This week at St Faith's

20 April 2018

Welcome Back

Summer is here! I am not sure what happened to spring but we won’t worry about that. I hope you and your family had a wonderful Easter, despite the inclement British weather, and your son or daughter has settled back in to the daily routine of school. The Summer Term is, for many, the best time of the year when we can make the most of our spacious green site. After a long winter, it has been wonderful to see the fields bathed in sunlight and full of happy children at break times.

Future Events

There are plenty of special events to look forward to this term, including concerts, drama productions and sports days, so please do keep a close eye on the calendar as we really appreciate it when you take the time to support these occasions.  We save the biggest event to last – Speech Day and Prize Giving on the morning of Friday 6th July, a celebration of the year and a formal farewell to our Year 8s, to which all parents are invited.  This year, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, will be presenting the prizes as our Guest of Honour.

Easter Holiday Activities

St Faith’s was a hive of activity during the holidays with a multitude of courses, ranging from trampolining, computing and cricket to cookery, sailing and golf. Sailing is another sport we have added to the long list of physical activities on offer. Dr Hoyle who, amongst other notable sailing achievements, competed for GB in the 4000 Laser  European Championships, was very impressed with the standard of our young sailors during their first training session at Hunts Sailing Club, St Ives  on Monday.

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On the same day as the sailing, Mr Rusted ran a very successful golf tournament at Royal Worlington Golf Club (for 24 pupils) and our nurses organised a Mental Health Conference at St Faith’s which attracted over 100 delegates from schools in Cambridge and further afield. Mrs Petkov, who led the organisation of the Conference, secured the services of many expert speakers who helped us all to better understand the pressures of modern life on children and how we can do our best to support them. This Conference was the first of its kind in Cambridge and the feedback we have received from the delegates has been overwhelmingly positive.

Over Easter there has been quite a lot of maintenance completed around the school and some further work on the Hub; the final phase of the Hub development is scheduled for the summer holiday. To the delight of the children , we have two shiny new table tennis tables, kindly and generously donated by the SFPA.

6L Book Launch

On Wednesday 6L hosted parents and friends for a book launch. The class has been working all year to gather recipes for healthy treats which comply with the school’s healthy eating policy. Recipes include vegetable ingredients as well as sugar, butter and white flour reductions or alternatives. Each pupil acted as a celebrity chef for the day and the rest of the class enjoyed tasting and reviewing the submitted recipe. The recipes have been assembled into a small book which has been printed and is being sold to raise funds for Latham’s chosen charity, ‘Action for Children’.  6L have worked really hard to reach this stage and are keen to sell as many copies of their recipe book as possible. Anyone wishing to support our charity effort, please send £5 in a labelled envelope to ‘6L Book Launch’ and hand it in to the office. The pupils of 6L will arrange delivery of your requested book.

    

New World Board Games

Year 6 pupils were delighted to showcase their New World board games in Ashburton Hall yesterday. Their brief was to design a fun, innovative and educational board game based on Columbus’ voyage of discovery. They worked very hard to produce eye-catching, interesting games, which they enjoyed playing as much as making. As well as being a lot of fun, this project helps them to consolidate their knowledge of 16th century exploration and empire-building. Many thanks to Year 6 Humanities teachers, Miss Dow, Mrs Yates, Mrs Hames and Mrs Critchley for leading this engaging project.

National Computing Final

Many congratulations to Daniel Myhill in Year 7 who finished in the top 20 (out of 143,000 participants) in the UK in the Oxford Computing Challenge. The Challenge is a computational thinking competition in which the contestants attempt to solve a series of logic problems, sometimes producing coded solutions. The top 10% in the country proceeded to round 2. In the second round, only the top 20 children proceed to the final. Daniel competed in the final on Wednesday; we are still awaiting the result.

Car Sharing Scheme

The St Faith’s Parent Liftshare initiative was launched today! You should have received a Schoolscomm message about this scheme; further details are also in the index of this newsletter. Many thanks to Miss Pearson, Operations Manager, for all her work in setting up this scheme which we hope will be another step forward in improving traffic flow at drop-off and collection times.

Finally….

One of the great pleasures of the beginning of each term is seeing the St Faith’s community come together again.  Even Pierre the French Partridge made an appearance at the weekend after a long absence from the school site.  He brought back his new girlfriend, Penelope, and both seemed very happy perching on one of the maintenance sheds and enjoying the sunshine on Saturday afternoon.

Another surprise came our way this week when we received a Facebook message from Ed Parkhouse to say that he had spotted this Old Fidelian blazer for sale (for £90) in an antiques shop on Portobello Road, London.  He even checked the lining and confirmed that it had been made by the same manufacturer as his old St Faith’s blazer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Old Fidelians, you may be interested to know that William Beresford-Davies (OF) is one of the participants in the ‘Secret Service Selection:WW2’ programme being shown on BBC2 on Monday evenings.  The programme aims to re-enact the selection and training of one of the WW2’s most covert organisations. I understand that William had a relative who worked with the Secret Service, hence his selection for this programme. We will be tracking his progress closely over the coming weeks.

With all good wishes,

Nigel Helliwell