Category: Senior School News

School pupils have been inspired into science with an exciting, interactive Kitchen Chemistry show presented by Dr Stephen Ashworth from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Over 240 pupils from St Mary’s Primary School in Woodbridge, Woodbridge Primary School, Waldringfield Primary School, South Lee School and Kyson Primary School enjoyed the show, held at the Seckford Theatre in Woodbridge on Friday 30 November.

Dr Ashworth’s Kitchen Chemistry involved a number of dramatic and energetic experiments with everyday household items, such as using a toaster to make a hot air balloon, demonstrating the flammability of custard powder, and looking at how indigestion tablets work. Dr Ashworth obtained his DPhil in Chemistry from Oxford University and has lectured in science around the world, most recently taking his Kitchen Chemistry show on tour to schools around South Africa.

Ambra Calver, Chemistry Teacher and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Coordinator here at Woodbridge School, said: “A huge thank you to Dr Ashworth for his fantastic Kitchen Chemistry show. The explosive experiments and interesting demonstrations on household objects left pupils with a real excitement for science”

Following the success of the STEM programme launched last year, take up this year of the exciting range of science-based activities on offer has been even stronger from Suffolk primary schools. The programme aims to encourage more young people into STEM subjects, with activities including robotics, coding and electronics, as well as earthquake challenges using K’Nex. Woodbridge School are collaborating with Sizewell B and BT Labs@Adastral Park on the enrichment programme, with workshops that explore all facets of STEM subjects and enable pupils to practice exciting experiments. New this year are sessions with the Brickologists, Suffolk Recycling Centres and Energy from Waste.

Ambra Calver continued: “It’s incredibly important to boost young people’s interest and enthusiasm for STEM subjects. Science is very strong at Woodbridge School so we feel we can really help local primary schools with exciting opportunities like Kitchen Chemistry and our enrichment programme.”

The U15A team put up a great fight and comeback against RHS on Saturday.  It was an extraordinary effort by the players, especially those who doubled up on the day: Jess and Ashleigh who had already run cross country very successfully in the morning; Year 9’s who gave their all in the U14 match before and still shone in the next match (Ella P, Ella S and Maddy M); players who performed well for club before (Molly and Ella W) and those players who also helped out the team after (Julia and Myla).  It was a big Woodbridge effort to make all the fixtures possible.

The U15As started the match well and looked to dominate at the start.  However after the initial exchanges it was RHS who scored half way through the first half.  Woodbridge came back strong and it was good penalty corner defence that denied them getting back on level terms.  The Woodbridge players showed excellent discipline, resilience and sportsmanship throughout the match, coping well with frustrating situations, including RHS scoring a second goal just before half time.

Worse followed as early in the second half RHS scored the dreaded third goal: now with nothing to lose Woodbridge really pushed forward.  This worked well, and Ella W scored a great team goal in the 10^th minute, followed five minutes later by a goal from Molly.  Woodbridge were rampant; RHS desperate in defence… but some sharp saves by the goalkeeper made sure RHS kept their lead at 3-2.  Despite the loss, this was a gutsy performance from the U15A team, showing how well they have developed both as individuals and as leaders.  Well done to Mr Wright and the team.

Molly takes up the story: As our last game of the season we decided to try lots of new things that we had practised in our games sessions and hockey practices. We started slow lowering ourselves to their level and not playing our usual fluid style. However, after winning a flurry of short corners we eventually put one away with Clara injecting to Molly who passed it out to the right to Ella who passed it back to Molly who put it away from the penalty spot. After this our game play improved as we set the press better and won the ball higher up giving us lots of attacking chances. Another goal followed as Ella shot from the top of the D and Clara deflected it in from close range.

We continued in attacking form from half time winning a short corner quickly after the restart. Clara injected it out to Molly who passed to Ella who was free on the left who slapped (yeeted) it into the bottom right hand corner. We then reverted to an attacking half court press which meant Ipswich High could barely enter our half which led to more attacking chances: Clara and Ella had some beautiful play up the right with lots of 1-2s which eventually resulting in Ella flicking it into the back of the net to make it 4-0. We then subbed our goalie Lakisha off to have a kicking back as an experiment which allowed us to retain the ball better and have more players to pass and transfer between the defenders Myla, Olivia and Ariane. This allowed us to work our way up the pitch and win a long corner which was quickly taken by Molly catching them off guard who eventually slotted it into the bottom corner. This meant we finished the season on a high with a 5-0 win to cap off a brilliant and enjoyable season.

