We had an extremely early start as we had to be at school by 4:15am and leave by 4:45am.

Our journey to Normandy started with a 1.5 hour coach journey to Portsmouth where we caught the ferry. On the coach everyone was quite tired until we got to the ferry because we were all suddenly so exited! The sea was blue and clear and the sun was out and shining, we were all in such a happy mood. On the ferry there were loads of vast spaces for us to explore, there were shops, restaurants, lounges, cinemas, cafes, seats viewing the sea, a deck, and even an arcade. The ferry journey was 6 hours long but the time went very quickly.

Once we had reached France, we had a 3 hour coach journey to P.G.L (Normandy). We all learnt some French but my favourite bit was (au bord de la mer) which means ‘by the sea’. A few hours later we got to a large chateau which was the P.G.L building on the top of the hill. We worked out our rooms then had dinner and set off on our first activity.

Our first activity in Normandy was robot wars. The point of the game is to build a robot then pick up cups of water and throw them at each other but we were blind folded (we all got wet in the end). We did a few small games to see who would pick the cardboard up first. Then we started building our robots.

After that we went to our rooms and were glad of a good, long sleep.

Through the weekend we took part in a number of activities

• The tour and quiz of the town,
• The goat farm,
• Rock climbing,
• Cricket,
• Problem solving,
• Mini Olympics,
• Raft building.
• We even tried snails!!!

  Most people’s favourite activity was the raft building. We built a raft out of 6 plastic barrels, 2 long wooden sticks, and 8 ropes. Most of the trip was about working together as a team to make things happen.

  The best thing about Normandy was being with all the people we may have never met before and getting to know them. Plus all the activities. It’s strange how we have got to know so many more people in such a short length of time.

  I had a fab time in Normandy and for me it’s such a great way to get to know people and understand how others feel.

  But I think most of all that we need to thank all the members of staff who gave up their weekend to come and look after us and I am very grateful! Thank you.

  - Evie Hoare (Year 7)

The Year 8s were treated to Shakespeare’s repertoire of plays in this exciting, performance-based day.  The highlights were the quote hunt and performance of each play at the end of the day.  Well done to the winners which included Tallulah Scott; her performance of ‘Hamlet’ in the title character was amazing!

Well done!

Miss Haroon

Leader of KS3 English

Year 9 spent some time pioneering our first issue of the School magazine entitled “The Piggott Pages”.  Well done and thank you to the following pupils:

Sahil Ali, Luc Delas, Mark Cornish, Ned Nolan, Alex Pitfield and Laura Sutton.  Look out for this issue and more in the new term!

Miss Haroon

Leader of KS3 English

The good weather and joyful vibe circulating that day made the day trip to ‘Dinton Pastures Country Park’ one of the most memorable and enjoyable activities day experiences I’ve ever attended. Being told previously of leisure activities such as kayaking, orienteering, raft building and more, even travelling on the coach, the whole group was both curious, terrified of the likeliness of swimming through deep water and also exuberant about the day planned.

On arrival, one cannot deny Dinton Pastures as being of a picturesque status and the perfect place for teenagers to feel like giddy children again within the activities planned. The first agenda (for my particular group) was the seemingly inspirited Orienteering, many of us (including myself) had no experience of what seemed such an unknown task of reading a map for the modern generation. So it was an effective task in being both challenging yet nothing short of amusing to search for hidden letters in the pasture, also much friendly competition caused more determination between leaders. The next task was Team Building which involved known to unknown team leadership exercises like Towers of Hanoi to transporting a ball across land with only pipe lines. This was a successful lay-out in that groups would often excel at some tasks and conclusively aim to beat another group’s time limit, and also ideas of unrealised leadership skills for many people grew within more foreign activities like a memory-challenge and a trusting exercise.

Lunch time gave us much time to take photos of the lake that we would later be falling in and then being told of the water-dependent kayaking and raft building created excitement in many and fear in others. The division became less obvious with safety gear such as life jackets and helmets. Everyone gleefully knew this would be no primary school permitted pretentious paddling session. Proper lake, proper rafts, proper kayaks, the freedom we were all selfishly longing for. Raft building involves learning a specific knot to secure barrels to a wooden frame: this becomes extremely important when one is almost fully submerged in deep water and desperately clinging onto that very barrel, whilst unhelpfully laughing as the situation is so absurdly nonsensical. Raft building was exceptionally fun as I and my raft group also watched other teams fall off abruptly to much comical value to everyone else. Kayaking may seem a similar practice of the paddle, yet everyone came out saying: ‘Capsizing is inevitable’ and I discovered this to be very true. A sheer effort of particular speed and timing with one’s partner takes time, although kayaking quickly became something many of us would like to do again. Capsizing about four times, I will say kayaking is harder than it looks; but instructing pupils to run along the kayaks mid-lake and jump off at the end allows a change of heart. Meant swimming freely after was no problem too.

