Category: Senior School News

The under fourteens very much enjoyed taking part in their first tournament of the season recently, hosted at Portman Road. Split into two teams, the first group opened their day against Kesgrave A in a hard fought and tiring encounter concentrated in midfield. Kesgrave took an early lead they never relinquished, but Fazil and Theo in particular helped us get back into the game, and Ollie made a brilliant penalty save towards the end.  The second game, against Beccles A, was a slower paced match with much of it played in the opposition half. Moses made a series of brilliant tackles in what proved to be a frustrating encounter in the end, as Beccles stole a goal on the break to win.  Unfortunately the pattern was similar in the final game against Saxmundham A: plenty of possession but very few attempts on goal.  In an end to end game, Saxmundham took their two chances to secure the win.   The B team had a better day of it: in the first game Max scored twice up front while Tom kept a clean sheet in defence thanks to a fine save. 3 points won – the team feeling good! The second game was against Farlingaye which added a bit of local rivalry to the proceedings. In a tight encounter we defended as hard as possible and Erwan made some amazing saves. The match ended 0-0, giving us a well-earned point.  The final games was against group leaders Kesgrave (we were joint second). Our approach was determined, but two headers from the opposition in rapid succession proved too much for us as they ran out winners by 3-0. The team, made up of Year 8 and Year 9 players who had not played together before, was proud of its efforts and the points gained.

Unlike previous Year 8s going to the Green Britain Centre in Swaffham, this year’s went to Foxburrow farm where they enjoyed such activities as an invertebrate search, tree study, pond dipping, and a classification mystery animal quiz. Now these activities may not sound like the most fun or interesting things to do but were actually very intriguing and exciting tasks.

Invertebrate Search

First when we entered the woodland meadow clearing we were told to sit on logs which we were not allowed to move for reasons which will become clear to you. Lena, our instructor, explained the different ways in which we could search for creatures. We swept through bracken, toiled through trees and captured what lurked under logs. The undergrowth hid Harvestmen, the trees strung with spiders; and under one particular log another group found an endangered species: a young great crested newt which in Poppy’s opinion was cute! In the end our team found a ladybird, two types of spider, a grey harvestman and a huge harvestman with black legs and an orange body that was about the size of a tangerine.

Tree Study

Firstly, we identified trees by the cuttings that had been taken for us. Searching through forest and thicket to find the owners of these twigs, we realised how similar and yet how different two trees can be. Next we proceeded to create a key by gathering three leaves before asking a question such as “Does it have a serrated (toothed) edge?” which led to either a leaf or another question. Our last task was to measure the height of a tree. We choose a beautiful pink leaved one. I stood a few metres away from the base and pointed the clinometer at the top-most twig. Once we had a reading of 45 degrees exactly, Poppy began to measure from my feet, but hit a problem, literally! There was a great stretch of thicket that we attempted to navigate through to reach the bottom of the trunk. Eventually, after picking our way through thorns, nettles and tree trunks, we made it in, so, with Jazzy keeping the other end secure, Poppy passed me the end of the tape measure. I brought it to the base of the tree ready for Poppy to confirm the exact reading. The tree was 10.4 metres tall.

Pond Dipping

When we first entered the pond area, there were bowls, nets and tubs with spoons. One person got to go up to the pond to dip first: even on our first net-full there were so many creatures, mainly backswimmers and lesser water boatman. On about our third dip I managed to catch a great diving beetle.  Nearing the end of this activity Mae Batchelor caught a dragonfly nymph – which is the top predator in a pond- proving the quality of the water was very good. Finally we placed our creatures into identification tanks.   When Mae placed the nymph in the tank it immediately got to work and fought to the death with the other bugs… it won!

Animal Classification

The final activity we did was inspecting a skull and classifying the animal it was from. After examining the skull we were asked two questions. 1) The positioning of the eyes. 2) The way in which the teeth were structured. Ours was a large skull with sets of molars, designed to grind down plant material. It had forward facing eyes with a little more peripheral vision than humans. Once we had recorded our answers we made our way to a woodland bowl (a lower area of woodland in the shape of a bowl), where we answered further questions according to the clues given to us. We were also given a fun fact about our mystery animal to help us on our way. Our creature was the largest land animal in the UK with the largest being 137cm to its shoulders and 190kg in weight. We also got to find out what habitat it lived in: for example our animal didn’t build a home so it just grazed a field.  In the end, after much deliberation, we decided (with a lot of help from Poppy) that our mystery animal was, in fact, a Red Deer.

Poppy , Hannah and Jasmine

Back at the school it was a varied day for the Woodbridge School Sports Leaders.

The Y11 pupils had safeguarding training and, together with the Y12s, a Circus Skills workshop.

Y13 had a day of First Aid training as part of their Paediatric First Aid qualification.

