Friday 5 July
#AHSWalksTall
Headmistress' Introduction
Dear Parents and Carers
I hope this letter finds you well.
This week has been super. Year 12 were all on work experience for the first three days of the week, thank you to all family and friends who supported our students in this important endeavour. They also enjoyed a Next Steps day on Thursday, helping the students begin to prepare for life after AHS.
We welcomed our new Year 6 students into School on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was lovely to get to know them a little better and they are super welcome.
Thursday was the whole School Activity Day - more detail below - and huge thanks to all staff who helped make this incredibly busy day possible.
D of E Silver Award are away in the Cotswolds this weekend, again thank you to all parents and carers, and staff who will support our lovely students.
Sport
There were no fixtures this week.
We would however like to congratulate Sophie in Year 7. Sophie plays squash in national level tournaments and recently won the Hampshire Silver and came runner up in the Surrey Silver. Individually she is currently ranked 3rd in the country at U13 level.
She also recently represented the South of England at 'super regional' level and at the 'Battle of the Borders', Team South beat Team North. Last weekend she represented the South region at U15 level (along with her brother who is at AGS). Out of 8 English regions, South region won the bronze medal. Huge congratulations Sophie (and to her brother), we are very proud of you.
Rampaging Chariots
On Saturday 29 June, 3 of our Year 10 students competed against 10 other schools and colleges in the 'Rampaging Chariots' final at Selex Leonardo in Luton. The students have spent the year modifying their robots 'Purple Turtle Taxi' and 'Mr Fish'. They built this from a kit and have made a number of their own improvements.
At the final our students performed very well. They came 3rd in the sumo robot, where they had to knock their opponent's robot off a round arena. They also came 3rd in the robot tug of war, again they very close to getting into the final. They completed the robot assault course very well with only a couple of faults but they sadly did not end up with the quickest time. Finally, they competed in the 2 a side robot football event. It turned out our students had a hidden goal scoring talent and they got through to the final only to be pipped at the post by a score of 2-1.
I would like to congratulate the students for all of their hard work this year and to Mr Jowers who helped this event to go ahead. I will be looking for a team of 4 to build a robot for next year. You will need to be available to attend one lunchtime a week from September. Please see Mr Potkin if you are interested.
Activity Day
It was a delight to see such an impressive range of activities taking place on Thursday for our annual Activity Day. All year groups were off their normal timetable and spread out across the school making it a hive of activity as students enjoyed everything on offer.
Year 7 students made the most of a range of activities provided by the Creative Arts subjects. Workshops included musical theatre, stage combat, art and dance, as well as quidditch, laser tag and rounders for PE. More information and photographs below.
Y8 students took on the STEM challenge of designing, building and testing their own wind turbine led by the Science and Maths staff.
Y9 worked in groups with Young Enterprise honing their business skills by pitching ideas to a team of visiting volunteers.
Y10 students' day gave them a taste of the 5 ways to well-being, going on a tour of yoga, boogie bounce, mindfulness activities, as well as talks on health and wellbeing.
Y12 students took part in Future Success Day, as part of our Next Steps programme, where they learnt about writing effective personal statements, the UCAS application process, writing a CV and practising interview skills. Afternoon workshops included sessions on student finance, preparing a portfolio, applying for apprenticeships and applying to competitive universities.
Many of these activities involved guest speakers and visiting practitioners but the majority was made possible by the support, hard work and enthusiasm of lots of AHS staff who ensured students could benefit from the great day on offer.
Creative Arts Day
Activity Day this week saw students in Year 7 opting to take part in sessions from across the Creative Arts, including Drama, Dance, Art, Music and PE. Sessions ranged from stage combat to musical theatre and students in Art created pieces inspired by nature. PE offered laser tag and Quidditch, as well as street and commercial Dance to name but a few!
Music
Jennifer Tarling worked with Year 7 to stage the song 'One Short Day' from the musical 'Wicked'. The students worked incredibly hard and did a fantastic job.
Drama
Drama Students learning stage combat
Laser Tag
Art
Year 7 worked with the theme of Nature to create their expressive artist inspired pieces. All students worked on a panel to be used as a collaborative piece to represent a tree or flower. Congratulations to these students for showing Curious Engagement throughout!