All in all, this year 10 activities day was a fantastic experience where all the pupils felt enlightened and confident in their own abilities, and no amount of ‘absolutely soaked’ can change that.

- Amelia Bowe (Year 10)

On the 30^th of June half of the year 10 pupils partook in an Activities Day at school, while the other half went to Dinton Pastures for a day of water sports and team building games. On the 3^rd of July we rotated and were able to partake in the other activities.

While at school, our regular classes were swapped with lessons on self-defence, drugs and alcohol, sexual education and internet safety from external teachers and speakers. In the drugs and alcohol lesson we played a game to test the knowledge we previously had and, debunked myths so we were well informed to make good decisions. We were able to try out some simulation goggles which were supposed to emulate the eyesight of a drunk person, and were able to see how difficult it was to walk around. There were display cases of drugs with information labels and we had to copy  information onto work sheets.

The internet safety and sexual education talks were informative and the speakers were very professional and humorous at times. My classmates were free to ask questions and I think we all were able to expand on our knowledge. We had had these two lessons on previous Activity Days and it was good to be able to expand and reinforce our existing  knowledge .

Personally, I enjoyed the self-defence class the most as I feel I learnt the most. We were taught how to shield ourselves correctly and how to safely attack if defence is needed. We were also told how to perform and escape a correct headlock and other holds. Despite practising in pairs, I managed to leave the lesson with only one new bruise, self-inflicted from doing a block wrongly.  Our instructor said that this method of self-defence was even employed in a batman movie.

All in all, I think our whole class enjoyed this day as a change from our regular timetables, and learnt a lot of things which will be useful for keeping safe in the future.

- Amelia Powell (Year 10)

On the 30^th of June half of the year 10 pupils partook in an Activities Day at school, while the other half went to Dinton Pastures for a day of water sports and team building games. On the 3^rd of July we rotated and were able to partake in the other activities.

While at school, our regular classes were swapped with lessons on self-defence, drugs and alcohol, sexual education and internet safety from external teachers and speakers. In the drugs and alcohol lesson we played a game to test the knowledge we previously had and, debunked myths so we were well informed to make good decisions. We were able to try out some simulation goggles which were supposed to emulate the eyesight of a drunk person, and were able to see how difficult it was to walk around. There were display cases of drugs with information labels and we had to copy  information onto work sheets.

The internet safety and sexual education talks were informative and the speakers were very professional and humorous at times. My classmates were free to ask questions and I think we all were able to expand on our knowledge. We had had these two lessons on previous Activity Days and it was good to be able to expand and reinforce our existing  knowledge .

Personally, I enjoyed the self-defence class the most as I feel I learnt the most. We were taught how to shield ourselves correctly and how to safely attack if defence is needed. We were also told how to perform and escape a correct headlock and other holds. Despite practising in pairs, I managed to leave the lesson with only one new bruise, self-inflicted from doing a block wrongly.  Our instructor said that this method of self-defence was even employed in a batman movie.

All in all, I think our whole class enjoyed this day as a change from our regular timetables, and learnt a lot of things which will be useful for keeping safe in the future.

- Amelia Powell (Year 10)

*VIVIT - a purposely engineered synthetic human cadaver

On the 17^th of July, fifteen Year 12 students visited the Sir William Borlase’s grammar school for the VIVIT experience. This consisted of a live post mortem of a synthetic human body with real organs of swine origin. Experts lectured us on how each part of the body from head to toe was structured and how it functioned as well as how faults in this could lead to a variety of illnesses.

Frequent intervals in the presentation allowed the audience to experience the organs hands on which helped both enhance our understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the human body but it also made the day much more engaging than a typical lesson.

Overall it was an excellent experience that not only was enjoyable but was perfect to consolidate the theory we had learnt this year.
 

Dr George

Science Teacher