The week before half term 15 Year 8 and 9 students visited the capital of Estonia, Tallinn where approximately 40% of the population are native Russians and there are lots of Russian speakers.
Students enjoyed a whirlwind tour of what life was like in Estonia during the Soviet Union, discovered what the KGB might be interested in them for and where they would have ended up if they didn’t go along with party communist party lines. They also took a step back into Imperial Russia and visited Peter the Great’s house and palace, enjoying the art collection there.
Students particularly enjoyed the Russian lessons and visit to the school where they met young Russian speakers and exchanged ideas about their lives and hobbies. Tallinn has a beautiful Russian language theatre which offered the students the opportunity to enjoy a very novel staging of Figaro, which was visually very engaging even if they spoke very quickly.
The students thought the old town of Tallinn was very beautiful and made their own Russian dumplings at the Russian restaurant in the old town centre. They also ordered their own Russian pies in the pie shop. We were very lucky to enjoy Tallinn in the snow and the students represented Presdales very well in spite of extreme tiredness from such a packed programme.
Slightly belatedly for the Russians, the Year 7 Russian class marked Maslenitsa (pancake week) with pancake ordering, sushki bracelet making and singing. The students embraced the challenge of singing quite fast and made a rather pleasant sound by the end of it! Well done Year 7.
A group of students from Year 10 and 11 have been working extremely hard over the last few months to design, build and program a VEX robot. They took their robot over to John Warner School to compete in this year’s Robot Rumble competition. The students displayed fantastic teamwork, as they progressed through the competition, they developed their skills and deservedly won the skills challenge trophy.
Robot Rumble has provided students an opportunity to work with engineers from MBDA.
‘On Wednesday, we took part in the Vex V5 High Stakes Game at John Warner School. Before we spent many weeks designing, building and adapting our robot, with dreams to win. The main idea of the game was to collect rings and place them onto stakes, whilst working with another team in an alliance. On the day of the competition, we did last minute adjustments to our robot and code and did last minute additions to our log book in order to show the judges all our progress.
When we arrived, we saw all of the other team’s robots and realised that different teams focused more on different aspects of the game so they all looked different. At the beginning, there were 30 qualifying games, where everyone was put together with different teams in alliances to put the various teams in ranking order. After this, we were in 11th place and beat Richard Hale!
After a quick lunch break, all the teams lined up and chose an alliance for the main competition. As we were last to choose, we were placed in an alliance in Richard Hale. In the main competition, we ended up losing our first game and were therefore out of the competition.
However, there was a sub competition which we also entered called the Skills Competition. The aim was to get as many rings onto stakes as possible in a minute. We had three attempts and got 0, then 10 and then 10 points. Overall, we won this competition and received a trophy! We were very excited about this.’
Darcy and Emily
On Tuesday 21st January Year 12 students of Italian were given an insight into one of the hottest Italian TV series of the moment during an interactive workshop with the University of Bristol. Professor Catherine O’Rawe, who has recently been writing a book about Italian youth television, told us all about Mare Fuori, a gritty teen drama set in a fictional juvenile prison in Naples.
During the session we considered different representations of the city, looking at the inviting clichés portrayed in two Dolce & Gabbana adverts and contrasting them with the dark and dangerous criminal underworld seen in the Mare Fuori trailer. Then Professor O’Rawe told us about Neapolitan melodrama and we saw examples of this while analysing the emotion and physicality in a very raw scene from the series. We then discussed music from the series and analysed the lyrics of a song. Professor O’Rawe was very impressed with the engagement of our students and the session provided a taste of what it’s like to study Italian at undergraduate level. In fact, Nyah and Polly, two of our former students, are currently in their third year studying Italian in Professor O’Rawe’s department! Mrs Evenden
I enjoyed it because it was a nice wider application of our understanding. It helped consolidate and introduce knowledge on Italian culture. I also enjoyed having discussions with our class and listening to the professor’s insight. Sai
I enjoyed learning about Italian culture and the media industry. I was surprised that Naples is so heavily romanticised and the dangers of the place that is hidden from the public. Sophia
It was very interesting to learn about different media in Italy and I loved learning more about Naples. Lara
I found the themes very interesting. I liked how the adverts and the trailer presented Naples in very different lights. I was surprised by the fact that some of the actors in the show were not professional. Elizabeth
I was already aware that different cities in Italy had different dialects. However, hearing the Neapolitan dialect was shocking! Madelina I thought it was interesting to compare the representation of Naples in adverts compared to in Mare Fuori. I enjoyed analysing the lyrics and thinking about the use of different tenses. Jess
Using grant funding already received from EdufundUK Ltd and the Royal Society of Chemistry, Presdales’ Science Department are currently in the process of updating their range of Data Loggers.
New Bluetooth Data Loggers communicate wirelessly with bespoke software installed on students’ own devices. Their ease of use allows them to be utilised in a wide range of experiments through all year groups and with data saved on the computers it can also be recalled for homework and for cross-curricular use, increasing the depth of learning gained by students.
Replacement of all of the data loggers will cost around £8,000 of which £3,000 has already been funded and the decision on a £3000 application to the Royal Society is pending.
A further application to the Tesco Community Grants Team for their Blue Token scheme has resulted in our project going live in the Ware store this week. With the opportunity of gaining £1500 funding Presdales would sincerely appreciate you taking the time to drop a token in the box whenever you are there. Please share this request with your friends and family too.
Alternatively, if you are in a position to be able to support the purchase of any of this equipment by way of a charitable donation/sponsorship our Grants Officer would love to hear from you and can be reached at nalbone@presdales.herts.sch.uk.
Latest News
Coming Up
Friday 16th to Friday 23rd
Russian Trip to Uzbekistan
Wednesday 21st
KS4 Health & Social Care Trip to Anglia Ruskin University
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Presdales School
Hoe Lane
Ware
Hertfordshire
SG12 9NX
Tel: 01920 462210
admin@presdales.herts.sch.uk
Headteacher:
Mr Warren