On Saturday 1 December, over thirty Woodbridge School athletes competed at Ipswich High in the second Suffolk Schools Cross Country trial, having qualified through the first trial in October.  And they produced an outstanding set of results despite the constant rain. In summary:

Four individual medals: golds to Amy and April, silver to Nathan and bronze to George.

12 top 8 positions (the Suffolk Team comprises 8 in each age group to compete at England Schools in March).

15 top 16 positions (a wider Suffolk Team is selected to compete at Anglian Schools in February).

24 athletes qualify by right to compete in the final Suffolk trial to be hosted by Woodbridge School on 10 January (Top 40 finish).

These numbers exclude two of our superstars who were ill or injured and who, together with a few other runners close to qualifying, will be granted byes to the final trial.

Congratulations to every athlete that represented Woodbridge School so well in difficult conditions. The results are just rewards for all the hard work you are putting in and everyone should be extremely proud of their performance.

Full results as follows (with apologies for one or two missing placings):

Minor Girls:
8 Eloise
10 Rose
17 Lara
And close behind, Millie and Sasha

Minor Boys:
5 Ethan
15 James
35 Jack
46 Arthur
And close behind, John and Will

Junior Girls:
1 Amy
21 Anna
27 Isobel

Junior Boys:
7 Henry
19 Edward
23 Jonny
48 Fazil

Inter Girls:
1 April
5 Jess
10 Bea
22 Ella
27 Ashleigh

Inter Boys:
3 George
4 Charlie
6 Kit
28 Tom

Senior Girls:
6 Sarah

Senior Boys:
2 Nathan
5 Alex

Many congratulations indeed to Saxon who has succeeded in achieving his Duke of Edinburgh Gold award – while still at school!  It takes considerable effort to achieve the award at any stage (indeed we have just recently heard from an OW who has completed some eight years after leaving us); to do so as a sixth former is exceptional and Saxon joins a very select group of Woodbridgians who have shown the extraordinary dedication and sense of public service this demands.

Congratulations to Victoria, Laura, Saffron, Hope and Medomfo for achieving their Bronze award!

I know that a couple of hours in the Dome at Woodbridge listening to speeches and applauding the year’s prize winners is not everyone’s dream Saturday morning.  But now I am retired I can choose not to attend, except that as OW president I am invited and so it seems churlish not to accept.  I was honoured last year to have a prize for French awarded, bearing my name, so I was keen to see who followed the worthy first winner, James Bellhouse (2017).

I was thrilled to discover that the French prize went to Gabriella Zins (2018) whom I knew to be another worthy recipient, simply from seeing her in language competitions, on exchanges and study trips not just in France but also in Spain.  Gabby is going on to study chemistry at Birmingham University, not surprisingly with a year abroad included; I hope she will choose France for that.

What I had not realised is that my youngest tutees in my last year of teaching had left school and they were both prizewinners too.

Alyssa Hedley (2018) won the Psychology Prize and will go on to study that subject at the University of East Anglia.  It was good to hear of the many other accomplishments she developed over her time at Woodbridge, including acting (she was a hilarious librarian last time I saw her) and playing the flute, on which I heard her play a solo at Snape Maltings.  She also helped out as a classroom assistant at Thomas Wolsey School in Ipswich.

Adam Wildbore (2018) won the Hewlett Cup for all-round contribution to school life.  In addition to A levels which are leading him to Exeter University to study geography, Adam managed to complete his gold Duke of Edinburgh award, was a sports leader and managing director of Young Enterprise, represented the school and the region in a range of sports and spoke at the Model United Nations in Paris.

I was so pleased that the final remaining members of B-GBB and the winner of the French prize were so successful at school and it was good to see these fresh new OWs once again; I wish them all the very best for their degrees and beyond.

There will be some people out there who don’t realise just how exciting maths is.  Add in an element of competition and the joy would be complete for Jonathan and John from Year 13 and Brendan and Jake from Year 12, our wonderful senior maths team.  All they had to do was to get to Northgate and answer a series of fiendish questions, against the clock and often ‘in relay’ (working in pairs, one pair providing a solution to a problem which itself enabled the other pair to answer theirs, to open up a third problem to the first pair… and so on).  It was cracking good fun!

We were one of the top fourteen schools from Suffolk and Essex vying for a place in the national final, and vie we did… 90% in the first round; amongst the top six going into the final round (with no idea of where in the six we were…); and then the final relay round… and a good start… four ‘races’ to complete… and the first was perfection!  The second was … nearly.  The third… was a little harder.  The fourth?  Don’t ask.

