In regular years, the week prior to the Whitsun Bank Holiday marks a poignant moment in the Westbourne calendar. Our second year International Baccalaureate students typically would be sitting the last of their IB Diploma exams, packing up their revision notes and preparing for a lively celebration alongside friends, family and teachers, marking the end of two years of dedicated study.
This year, whilst we may all be located across the world, tonight as a community, we stand together and raise a glass to toast our Class of 2020, IB2.
Hard work, commitment, boundless enthusiasm, the inevitable tear or two along the way, yet plentiful laughter, the contribution our Class of 2020 have made to the Westbourne Community will remain with us for years to come.
We are all immensely proud of you, IB2, you will be dearly missed and we all look forward to raising our glass in person at your autumn graduation ceremony.
To quote the motto of our new Westbourne Sydney school, Plus Ultra – Further Beyond.
A huge thank you to everyone in our community who has shared our latest Prep School film on Facebook, with over seven thousand views in just three days, the wonderful world of Westbourne Prep has enjoyed quite an audience.
Special thanks of course to the students, parents and staff who took part in its making.
We’ve enjoyed sharing Photography Club’s work over the past few weeks and this week’s challenge from Mr Tucker has again given us some wonderful results.
Our keen photographers were set the task of taking a picture using the rule of thirds, for those who might like to try the task themselves this weekend, the following YouTube link explains the task in more detail.
The tennis court may seem like a distant dream, however, Mrs Barber has been helping keep our Tennis Club students on top of their game with some skills practice this week.
Ball drills alongside a focus on moving around ‘the court’ and serving have kept our keen participants active, many thanks to Megan and Mathias for sharing their tennis club experience with us.
Mrs Allen set our Football Skills Club a Keepy Uppy challenge this week which saw some excellent scores being entered across the board. For those who may not be familiar with the ‘Keepy Uppy’ it’s the simple, yet challenging skill of keeping a football off the ground.
With many students achieving 40 or more, there was a clear winner this week, with Tomos in Year 7 achieving 82 keepy uppy’s in a row…video evidence provided!
Congratulations Tomos…no doubt they’ll be a few of us trying to emulate your score over the Bank Holiday weekend.
Mrs Major’s Year 10 art class have excelled again this week, learning the technique of stippling, which requires concentration and determination to capture tone, contrast and form through a series of small dot patterns.
Despite being a rather repetitive technique, Year 10 have pulled it off with aplomb!
Well done everyone.
Two weeks ago we were delighted by a rare and magical mix of hybrid creatures, inspired by Dr Seuss, as part of Mrs Major’s Year 6 art class. This week the illustration project has been taken one step further and our talented artists are focusing on their habit, the results of which will be shared on social media shortly.
Budding artist Simon has taken a keen interest in the project and has been highly commended for his meticulous work this week, plotting the outlines of his creatures terrain accurately as well as applying various tones and colours with accuracy.
We very much look forward to seeing the end result!
It’s not every day you get to indulge in a full Treasure Island fantasy during the school day!
Mr Pocknell’s revision based lesson took a fun turn this week as students were tasked to create a quiz, in order to refresh their memory with the most recent topics studied in English, RS and PSHE.
It was great to see the Peg-Legs, Silver Dragons, Unknown Pirates and Young Pirates battle it out for plus points and glory!
Well done all!
Some excellent and amusing work from our Prep School stars this week, including winning Year 5 rejection letters to Cruella De Vil in response to her recent job application as a dog handler, Year 3 playscripts and some imaginative examples of demonstrating mathematical factors in Year 4.
- Early Years: Lyanna, for her 3D shapes
- Year 2: Nye, for fantastic story writing and reading.
- Year 3: Rania for her hard work, character list, prop list and scene-setting for her playscript this week which was particularly detailed.
- Year 4: Meher, for her excellent work in maths and presenting her factors in such a beautiful way (rainbow featured below)
- Year 5: Michael for his rejection letter to Cruela.
Across the Senior School, we have seen yet more exceptional work, Mr Laity gives his round-up of those who have shone particularly brightly.
In Year 6, Ms Duble recognised Caleb for his impressive interest and engagement in French, eager to start each lesson as quickly as possible. Olivia, has also shone out for her commitment, having only just started French this year she is working really hard and showing enjoyment and having fun during zoom activities.
In Year 7, Megan has shown a notable level of maturity in her engagement, work, help to others and communication with teachers, Isaac has also been recognised for being very committed and hard working and Owen has been consistently submitting excellent work.
In Year 8, Mrs Brazier would like to nominate Lowri for a special mention for pushing herself beyond her comfort zone. Mrs Owen is keen for the Year 9 students to get a mention particularly Iman, Mayra, Priya and Zainab who have all been excellent in Physics.
Staying with physics, we move to Year 10 where pupils get a mention from Mrs Owen who is really pleased with the group for consistently submitting work on time and resubmit assignments on areas they want to improve upon. They have been looking at the life cycle of stars and the discovery of exoplanets using space missions like Kepler and Spitzer. Rochelle, Olivia, Izzy and Louis have all submitted some excellent work.
In addition, a special mention to the whole of the Year 10 GCSE Art class, from Mrs Major. (Antonio, Tay, Lilian. Louis, Oomisha and Clara) “They have been absolutely phenomenal. They have all consistently engaged with every single lesson and worked so hard at learning new techniques for their new coursework project.” Examples of their work are featured earlier in the newsletter.
Mr Tucker has highlighted the effort from Esther who has been keeping up with Year 11 work and Pre-IB. In Year 11 Nikita, Mia, Abi and Jeremy have been excellent and in Pre IB Jakub and Esther continue to shine across their subjects.
Also, in Pre-IB: Rachel, Lilian, Noah and Wesley are very consistent in their work and participating in zoom meetings no matter the time difference.
Congratulations to all of those mentioned!
Huge congratulations go out to all pupils for the incredible effort that has been put into an unprecented term of online learning, clearly demonstrated by the impressive accumulation of Plus Points across all houses.
As we head into Half Term, Llewellyn not only maintain but increase their lead in the Plus Point race.
Excellent work House Llewellyn, no doubt Dafydd and Glyndwr will be hot on your heels on the 1st June!
Until then, wishing all our students, parents and teachers a very happy Half Term!
