Category: Woodbridge News

Mary Godfrey and Chris Long report: The twelve Woodbridge School pupils with Mrs Shanahan and Dr Ruggiero, had a highly successful trip to the Paris International Model United Nations Conference. Whether it was Abi Crane in the Security council trying to solve the complex issue of achieving stability on the Korean peninsula, or Sam Kill and Callum Sycamore working together to pass clauses to solve the problem of rising rates of automation. The energy at this conference was truly unique with delegates from 23 different countries. It was so exciting to have the opportunity to meet and debate with like-minded individuals from such a diverse set of backgrounds, it was truly mind broadening meeting with people from Saudi Arabia and America and hearing their very different opinions on different global issues. In a world filled with nations intent on pursing further isolationism, it is truly inspiring that there were 600 pupils and numerous teachers from all over the world willing to give their time to ‘work toward the new world order’(which was the conferences aim).

All our delegates contributed brilliantly: whether it was Sophie Little and Daniella Elman debating the virtues of ecotourism, and sustainable development in developing countries or Mary Godfrey working her way through the complex issues surrounding medical intellectual property rights, and how to limit them and then the question of infrastructure’s effect on education (all three at their first conference) or the seasoned debaters Ben Weston and Josh Cole working toward a peaceful solution to the South China sea crisis. As a NATO country, France’s delegates were vital to the passing of constructive clauses, and delegates often found themselves being influential in their blocs. Venezuela were part of the Arab League and again found ways of using influential comments and working with France to better their clauses. In the general assembly, Josh Cole, as a delegate of France submitted and presented an amendment, to a resolution submitted by USA on climate change, and the entire delegation helped to form an alliance with many European countries. All of us learnt so much about international relations, debating and humanity from this conference and had a lot of fun doing so! As an added bonus Chris Long won Best Delegate of the Human Rights committee, for his work on redrafting the UNHDR. A total of 5 clauses submitted by our delegates were passed, so all in all a fantastic weekend, which has left all of us inspired to continue working toward a more equitable world.

A Saturday evening – and in the Library: two new ventures for us (though the Library has been a familiar lunchtime venue for a little while now).  It’s nice to make a positive impression, and I have to say the performances were terrific.  Mr Milton did a fine job introducing musicians and repertoire alike (and even managed to take precisely the number of words required to allow William Emery and Jenny Clare the time they needed to join us direct from London!); and the musicians did an even finer job of living up to their billing.  Add to the mix excellent hospitality from the Friends of Woodbridge Library, and readers will sense the audience left immensely happy and thoroughly well treated.

Cellos and flutes, then a trio and a quartet comprised the first half (before the mulled wine and mince pies); so many very young players – but such maturity of expression and poise of delivery.  Variety too – and this was a theme very well carried forward into the second half.  Guitars first – such a lovely sound rather too rarely heard in ensemble: Bob Power’s Suite an absolute delight; a second Quartet (Allegro in name, and allegro in nature thanks to Mozart).  And then two quite magnificent performances to end:

First, William and Jenny, viola and violin, Mozart’s String Duo.  Oh my goodness – the way they interacted: the musical conversation was quite stunning as theme passed back and forth, now one in the lead, now the other.  How lucky we were that their train had been on time!

And at the close, the Chamber Orchestra in full playing Holst’s St Paul’s Suite – Mr Milton almost dancing at the front, and the players responding with a deftness of touch, and range of expression, that was stunningly professional.  No wonder the applause were so long – long enough to gain an encore, and Pachelbel’s Canon closed the evening.  I was glowing on the way home, even on my bike in the chill winter air…

Many congratulations to Eleanore who was recently spotted by one of the Royal Ballet principal dancers, Sander Blommaert, who offered her some personalised training. She has been up to London a couple of times so far and is absolutely loving it!

‘It’s the Dome, but not as we know it, Scotty…’

So might Captain Kirk have said on being transported to our Fair on Saturday. It felt like a city centre in microcosm: neat streets back to back with over sixty enterprises advertising their wares to a bustling array of families, teenagers and young adults all bent on defining (or redefining) their futures. The sense of energy and purposefulness was invigorating, and the welcomes given wherever one turned were genuinely warm and full of passion for what was on offer. From start-ups to the very well known, from local to nation to international, from apprenticeships to universities, from hi-tech and digital to care and service.