Y9 Young Enterprise
Y10 Health Day
Bronze Arts Award
It has been a busy time in Art this week. As part of Year 8's Bronze Arts Award they shared their artistic skills with students from Bedgrove school.
We were thrilled to welcome 120 Year 4 students form Bedgrove Junior School on Monday to take part in the Arts Award Skills Sharing session. 80 Year 8 students who have been working on achieving their Bronze Arts Award this year, planned and delivered exciting sessions for our visitors in Music, Art, Dance, Drama and Textiles. We can't wait to see their completed portfolios next week!
Bite Back
This year, AHS has been involved in a project with Bite Back. Biteback is an initiative supporting students to make changes within their school environment which will have a positive impact on health and wellbeing. When we started the project, we decided to focus on water access around the school because we felt as students that there were problems with not being able to access drinking water around more remote areas of the school like the PE department, and we also wanted to reduce the amount of time you had to queue to get a drink, having one queue for people wanting a drink and wanting food was causing problems in the canteen.
We started to plan different ideas, like vending machines or water fountains, and we actually found out that there were plans for a water fountain outside the PE department and Sixth Form study centre to be implemented, which would solve a lot of problems around the school. We also thought up plans for free water bottles provided to Year 7s to encourage them to drink water and bring in reusable bottles.
Once we had lots of different proposals, we took them to the Regional Director and Operations Manager of Cucina, our canteen supplier, and they offered to help with designing and supplying the free water bottles for Year 7s and they also offered to provide free ‘hydration stations’, which are large pitchers of fruit infused water that would be available all day, to make water options more appealing and tasty.
As part of our roles as School Food Champions, we were invited to a celebration event, at Waddesdon Manor. The meeting was at Waddesdon Manor’s Dairy where we presented on the changes we had made for the school and the things we were planning to implement. The presentation went very well and we got a large round of applause. After the presentations we were free to explore the grounds and there were many games provided for us to play after our lunch, and we had discussions on our next steps for the program, including advertising the Hydration Station and distributing our water bottles on Transition Days.
Overall, it was a very successful experience and we all learned a lot about how to negotiate and plan successfully in a business environment. We learned presenting skills and were also taught about how suppliers affect what foods we have in the canteen day-to-day and hopefully we have managed to influence some more people to drink water around the school.
We would definitely do it again!
Lottie, Franny, Amelia, Zakeyah and Akshaya
Our AHS Alternative Election
To mark this week's momentous election, we held our very own AHS Alternative Election during Wednesday and Thursday this week. For this, the Y12 Politics Ambassadors created their own political parties which they named: Vision, Progress, Tomorrow and Evolve, encompassing the broad spectrum of political ideology. Each had a team of campaign managers that helped them with canvassing and creating their very own campaign videos, which were shared with the school. Our results were certainly less decisive than the general election, and we would have ended up with a hung parliament with some very interesting coalitions being formed! The winning party for each year group (constituency) were: Y7 Progress, Y8 Progress, Y9 Vision, Y10 Tomorrow Party and Y12 Evolve
The History, Politics and Sociology Teams
AHSA Summer Raffle Draw
Win some exciting prizes. Check the poster for more information. The tickets are £1 and the winners will be announced on 15 July.
Buy more and increase your chances of winning!
Thank you in advance and best wishes from everyone here at the Aylesbury High School Association. Have a great summer holidays!
Vacancies
Please click on our website to see our latest vacancies:
Educational Visits Coordinator and Duke of Edinburgh Manager
HS2 affecting the Oxford Road until September
https://www.hs2.org.uk/work-items/notice-of-road-closures-a418-oxford-road/
Wishing all well for a lovely weekend and thank you, as ever, for your support.
Marieke Forster
The AHS School Fund
The AHS Fund helps us to enrich the curriculum and develop the school's facilities to ensure that every student is able to fulfil their potential, wherever their strengths lie. Support from our Parents, our Alumnae and our wider community allows us to provide the outstanding education you expect and the students deserve.
