January 17, 2020

Weekly News – Friday 17th January

Message from the Headmistress

Dear Parents,

It has been another quiet week in the Senior School and mock examinations have been continuing (nearly done now…). For our Year 11 pupils, this will have been a telling experience as the reality will dawn over the work to be done in the next few months.

Tonight, the Friends of Hollygirt committee are meeting in my office at 4.00pm. Please come along.

I am about to start a review of Hollygirt PE kit. If anyone would be interested in letting me know what they like or don’t like, or would like to see as alternative kit, please get in touch with me. Just for reassurance, any changes would be phased in, so there would be no expectation of everyone purchasing new straight away.

Next week we will be hosting our Year 7 Entrance Day for prospective Year 7 pupils for September 2020. We have a lot of young people coming in on Wednesday for a day of Senior School lessons to get a flavour of what it might be like in Hollygirt Senior School.  We no longer do formal assessments and examinations on entry for all pupils, preferring to get to know what the young people are really like in class and how they present around the school. We hope this takes the pressure off some, who in Year 6 in many schools are working on SATS practice which when  combined with other school’s entrance testing makes them thoroughly bogged down in examinations.

We do more formal testing on the next day, Thursday, for any who have elected to sit our scholarship papers.

If you know parents of current Year 6 who are undecided on which school best suits their sons and daughters, remember to use your Recommend Cards and  put them in touch with us.

Former pupil (2015), Shanti, raised £199.45 at our Christmas Fair by selling homemade vegan cookies and cupcakes to raise money to sponsor an orphan. I’m so pleased to hear that as a result of her fundraising, she has been able to sponsor a 5 year old boy called Nahid from Ghoraghat in Bangladesh. Shanti will be back with her homemade vegan cookies and cupcakes at the Junior School Garden Party on Saturday 27th June to raise money in order to further support Nahid.

 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Hutley
Headmistress

Message from the Head of Juniors

Click here to view this week’s Stars of the Week

Dear Parents,

As we approach the end of the first full week, I think the children are ready for the weekend. They have been extremely busy, working hard and also starting their extra-curricular clubs; it is good to see so many children involved.

On Tuesday, it is our first Stay and Play session of the year. This is for prospective EYFS children and their parents.  If you know of anyone who you think may be interested, please ask them to contact school to book a place.

On Wednesday, our Year 6 pupils will be going over to the Senior School for the Year 7 Entrance Day; I am sure they will have a very enjoyable day having Senior taught lessons and getting to know new children. Meanwhile, in the Junior School, Nottingham Forest will be delivering an assembly to the children.

We have an incredibly exciting day on Friday. Sue, from Blocky Bots, will be visiting the Junior School. The children will be set challenges to design, build and adapt their BOT. They will create, test and debug programs to control it using the popular, and highly regarded, Lego WeDo 2.0 kits. The fantastic Alpha 1 Humanoid Robot, the MeeBot Dancing Robot will also be visiting. We have invited some children from 4 other schools to join us for the afternoon. This event will be funded by money raised at the Garden Party.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Wright
Head of Juniors