Our main weekend Chapel services here at Gresham’s are always engaging and special. In the past two weeks the Senior School has enjoyed spellbinding performances of beautiful Advent music for our choir; World Cup related footballing fun drawing out the importance of hope; and a student led Q and A session with Jerome Mayhew MP, who suggested that faith helps to gives him a sense of perspective in parliament.
We are currently holding our third annual Christmas Tree Festival. The school Chapel has been filled with over forty beautiful Christmas Trees, all lovingly festooned by members of the school community. Every pupil from all three schools has helped to decorate a tree, with the catering and support staff also joining in on the fun. All of this will help to create a special atmosphere and environment for the Christmas celebrations, carol services and events in the coming weeks.
At this time of year, the school’s Chapel have always collected donations for a variety of good causes. This year, the Christmas Tree Festival is raising money for the school’s charity partner, Holt Youth Project. The charity exists to provide a safe environment for young people to meet and socialise with the minimum of supervision, which builds their social communication skills and promotes ownership. The centre is a place where young people have opportunities that empower them to reach their goals and aspirations, through various programmes and activities. If you would like to donate to the Christmas Tree Festival you can do so on the Just Giving page by clicking here.
The festival is open to visitors during the special Festival Open Afternoon, which is taking place on Saturday 10th December, 1 – 4pm.
Earlier this month, The Oddballs Foundation visited the school to give a talk to our Sixth Form pupils about testicular cancer. The talk concerned the signs and symptoms of testicular cancer, also with the resounding message to talk and support each other. Pupils were also informed of the work that Oddballs does as a charity and the support it provides to those affected by testicular cancer.
Well done to pupils who have recently taken LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) exams. Spike C took his Grade 7 (silver medal) in Solo Acting, Yssy D took her Grade 5 in Solo Acting, Seb W & Luca H both took their Grade 6 (silver medal) in Duologue Acting and Freddie L took his Grade 5 in Solo Acting.
There is now a period of time to wait until the New Year for the exam results but all pupils seemed happy and confident with their performances. These medal grade exams also achieve valuable additional UCAS points for pupils.
The standard was incredibly high this year, with many entries making the final short list. Mr Hazelwood judged this year’s entries and came up with an overall top three ranking. Emilie G came in third place for an excellent model with sound effects and Ilana B took second place for an outstanding cross section complete with full annotations and lovely additional details such as Reginald the Rat. Theo H, Will B and Rafe C came first with their life-size trench system construction alongside a film of the trenches and a filmed reconstruction of a trench attack.
Congratulations to all of the winners, who will receive Amazon vouchers as a prize.
Congratulations to Cerys D (O), Eva O’D (O), and Zinnia-Claire B (O), who have progressed through the Norfolk round of the English-Speaking Union Churchill Public Speaking Competition. Well done to the second team too, Pablo B-G (F), who spoke brilliantly as Speaker, and came in as a late substitute along with James C (F) and Pullo W (T) as Questioner and Chair, and also to Maddi W (E) for supporting the team.
This is the first time the School have competed in this competition, certainly in recent years, so well done to both teams.
Pre-Prep children were treated to a super assembly on kindness, led by a handful of our Prep School Year 8 pupils. They talked about how we can be kind, and they acted out Aesop’s Fable, ‘The Lion and the Mouse’. Pre-Prep children loved joining in with the interactive assembly and came away from it with lots of ideas of how to be kind.
Year 7 Spanish have had a cultural interlude this week where they learnt a bit about Cuba and did some research into the history of Salsa (the dance, not the sauce). Then on Thursday they were treated to a salsa lesson with our fabulous dance teacher, Lucy, who had them all grooving and moving to the beat in no time. Olé!
Year 1 had a fantastic trip to Langham Glass. Pupils watched some amazing glass making demonstrations, had a go at colouring glass and also made their own tea light holder to take home. Mrs Archer even blew a big glass bubble which the pupils enjoyed smashing! It was very exciting and Year 1 loved their tea light holders.
We are delighted to announce that Gresham’s Prep School has been featured as a top 50 Prep School in the UK in The Cricketer magazine. It is a fantastic achievement to be featured after a thorough selection process, in which hundreds of schools sent in entries to be featured in the list. All entries were then judged against an extensive set of criteria, which included a compelling commitment to cricket in the curriculum, facilities, fixture programmes and coaching.
This is also telling of the hard work that our cricket teams put in to achieve results, which has payed dividends for both boys and girls cricket teams, who had impressive seasons last year. The Girls U13A and B teams ended their season last summer with wins against Wisbech Grammar School and Norwich School respectively, topped off with a win at the St Joseph’s College six-a-side tournament. The U13 boys team ended their season winning the County Cup. These are fantastic results for our Prep cricket teams and very promising looking towards next season.
Gresham’s sports fantastic facilities for our budding cricketers, who have the opportunity to develop their skills all year round with the use of the Bola Meryln indoor bowling machine. Cricket is the main sport for Boys and Girls in the Prep School in the summer term. The game is initially learned through the Kwik cricket format encouraging all players to develop batting, bowling, and fielding skills. As their skills develop, coaching builds towards pairs and T20 match formats with most players moving into the hard ball game in Year 5 or 6. Players are offered coaching throughout the year during activities sessions led by the school’s Director of Cricket, Chris Brown, and other cricket coaching staff.
