Holliday of Year 11, Louis Tomlinson, Guy Seagers, Nathan Goddard and Cristine Lui of Year 10, and Hal Ottley and Nathaniel Gunn of Year 9. Bronze awards were won by James Eaton, Daniella Elman, Tara Hartley, Justin Tsui, Jude Ashken (Year 11), Sarah Barker, Martha Carey, Jonathan Kajoba, James Martin, Amy Knight, Alex Evans Lombe, James Brooks, Toby Cassy, Sophie Drew, Toby McNally, Natasha Doole, Jenny Clare (Year 10), and Isobel Stewart (Year 9). Many congratulations one and all.
Alessia Ruggiero reports: On Sunday and Monday 11 Woodbridge School students performed the role of International diplomats, or in UN speak, “delegates” for France, Canada and North Korea at the 8th MUN Conference at Felsted. For two days they experienced the complexities associated with the global governance of challenging issues such as nuclear disarmament, religious extremism and LGBT rights. Inspired speeches were delivered by all the delegates who contributed to developing, challenging and supporting a range of resolutions. The quality of our delegates’ preparation as well as debating and negotiating skills was recognised by the organisers who also awarded special commendations to Chris Long, the delegate for France at the EcoSoc and Abi Crane, the delegate for Canada on the Ecology and Environment committee. Other strong delegates were Josh Cole, influential member of the UN the Security Council who was superbly supported by the rest of the rest of the French delegation (Abigail Tearle, Callum Sycamore and Archie Timms) in the General Assembly.
Meanwhile the ‘pantomime villains’ of the delegation for North Korea (Ben Weston, Miles Budden, Chris Grainger and Jozef Gwizdala) also attracted a great deal of attention, not least for their uniforms and accessories!
How true, how true, how TRUE! A festival – ‘a celebration’ – and so it was, embracing the enthusiasm, skill, passion and talents of well over a hundred of our pupils from eight to eighteen, not forgetting the brilliant staff who guided them to such heights (the staff embraced a different range of ages… but Mr Penny’s not letting on).
Cantabile – stunningly melodious, and beautifully measured: poignant pieces, witty arrangements, and crystal clear from the start.
The Chamber Choir – the pinnacle, and at the top of its game, mixing the secular and the religious with graceful aplomb and mesmerising musicianship (did you pick out all the nursery rhymes before they all began-agin?).
The Barbershop – not just a case of half a dozen snappy dressers having fun, but a wonderfully nuanced and balanced rendering of two classic songs given new heart and soul.
‘Down by the Riverside’ (how about that for a title written for Woodbridge…) and a wonderfully clever coming together of youth and experience as Cantabile followed where the Chamber Choir led. Brilliant.
The buzz at the interval was electric – here was an audience in the thrall of something very special. And the second half measured up in spades. The Abbey Chapel Choir delighted with its take on a very international repertoire, mixing brave solo voice with unison and harmony to joyous effect; the Chamber Choir returned to take glorious advantage of a chance to sing Mozart’s Ave Verum with a professional chamber orchestra; and then it was all (senior) hands to the pump for the Choral Society’s powerful performance of Schubert’s Mass in G featuring three quite outstanding soloists: Florence Gidney, David Spray and Owen Butcher.
A magical evening of song. Our sincere and enormous thanks to our wonderfully generous benefactor who made this very special event possible, and our hearty congratulations to all the performers, and of course to Ms Weston and her inspirational team of singing teachers, to Mrs Williams, to Mr Milton, to the memory of Mr Stafford, and to Mr Penny who rightly took the final bow at this, his final Woodbridge School Snape concert.
The children were very excited when the Magic Carpet turned up unexpectedly this week. It had been to Spain and brought back some Spanish foods for them to enjoy. The children and their parents then took part in a Tapas Tasting Session together, whilst listening to some lovely Spanish Music. Ms Verona, our Spanish teacher, helped the children to learn the words for the foods and the children were able to use these whilst deciding which of the foods they liked best.
We are delighted to be able to welcome so many schools to Woodbridge for the East Anglian Prep Schools Cross Country Championships on Sunday 5 March. We hope you enjoy the day and best of luck to all of those participating in the event.
Registration opens at 10.30am, with the first race starting at 11.30am
Refreshments will be available all day, and at 2.15pm there will be a tea followed by the awards presentation.