Nearly it for the summer

It’s Activities Week and most year groups are out and about enjoying themselves or working hard at their Work Experience placements. But there are also things going on in school and there is currently a bunch of Year 8s juggling and spinning plates in the hall with a skilled circus trainer and multi-tasker. They are working to an inspired music playlist and a bit of vintage Ian Dury and the Blockheads has just lured a certain librarian away from her cataloguing to do some plate-spinning of her own.

Meanwhile, out on the school field, some of us have been enjoying the Derbyshire summer and soaking up some sunshine. Not a bad view from our staffroom.

PARTY TIME

To mark the end of Pride Month 2022, Miss Starbuck and friends held a hot and sweaty Diversity Party in the library this week, with lots of coloured lighting, music (YMCA and ChaCha Slide being particularly popular) and dancing. Students from all years came and joined in and the mini-rolls, pop and glowsticks very quickly vanished. Another reminder of what this school does so well, what amazing students we have and what a versatile venue we have in our most excellent library!

(And just for the record, two avid readers, disappointed that they were being ousted over lunchtime, came in with their books and read their way through the whole party to get their books finished.)

The last of the Reading Buddies (for now…)

This year’s Reading Buddies have closed their books for the last time and said farewell to their reading partners as the Y11s take up their exam pens and the Y7s prepare for the big step into Y8. They’ve been a cracking bunch and all have benefitted from these weekly quiet library sessions in their enthusiasm for reading and general outlook and confidence.

At the end of today’s lunchtime session, readers and listeners were given a big vote of thanks from staff and a certificate of excellence in recognition of their involvement in the scheme. And the amazing ladies in the kitchen conjured up a delicious celebratory cake to cut and share, which made an excellent finale to a very successful scheme.

We wish the Y11s well in their exams and hope that before we know it we will see the Y7s again as 11s themselves, all grown up and ready to befriend a new set of emerging younger readers.

Any of the Y11s who are also taking part in DofE are most welcome to ask for a reference to support their Skills section.

Oh, and another thing…

Our Miss Powis has been firing up our HVC poets again with another bout of Poetry By Heart. All of Year 8 has been taking part in this national competition; choosing, learning and rehearsing poems, some self-written, before performing them in front of an audience of their peers.

We were sad that our special guest judge, Berlie Doherty, was unable to be with us on the day, but Mr Hill and another member of poetry-loving staff made notes as twenty-two students in succession took to the stage with their memorised poems and recited them to the whole of a very appreciative year group. Winners included Adey, Willow and Aubrey, but the real star of the day was Aily, whose rendition of Imtiaz Dharker’s How to Cut a Pomegranate was, like the poem itself, a thing of real beauty.

The winners now go on to take part in further heats, with the national final being held at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London this June. Wouldn’t it be brilliant to see a student from HVC perform on the main stage of this amazing world-famous venue?