Last Thursday evening saw the CCF Navy section pile into minibuses after school to travel to HMS Bristol in Portsmouth for their field day. Arriving in reasonable time the cadets were able to take in the experience of spending the night on a real Royal Navy destroyer before an early start on Friday for an action packed field day. After marching across the HMS Excellent base and past the RN HQ to breakfast our new Year 9 cadets were able to visit HMS Collingwood where they spent a morning getting wet and muddy on the Navy obstacle course before taking on the challenge of the low ropes course in the afternoon. This year we were fortunate to secure the use of two large motorboats and two small yachts which enabled all the rest of the section to spend the day afloat. Despite a lack of wind we all made it across in the sunshine to Cowes on the Isle of Wight for lunch before returning to Portsmouth and the long drive back to Woodbridge.

Congratulations to Myles who been successful in gaining a place at British Film Institute (BFI) Academy for aspiring filmmakers. The application criteria were for committed, talented young people who are passionate about film. In his application Myles submitted his CCF Inspection video amongst other videos he has produced, as well as demonstrating his commitment by running an after school Filmmakers Club and volunteering at holiday film workshops.  The support and encouragement Myles has received from teachers at Woodbridge has given him the confidence to pursue his passion.  His favourite fun film experience was making the Amarillo video with the staff in record time to raise money for Comic Relief!

The Suffolk Festival of the Performing Arts took place last week, with Woodbridge pupils from Years 3 to 10 taking part.

The School enjoyed spectacular success at the Festival, with 3 out of 4 of the speech and drama championships being won by Woodbridge pupils, along with a substantial number of other cups and awards. Our congratulations to all those who have won prizes, with particular congratulations to Oliver (Y8) who won the Senior Drama Champion award, to James (Y7) who jointly won the Junior Drama Champion award with Sacha (Y6) who also won Junior Speech Champion, and to Alice, Havannah and Amelie who also won cups or trophies.

The full list of Senior School results is attached here.

Our congratulations to recent OW Will Emery who has been offered a prestigious Palgrave-Brown UK Scholarship to attend St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

The Palgrave-Brown scholarship is an Oxford scholarship aimed specifically at providing funding for undergraduates from Norfolk or Suffolk.

Competition for the scholarship is exceptionally high, and this makes Will’s achievement notably outstanding.

Last Saturday, four Woodbridge girls took to the mountains of Norwich to compete in the National Finals of the ESSKIA dry slope skiing competition. They were the embodiment of what has come to be known as the Learning@Woodbridge qualities. Their perseverance to make it through a tough qualifier, by far the most stacked in the country, and endure miserable (but fast!) conditions in Norwich was commendable. They took responsibility for their own training regimes, all attending school training as well as clubs or academies outside school. They were collaborative and worked excellently as a team to qualify for the prestigious team finals. And they were aspirational, competing in the Under 19 category as two 13 year olds, a 15 and 16 year old. I could not have been prouder of the way they represented the school, skiing competitively and exuding positivity, improving times between runs and proving that they are a team for the future.

With results yet to be ratified, our team of Katherine (Y12), Beth (Y11) Honor (Y9) and Madeleine M (Y9) has finished in the top dozen schools in the country, a fantastic achievement. And hot off the press, Honor has been selected to represent Great Britain in the upcoming races in Andorra next January, so many congratulations!

Woodbridge made a lightning start against Thomas Mills, scoring five well-worked tries in the opening half before the opposition had barely found time to draw breath. Fazil touched down for two and there was one each for Erwan, Edward B and Obi. So slick was the play that spectators might have felt they were there for a masterclass in flowing attacking rugby by Woodbridge: tries scored out wide after quick passing and good handling from the backs. One onlooker was even drawn to make comparison with the All Blacks! The forwards played their part magnificently, opening up the pitch beautifully with their powerful running to allow the backs to flourish, George N, Hector and Sam W being particularly impressive. The second half was much the same with another five tries: Barnaby, Fazil, Robert S (2) and Moses scoring. This meant that Woodbridge were dominant victors with Fazil scoring his third hat trick in three games.

The under fifteens recently travelled up to Culford on a cold and rain swept Saturday afternoon, but came away with smiles on their faces nonetheless. The match proved to be unexpectedly straightforward thanks to the successful use of many of our tactical plays – typically, the forwards crashing through in the heart of attack, and the backs finishing off superbly in the corners. Woodbridge were stronger, faster and fitter on the day, and it paid off with a score of over 50 unopposed points by halfway. The second half allowed the less experienced players to get some game time, and it made for a much more evenly matched game thereafter. Meanwhile the weather ended as it started, with heavy rain, though with a silver lining to the clouds thanks to the convincing victory by 64-14 (tries by Tom, Mauricio, Ollie, James, Ruben and Jack).  Roll on East Bergholt!