From the Headmaster’s Study

The progression from summer to autumn signifies changes: changes in the colours of trees, the gathering of the harvest, shorter days and cooler temperatures. Over recent weeks and months, we have all experienced significant changes to our lives and on returning this term, it has been the Wellesley community’s ability to adapt, adjust and carry on that has provided us all with such enormous encouragement. The enthusiasm with which the pupils and staff approach each and every day at Wellesley is evidence of this. We wish you all a wonderful week.

Gavin Franklin

 

JDRM Gavin Portraits-2

Future events

Pre-prep teacher conferences

Thank you to all parents in the Pre-prep who have signed up for our virtual parents conference. Mrs Brown, Mrs Reed and Mrs Hodges look forward to meeting with you from 4pm to 6pm on Thursday 15th October. Class teachers will be able to feed back to parents, from meetings they have had with subject specialists.

Please book a time through the school portal. Once booked you will be sent a Google invitation to join the meeting.

Covid-19

Symptoms and Testing Information

Public Health England has asked us to share this letter with parents, which explains when a child requires a coronavirus (COVID-19) test and what the symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are.

ISC Coronavirus Parent Survey 2020
The ISC is collating data regarding the provision of education during last term’s lockdown. Please click here if you would like to complete the survey. Please note, the closing date is Monday 12th October.

Important information regarding pupil absence due to illness
If your child is off school due to illness, we will send you the following standard email as a matter of good practice in the current climate. We thank all families for their ongoing diligence and support as we look to do all that we can to protect those within our community:

“Thank you for your communication and for letting us know.

Please ensure that if your son / daughter is displaying / has displayed any symptoms of Covid-19 – high temperature, persistent or new cough or change or loss of sense of smell / taste – that you arrange for a test and await a clear negative result before returning them to school. Please do keep us informed.

For any pupil who has been absent from school through illness, we will be conducting a temperature check on their return. If your child is in the pre-prep, this will be undertaken at Junior House. If your child is in the middle or senior school, we ask that you drop them at the school office on their return so that their temperature can be checked by our school nurse.

Thank you for your assistance and understanding.”

School Last week

School Council

The School Council held their first, socially distanced, meeting of the term on Friday where we welcomed 12 new councillors: Archie Butterfill and Olympia Jokat (Block 1), Stanislav Shatokhin and Alina Kheidorova (Block 2), Teegan Pretzlik and Raf Cable (Block 3), Luna Sarafoglou and Freddie Southorn (Block 4), Joel Goncalves and Greta Grand (JL), and Suri Lear and Sophie Spencer (Pre-prep). We discussed a range of issues, and were pleased to hear positive feedback about how well the restrictions put in place this term have been working. Mr Curtis, our catering manager, attended the meeting and we thanked him for the fantastic job the kitchen team have been doing under these difficult circumstances. The council also discussed ways in which we can adapt our charity programme to fit in with current restrictions, and they are keen to plan a sponsored event during the second half of term. Thank you to all members of the council for their time.

 

News from the Pre-Prep

Members of JH are really enjoying their weekly computer coding activity with Mr Spencer and this week many of them received certificates for successfully completing various levels.
In swimming, Felicity and Immy have earned awards for their courage and positive attitude to swimming.
We are very grateful to our extremely artistic (among many talents) gap student Miss S-D who has inspired JH in their creative writing.
Following Mr Parfitt’s observation that the nursery children love drawing round their hands they have begun a brilliant art project making collages of autumnal coloured hands. On the same theme, this week JR conducted a science experiment and placed different slices of bread in separate bags. One bread slice was put in the bag untouched, one was touched by children with dirty hands, one was touched by children who washed with soap and water. We await their results….

National prep schools virtual cross-country event

When Shrewsbury School invited prep schools from all over the country to take part in their annual cross country event, Mr Longdon and Mr Waldie accepted the invitation with open arms and set about devising a suitable course around the Wellesley grounds, that took pupils past the squash courts, shooting range, through the Orchard gardens, around the netball / tennis courts, around the back of the Junior House, past the front of the school and back onto the main games field by the Science and ICT block. All pupils from JL to Block 1 took part in an U9, U11 and U13 competition with all results being recorded. The distances for the competition were as follows: U9 – 2.2km; U11 – 3.2km; U13 – 3.7km. Shrewsbury also stipulated that there must be one obstacle on the course – for us this was the outdoor stage (and crash mats). The best 6 times from each year group will be sent to Shrewsbury as part of the overall competition and Mr Longdon and the Headmaster provided trophies for the fastest boy and girl in each category. Most importantly, all of our runners took part with great spirit and thoroughly enjoyed the hot dogs and doughnuts put on by our catering team after the event! Well done to everyone who took part – a video montage of the event will be shared in due course.

Study Skills

Ms. Moosuddee met with Block 1 for their initial session about Study Skills. They discussed ways in which they can prepare themselves to be better learners, and talked about how they learn and remember things and what tools they can use to help improve their memory. At the end of the session Ms Moosuddee showed them how to do a Body Scan and they looked at techniques to use to stay calm and focused.

Sunday Outing

On Sunday the outing was to SOAR Trampoline Park, where our boarders enjoyed two hours of high energy bouncing!

Honey Day

On Monday, pupils from across the school participated in Honey Day. Middle school pupils donned bee suits to collect the frames from our two hives before learning how the bee social structure works. Throughout the day pupils learnt about bee behaviour, how to work safely around bees and how to extract the honey. Of course there was plenty of opportunity to taste the honey and many pupils did! One pupil was heard to exclaim that it was the best honey and the most fun ever! Pupils worked exceptionally well and at the end of the day over 100 jars of honey had been collected and labelled. Thanks to all the staff who came and supported the day and a special thanks to Mrs Franklin and Mr Shaddick for helping to organise and run what we hope will be an annual event.
After this hugely successful and fun day on Monday harvesting the honey from our beehives, we are now ready to sell our very own Wellesley Haddon Dene honey. The school council will be outside selling the jars of honey from 8am this Friday morning (16th October). They will be wearing masks, gloves and high visibility jackets at two tables on the school drive. The honey will be on sale for £10 per jar and it will be cash only. Initially we must limit the sales to ‘two jars per car’. Boarding parents or parents who will not be dropping off on Friday can email cef@wellesleyhouse.net if they would like to order a jar.

School This Week

Team of the Week

This week’s ‘Team of the Week’ are the historians who entered the Ampleforth College Junior History Competition. Well done to Archie Butterfill, Max Miller and Georgie Carter They will be treated to cookies and squash during Monday morning break time in the Headmaster’s study with Mr and Mrs Franklin.

Music on Monday

This week Hank has played along to Linkin Park – What I’ve Done on the drums! Well done Hank, a tricky song to play!

 

Website Galleries

Our website galleries have been updated, please click here to view.

Senior School News

Wellington College very much hopes to be able to welcome visitors soon, however, in the interim please view their Virtual Visitors Day via this link. At half term they will be offering slots for people to visit Wellington for a self-guided wander around. Please contact admissions@wellingtoncollege.org.uk for further details.

Benenden is hosting a series of online Prospective Parent Open Mornings, please click here for dates and further information.

Menu

This week the kitchen will be serving Menu 3

Matches This Week

Please always refer to the website calendar as it is the most up-to-date place to check for fixture changes and locations.

All fixtures cancelled.

On Social Media