The flow of visitors was fantastic, right from the start, and there was barely a quiet moment on any of the stands; regular talks on matters such as finance, apprenticeships and interviews fed into the day as well and made sure that everyone left with plenty to think about, contacts to pursue, and ideas to explore.

Many, many thanks to the quite brilliant organising team under the leadership of Mrs Brown and Mrs Woodmansee, to the prefects who kept the day so well on course for visitors unfamiliar to our site, and of course to the exhibitors who gave their time so enthusiastically (and in such style) to make the occasion go with the swing that it did.

And if you were there, our thanks to you too for taking up such a great opportunity: you were one of over five hundred to make the best possible use of the occasion.

Kirton Church Hall was full to bursting on Friday night: the residents clearly remembered the previous visit of our Swing Band, and they were keen to relish an equally wonderful reprise. And the evening proved to be that and more – far more!

With the full band top and tailing the concert, as well as opening the second half, with a heady mix of the familiar, the jaunty, the lyrical and the boisterous, we were treated additionally to a rich and eclectic quartet of smaller groups: the Saxophone Ensemble, the Brass Ensemble, Trombosis (Mr Shepherd particularly proud to have a sextet of trombones to present!) and Lewis Chinn’s brainchild The Second Line Band playing Sweet Dreams.

One of the delights of the Swing Band concerts, above and beyond the supreme musicianship on offer, is the opportunity they offer our young players to take little solos within the pieces, some pre-written, some more improvised – but all adding a touch of personality to the renditions. The ripples of applause which greet them are part of the style of swing and jazz, and in this case presaged far more prolonged applause at the end. Encore, encore! And they did! Many congratulations one and all – players and conductor – for a quite fantastic evening, one which left the Master of Ceremonies almost lost for words. Almost, but not quite – enough certainly to deliver abundant gratitude and huge admiration in equal measure.

…And virtually no idea about what was going on, and why, or between whom. But it hardly mattered, because the beauty of farce is that a tightly wrought plot, though essential, is also, counterintuitively, almost irrelevant. I think it all made sense; I even think I worked out how the miraculously beguiling Francis (Henshall – can’t be dealing with first names) came to have two such eminently captivating guvnors in Rachel and Stanley and why it mattered they each in their own turn didn’t know; I know that I sat there laughing and sniggering, and occasionally worrying for Alfie’s wellbeing. Brighton in 1963 was clearly quite a complicated place, and gangsters and their molls, being often more interested in brawn than a brainier alternative struggled with … higher order skills. Unless they’d been to boarding school. Or were budding ACTORS.

Our cast captured their confusions, pretensions and delusions with a wonderful lightness of touch, and delivery so slick it was truly professional. It’s a fantastic script, laced with running gags that get funnier through repetition, and visual gags that take the breath away – and to deliver them so well, while maintaining a ferocious pace, and yet give the plot the space to breath at least some semblance of a reality over its audience was masterful. The players gave their all, having earned every second of the rapturous response as the curtain fell.

So what actually happened? Well, in a nutshell… um… Charlie and Harry wanted Pauline to marry Alan, despite Stanley killing Rachel’s brother meaning that Rachel had to dress as the man Pauline had to marry, despite Lloyd spotting the deception from the start. This in turn meant there was money owed, and Dolly needed to make sure it got paid, but not before she and Francis (the ham in the sandwich, as served by Gareth, obviously) had their holiday thanks to Alfie’s trip to Thomas Cook’s. Not forgetting the Mashed Potatoes. Got it?

Our thanks, admiration, and lengthy applause go to the extremely fine cast, crew and directors on a wonderful, wonderful tour de ‘farce’.

On Monday 13 November the Under 9 Boys Hockey Teams travelled to Rushmere for the 2017 Hockey Festival.

We were due to play 4 rounds against some very good schools.

