June 2018 - Page 3 of 3 - Woodbridge School

On a day to day basis the rules at school are easy to enforce; there are not too many of them and they are all there for a reason. Examples such as: stay within the boundary fencing, clearly for the children’s safety and obvious when the line is crossed.

Others that are not so visible are also clear; be kind to each other, calling pupils by insulting names is obviously unkind.

Both examples are quickly dealt with and parental support is a given.

However, there is a grey area that is creeping ever more into school life. The power of technology. School rules across the country are being updated due to the necessity to remove the ability to connect to the internet through a watch; as clearly we have no means of securing the children’s safety if their school access is not through the safeguarded systems.

Equally, and even more difficult to contain, are the discussions about inappropriate games and apps that the children have access to. Now these games are not accessed at school so therefore surely it is not our problem? However, the discussions in playgrounds and re-enactments of scenes played on a sofa have repercussions in our safe environments.

It is a delicate balancing act. Schools do not want to interfere with family life and home rules, however, we have a duty of care to ensure that those parents who do not wish for their underage child to have knowledge of content that is deemed inappropriate by ratings, and individuals, to come home with information gathered in school.

Schools spend a huge amount of time trying to teach the children the importance of kindness, compassion and solving conflict through discussion and understanding. These are key skills that they will need as they grow up to be young adults of the future. Prep school age pupils do not have the ability to successfully filter appropriate language and actions when transferring them from a screen to the playground.

Whilst I am in agreement that we do not need to wrap our children up in cotton wool and protect them from all that is going on in the world, equally I do not think that we should be ignoring advice and allowing our young children access to games that have been age limited for good reasons.

Childhood is precious and we need to support the children to enjoy it in an age appropriate manner.

Happily, when recently walking this tightrope between home and school rules the surge of support that bounced back was huge. Clearly working together with the best interests of ours sons and daughters means that the line is increasingly blurred, and for good reason, as we all seek to support and nurture the next generation in their development.

Year 6 have now had a chance to calculate their final profits from our Stepping Into Business Market Day just before half term. In total, they made just over £1500 profit, which is a phenomenal achievement!

This money will be split between prizes for all the children, experiential prizes for the group who made the most profit and the group who demonstrated the best teamwork throughout, as well as a sizable charity donation. More information on the above will follow in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I am very pleased to announce the group prizes awarded below:

Best Teamwork – 10x Crazier
Most Profitable Business – Busy Bombs
Most Units Sold – Poppety Keyrings
Best Branding – Smileys
Resilience Award – The Freezers
Best Financial Planning – Smoothshakes
Best Service Industry Award – Tearoom Delight
Most innovative Product – Sharp Fire

Excitingly, lots of these stalls will be reopening for the Summer Fete on Sunday 17 June so the Year 6 entrepreneurs look forward to welcoming back to their stalls then.

It is so important that children understand the correlation between the creation of Art work and seeing that art on display for people to enjoy. Our “Woodbridge Views” exhibition was a great opportunity for children to celebrate their creations and share them with friends and family. It was so lovely to see so many parents and grandparents talking about the Art work with their children!

At Woodbridge our children are lucky enough to experience a diverse range of media; sculpture, ceramics, painting, collage, drawing and digital art to name but a few. We even had parents asking to purchase sculptures; this is indicative of the standards our little artists are capable of achieving!
Thank you to everyone that came along, we hope you enjoyed the afternoon.

Probably a first for Suffolk Cricket: siblings Daniel and Katie Norman, Woodbridge School Year 10 & 8 respectively, both captaining Suffolk Cricket age groups on the same day and both scoring 50s!

Daniel faced arguably the country’s leading team in Middlesex at Woodbridge School in a 50 over Royal London Cup fixture: Daniel captained, was wicket keeper and number 6 batsman. He steered Suffolk from 21 for 4 and 27 for 5 to a respectable 133 all out scoring exactly 50, though his efforts proved in vain as unfortunately Middlesex won by 9 wickets. He also scored a 50 last year against Middlesex at Woodbridge School. Very few batsmen achieve the feat of back-to-back 50s against Middlesex who boast boys from some of the top cricketing schools in the country.

Katie also captained the girls’ U13 Suffolk team who faired a somewhat better! Her team scored 237-8 off 35 overs with Katie hitting a superb 52 not out, batting at number 6. She then followed this up with 2 wickets when bowling as Suffolk dismissed their opponents Hertfordshire for 77 to earn a comprehensive victory.

On Wednesday night during Half Term some of our top athletes travelled to Watford to compete in a series of middle distance races in the hope of achieving personal bests or perhaps even the entry standard for England Schools.

Alex Evans Lombe was the only athlete to compete at 3000m, having finished second at the recent Suffolk Schools running 9:57 to secure selection to compete at the Anglian schools on 16th June. This time Alex improved by a massive 25 seconds, running 9:32 and gaining a perfect confidence boost ahead of the Anglians.

Amy Goddard and Kit Evans Lombe competed at 1500m and ran brilliantly, just missing out on season bests by one and two seconds respectively.

Charlie Turner had opened his season with a 4:36 PB, and on Wednesday he went significantly faster running a really impressive 4:27. Charlie is in Year 9 – the Year 13 school sports day record (set in 1974) is 4:29!

April Hill entered this event with a personal best of 4:52 knowing that she needed 4:48 to be included in the top 25 or 30 athletes that will get to start in one of two heats at England Schools. The result – April ran a new personal best of exactly 4:48, qualifying for England Schools and as far as we are aware becomes the first female Woodbridge School endurance athlete to do so.

Last but not least, Nathan Goddard started his race with a personal best of 4:10 knowing he needed 4:06 to guarantee selection. Not only did he achieve that, he ran quicker than the National Standard of 4:03 for his age, recording a very swift 4:02.79. This will secure Nathan’s passage to compete at England Schools in Birmingham on 13-14 July for the third year in succession.

To give the performance some context, Nathan is age 15 in Year 11… now, what did I write above about Year 13 school record…?!

A long night in Watford, but a very successful trip and we wish the athletes the very best for the rest of the season.

This has been an outstanding first Senior School winter for young Ruby Vinton who was competing a year up in Club and Inter County events as an under 13. Ruby was ranked 6th in the UK after a winter in the mud, which is the second highest ranking by any Suffolk athlete, and she is one of only three Suffolk Juniors to make the rankings across the ages. Ruby’s impressive season included a win at the National England Schools’ Cup, victories at the South of England Inter Counties and South of England individual events, and a fantastic 8th at the UK inter Counties.

Not only is Ruby competing a year up, she is an August birthday in Year 7! What a winter; all being well Ruby has an exciting few years ahead.

Many congratulations to Arabella, pictured here at the reception for her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award, held in the presence of Princess Eugenie and personally presented by Dr Hazel Wallace. It was a double celebration for Woodbridge School, as OW Rosie Streat was also delighted to be at the Palace to receive her award.

Many congratulations to our team of four which gained a ‘bronze medal’ from within the very competitive field of eighteen Year 8 teams in the region vying for the honours. Raise your test tubes to Asmee, Lucy, Amy, and Henry.

Asmee takes up the story: “Going to UEA for the chemistry competition and seeing the demonstration was incredibly fun. In fact, the kitchen chemistry may have been the best part. With its light show, explosive foam and colour changing chemicals, it really did shock the audience. For the challenges, firstly, we had to solve a robbery by doing chromatography and testing unknown samples. The second challenge was very experimental – it involved making foam. The team that made the most foam in a limited amount of time won. In the end, we came third out of 18 schools, which we were very happy about. All in all, UEA has an amazing chemistry school and if we could ever go again we definitely would.”