News from English

Young Writer’s Writing Competition ‘Unsolved’

Students across KS3 to KS5 entered the Young Writer’s writing competition ‘Unsolved’, where they wrote mini-sagas in the style of a thriller.

The students selected to be published in November are:

Year 8

Lily Corney

Evie Bowkett

Farrah Duman

Isla Warriner

Gwen McDonald

Olivia Baptiste-Talajka

Olena Sklyarenko

Year 9

Ruby Horner

India Phillips

Cara Nolan

Year 10

Halle Maurice

Nadia Nikolajewicz

Kiera Walker Hiam

Martha Gant

Olivia Unwin

Emily Man

Lucy Norris

Alice Hawkins

Lila Higgs

Caitlin Lambourne

Olivia Watson

Libby Senior-Dickson

Agnese Prane

Reggie Webb-Ingall

Phoebe Marchant

Isabel Wright

Charlotte Moorcroft

Ruby Chiswick

Sasha Chellan

Hana Gashi

Tilly Peart

Darcy Smith

Matilda The Musical JR.

Presdales Drama Department are very excited to announce that rehearsals are underway for Matilda The Musical JR.

We have met with our Wormwood family, our named children, Mrs Phelps, The Escapologist and Acrobat and of course our Matilda’s!

Well done to all students who have attended rehearsals so far, you are all working with such energy and enthusiasm, this is set to be quite a production. Today we meet with the whole chorus to learn School Song with our new Music teacher Miss Sargent on Piano and vocals!

Looking forward to updating our Presdales community on our progress with the show and of course seeing you in the audience next February!

Miss Mack and Mrs Smith

Presdales Drama Department

Sparx Maths

Year 10 History Trip to Berlin

We left school for Berlin at 2pm on Wednesday and arrived at our hotel at midnight.

Our trip began with a tour around some of Berlin’s most famous sights, led by Mr Spurgeon. We visited the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Night of the Long Knives Memorial, the Roma Sinti memorial, the Holocaust memorial, Hitler’s bunker and the Topography of Terror. These are all things that we learnt about during our history lessons and in Holocaust memorial assemblies, but visiting the memorials and the Topography of Terror really instilled it in me how the Nazis believed that they were a superior race and what they were doing was justified. Seeing the memorials and about how many different groups were persecuted reminded me how this happened in the not-so-distant past, and the risks of it happening again. Our day continued with a tour by TCBC guides, we visited more places including the Tiergarten to see the T4 and homosexual memorials, Gendarmenmarkt, Bebelplatz, Lustgarten, and the reconstructed palace. We had an amazing tour guide who taught about us lots of different aspects of Germany in the 20th Century e.g., the book burning that took place at Bebelplatz in 1933 where Nazi students burnt around 20,000 books by authors that the Nazis didn’t like. We finished the day with a trip to a lovely Italian restaurant and a round of bowling.

On Friday, we went to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Plötzensee Prison, and had a tour around the Jewish quarters of Berlin. These were all led by the TCBC guides, who were very highly knowledgeable about everything that we visited. At Sachsenhausen, we saw the rooms where prisoners would have to stay, learnt about the jobs they had to do and the different methods the Nazis had for killing people, not just the gas chambers. In our tour of the Jewish Quarters with visited the Hackeschen Höfe and saw the workshop owned by Otto Weidt, who mainly employed deaf and blind Jews and did everything he could to protect them against the anti-Jewish measures. One of my highlights from the tour were the Stumbling Stones, they are all around Europe and they are to remember people who were persecuted by the Nazis. The stones have the person’s name, birth year, what happened to them e.g., deportation to Theresienstadt, and when they died. I had heard of them before but never realised how many they were. Although there are lots of memorials to the groups persecuted, I like the Stumbling Stones as although they are little, they tell the stories of thousands of people. In the evening, we had time to go shopping and then went to see the new Spiderman film – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse.

On Saturday, we finished our trip by visiting Hohenschönhausen which is a former Stasi-Prison so linked to our Cold War topic. We then went to Berlin Olympic Park and got a tour of the stadium. I found it interesting to see how they have removed the Nazi paraphernalia but still embrace the history of what happened in the 1936 Olympics. They have done this by having the Jesse Owens Lounge and the coloured stones that were Swastikas have been rotated to create different patterns; they are still shadows of what was there. After this we headed to deportation track 17, which has stone slabs to commemorate how many Jews were deported each day.

It was an amazing trip and will be very helpful as we continue our studies on Weimar and Nazi Germany and then move onto the Cold War. The thing I found most interesting was how they have embraced the history without making memorial sights neo-Nazi pilgrimages or completely ignoring the horrific events that happened in Germany during the 20th Century.

Isla Threlfall

Philosophy PRE Header

News from Philosophy, Religion and Ethics

Year 7

In the spring term, Year 7 investigated different responses to the question, ‘What is God like?’ and learnt about the nature of God from the Christian perspective in the Parable of the Lost Son. We set the students the challenge of designing and making a board game that illustrated the story, and were hugely impressed with many of the games presented and played: well done everyone!

In the summer term, Year 7 students learned about the value of Holy Books to religious believers, and were set the task of making a model inspired by a holy book, whether it be out of junk or something more edible! Some students really excelled and showed us their creative side. Well done!

Year 7 Textiles Club

Textiles club is a great place to learn and create new things as well as meeting new people. This term we have enjoyed making bunting for the annual swimming gala. We learnt how to use the sewing machine so that we were able to put together the bunting. To make the bunting we used scrap materials to save money and be eco friendly. We would recommend this club to anyone that likes textiles and sewing. It is a fun place to be and all of us really enjoy coming.

By Isabella Tilley, Amelie Wooding and Lily Corney

This year we have been privileged enough to be a part of the Year 7 textiles club. We have learnt many great skills and facts. From how to use a sewing machine to learning how to cut bunting and use templates.

In the first term, we used the patterned year 8 bags to make makeup bags. We cut the fabric carefully and then embroidered the outside fabrics. We then chose fabric for the inside and started to sew the bag together. We added a zip to the top and then it was done. Mine has its own proud place in my room.

At the end of the first term, we made Christmas decorations. We chose fabric and then added ribbon and accessories. Once we had sewn it, it was done. Mine was a reindeer. I hung it up on my door and it looked very christmassy.

All of the exams prevented us from making anything in term two but we came back for term three to make bunting for the swimming gala. It was very intense as the deadline was looming closer and Mrs Hayhurst had to take some home to finish. The first step was cutting all the different fabrics. We had six different colours: yellow, green,red, blue, white and purple. This is the stage where we learnt how to use the bunting.

Finally, the day before the swimming gala we began to put up the bunting. We tied it to the fence and it made this nice looking pattern. We had yellow, red, blue, purple, green and white. The wind made them descend and it looked adequate.

Sadly the swimming gala was cancelled but the bunting was still up and looking fabulous.

We would like to thank Mrs Hayhurst for her amazing work and help. This club and all we have achieved could not have been possible without her.

This is an article made by Lucille and Evie