But we had enjoyed ourselves!  It’s the taking part after all…  And so to the announcement of the top three.  Third Framlingham; second Woodbridge!  You could have knocked us down with a feather (and not just because we were so mentally exhausted); and first (perennial winners) Colchester RGS (next year…).  So our best result for years if not ever and a fantastic achievement delivered with genuine enthusiasm and received with astonishment and humility.  Mr Streat was so over-excited that he forgot to take a picture, so you’ll have to imagine our happy smiles as we proudly held our certificates.  He also thereafter very nearly ran Jonathan over in the car park, which would have been a shame, and scant reward for Jonathan’s sterling efforts all evening.

On Tuesday 27^th November, Year 7 enjoyed a school trip to Trinity Park. We went there to watch two science presentations with practicals and explanation.

The first half of the show was led by a man called Russell who was very funny. He told us all about his job as an oceanographer. He taught us all about the different types of plankton including cyanoplankton, otherwise known as blue-green algae. He asked up two children to help him with a demonstration of a food chain, and even dressed up as a shrimp!

After a short break, we settled back down into our seats to start watching the second half. The lady (called Dr Suze) was talking about how super powers could become reality by nano-science. Scientists have been developing different ways to make people invisible and lots more. She showed us a practical in which she had a beaker of plain water and then put 3 circular bead-like things made out of hydrogel. Once the beads entered the water, they were indistinguishable from the water in all lights.

In conclusion it was a fascinating day out and we all really enjoyed it. They both really made us all want to learn more about science.

By Phoebe and Florence

Fables and Fairy tales

We all know the stories… don’t we?

It’s wonderful to be captured unawares, and right from the first moments so we the audience were caught – by a freeze-frame quartet: ensembles at the ready, caught, in their turn, between books and their own imaginings…

And then a moment of reflection – a clever device to introduce both cast and intention as we saw our stars-to-be on the big screen, preparing to tread the boards: the usual thespian route of stage to screen turned upside down.

And thereafter it was the joy of performance: The Golden Goose (was anyone else waiting for a golden egg?) caught me unawares – I didn’t know the story! That laughter should win the day was as it should be (though, as with the best fairy stories, it’s dark laughter at heart, just to keep you on your toes).  Rumpelstiltskin ran and romped, and the weaving was done to perfection… but what else was captured by the intertwining threads?  Ah yes; nothing is simple.  And nothing was simple for the misused and wishful Catskin either.  So nearly everything lost, but everything won in the end (though the old man may disagree): our happiest ending?  The Hare and the Hedgehog, and the defeat of hubris, looked set fair to trump it – victory to the underdog and lots of laughter on the way… only for a tragedy to tip the balance and draw the worst from the best.  And so the moral of our night exploring the medieval imagination is?  Modesty, humility and dignity in your victories; and much the same in all your trials and tribulations!  Yes, please!  And what a fine example our cast and crew set: terrific in their endeavours, marvellous in their performances, and dignified in their gratitude for their audience’s warm, lengthy and well-deserved applause.

We had the opportunity to take our Year 10 business students to BT global headquarters this week to engage in an Enterprise day.  The purpose of the day was to put students into a controlled commercial environment where they break out into small teams (each team representing a company) and compete to make the most virtual money in the day.  To achieve this the students have to work together in their respective teams completing milestone tasks including:

• Building and selling virtual cars; achieved through the accumulation of car-part tokens that can only be completed by trading/negotiating with other teams.
• Raise initial capital (for the car parts) with a start-up loan; needing them to understand what a loan is and that it needs to be paid back through the online bank.
• Raise initial and ongoing capital by trading in shares; trading in of all the other companies, using our online share-trading software.
• Maintain the company bank account; using BT’s online banking software.
• Raise additional capital by paying for then completing physical team activities and a variety of reasonably complex quizzes and questionnaires; these activities provide a “return on investment”.
• Complete a mock-government paperwork exercise.
•  Delivering a short presentation (in the Dragon’s Den style); two people pitch for a couple of minutes to a panel on “why their company is investable”.
• Negotiating with “The Union” when their “car factory workers” go on strike; the outcome has a cost, the better the negotiation the lower the cost.
•  Generally manage each other in the team (lead by a Chief Executive Officer and a Chief Financial Officer) and handle/negotiate all the other teams competing.

According to the placings one of our teams,  Lovol came second in the competition.  However the organisers acknowledged an error in their otherwise excellent procedures that made the “first” team results invalid.  Congratulations to all our students below and particular pride and respect for our winning Woodbridgians headed up by CEO Jack W.