The A team’s first nail-biting match was against OBH and we drew 0-0

Next we were against the home team, Ipswich Prep. Although we played better as a team, finding each other to pass to, unfortunatley we lost. Orwell Park and South Lee are all good teams and we all played our best and learnt from our day

Although not the top scoring team on the day, I think we were definitely winners as we all had such respect for each other, encouraging each other and coming together as a team . We had great fun.

The sun was shining and the air was chilly as we walked through the forest in search of extra-terrestrial life…As part of the Year 5 ‘Conspiracy Theories’ topic the children assumed the role of UFO investigators and set out to gather evidence to support their views as to whether or not the alien landing in 1980 was a hoax. The UFO tour in the forest led to many different theories being put forward as to what actually happened. These included an alien landing, a US Military cover up and a crashed Russian spy satellite. Over the coming weeks we will attempt to uncover the truth…

On Monday 6 November a team of 5 girls from Year 5 represented The Abbey at a STEM Olympiad day at Old Buckenham Hall. Georgia P, Thea, Juno, Lara and Sasha travelled to OBH with Mrs Martin.

The journey was such fun as we were all chatting and singing and before we knew it we had arrived. There were quite a few other schools that had been invited. STEM subjects are Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Our first task was to go to the computing room where we were set a coding task on Scratch. This technology task was a great start to our day. We were programming our characters to move and do lots of different things including: changing colours, going round and round and speaking.

Next we moved onto Engineering (Mr Smith would have loved to see us complete this task). We had to create and build a wind powered car. We had no instructions, only materials that included; a sweetie bag, a piece of cardboard, two straws, a thin oval shape of wood, 4 cardboard wheels, a cup, masking tape and playdough. Unfortunately it did not go that well because the wheels kept falling off!

After that it was time for Maths. We had to do lots of different puzzles and it

was really good fun. We had five minutes for each task and then the buzzer went off. We learnt that the key to success was TEAMWORK!

Next up was Science – a fantastic experience of Chemistry. We had to work out how much Vitamin C was in different fruit juices using a chemical called DC Pip. Then we made elephant toothpaste so that when you added the yeast it exploded! We couldn’t believe how much it grew!

We all worked so well together and supported each other in all the different tasks; we had a great day too! We are all really excited about the STEM subjects now.

By Georgia, Sasha and Lara

We were so lucky to have Mr Bates, a forensic scientist, at The Abbey for two days this week. He was entertaining and very informative about his career working at crime scenes. He was very impressed with how the children worked together solving the crime and I have enclosed a paragraph of the email he sent to me. The detailed report about the day has been written by James Hattan.

What a marvellous school! I thought all the classes I worked with showed excellent manners and great enthusiasm and creativity – bombarding me with ideas about what had happened in the crime. I was struck by the very effective way they worked in teams, sharing tasks very well and talking to each other about their findings – crime investigation really does require cohesive teamwork! I must say that the fact that the children were such good team workers reflects very positively on the ethos of the school and is a great credit to the staff.

On the evening of Sunday 12th November some robbers broke into the Abbey School and stole some very expensive computers. The police have three suspects and Year Six was called in to find out who it was. As we entered the hall, we saw a dummy with bruises on his head lying unconscious on the floor in the corner. We all sat down and were told what we were going to do, by a real forensic scientist! Next we were put into our groups. We learnt how to do all the things that the police do to find out who did the crime including; checking for blood on clothes, checking their handwriting and the ink of their pens and putting together a smashed brake light of a car. By lunchtime we knew that Davie Davies and Jackie Jackson were behind the crime but we still had two mysteries to try and solve, how did they get in through the window without smashing it? and who was the 10 year old boy, Jake, who lied to the police?

After lunch, we did an awesomely fun fingerprint competition and then learnt about evidence from mobile phones. We checked Jackie Jackson’s deleted emails and found some very interesting information. It turned out that the cleaner had let them into the building! Although we had all this evidence of who did the crime, we still had to be one hundred percent certain, so we went to Court. Milly played the judge and had to put on a really funny wig!

I was a member of the jury and we had to vote who was guilty and who was innocent. We decided that Jackie Jackson and Davie Davies were guilty and would go to prison for 10 years. After much questioning, we finally found out who Jake was as well, it turned out he was Jackie Jackson`s brother!

We had such a fun experience and I loved being a forensic scientist for the day!