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Reading Girls' School newsletter - 17 DECEMBER 2021

Principal's Message

The Christmas tree has been twinkling away in the foyer for a couple of weeks now thanks to the efforts of our Senior Student Leadership Team. Wednesday was a very festive Christmas jumper day, which raised over £220 for Save the Children, as well as our traditional Christmas Dinner and festive events, including a whole school sing a long in a ‘COVID’ safe way. We also enjoyed the Music Department’s Christmas Concert, thanks to the efforts of Mr Jones and Ms Gabriel. I hope you all managed to log on and enjoy the talented performances of our students online.

Nicola de Sousa Year 7 - Christmas card

In spite of the challenges of living through this pandemic, we have had some fantastic events this term, including our religious studies and personal development days, a plethora of visitors supporting our STEM days for Year 7 and Year 8, and a number of our Year 10 and 11 students have been able to attend workshops at Queen Anne’s School. These provide opportunities for your children to grow outside the classroom, to enable them to find out who they are as people. In school we also continue to offer a full range of clubs - do encourage your daughter to get involved. All clubs are on the website.

Our sports teams have also been busy in competitions. Following an 18-month period of no fixtures and few sports clubs, it was great to get back to training and getting sports teams out to represent RGS. It has been a busy two terms for our school football teams. We had the Year 10/11 Team playing in a 9-a-side league, the Year 8/9 Team playing in a 9-a-side league and the Year 7 Team playing in a 6-a-side league.

The girls have worked really hard in training and on the pitch making great improvements to their skills and game play. A huge thank you to Mr Jones (music) and Mr Jones (geography) who have worked tirelessly with the girls in training and attended their matches to coach and encourage them. We now move into netball season with the Year 10 and Year 11 girls competing in their leagues in January/February and the Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 leagues in March. Netball Club will also resume next term.

We had our visit from Ofsted and await their report, and then we were rewarded for all the hard work and commitment of staff and students by being nominated for the National Schools Award. All in all, a very busy half term.

As always at this time of year we say good bye so some of our staff. We wish Mr Fitz-Gerald all the very best in his new venture, and welcome Mr Williams, who will be our new food technology teacher, as well as Ms Dar an experienced science teacher, and finally Miss Freemantle who will be Head of Year 8. Mr Williams will reintroduce practical food lessons after the first couple of weeks.

In this challenging period that we are all enduring, the whole school staff team appreciate the many messages of warmth and support we receive from you, our wonderful parent and carer community. We take pride in our vocation and continue to strive for your girls’ happiness and success in all that they do. I hope that you enjoy some special time with your children during the Christmas period. We look forward to seeing the girls well rested at the beginning of the Academic year.

How we keep in touch

There will be occasions when we need to share news or contact parents/carers. Our weekly newsletter enables us to share what has been going on in the week. Please do have a look to keep up to date with events. In addition, we also communicate via emails and text messages. As a result, please ensure that we have your correct email and mobile numbers. For specific messages we do send letters home with students as well as share them through emails.

How to get in touch

If you wish to get in touch please do contact either the subject teachers, if it is related to a particular academic matter, or the Head of Year, if it is pastoral or any other general issue regarding your daughter. We politely ask that staff have 48 hours to respond initially. If the matter cannot be addressed by either the subject teacher or the Head of Year, then please direct your enquiry to the Head of Department or a member of the Senior Leadership Team. Please find the email addresses of the relevant staff on the school website at the following link.

Of course, every day is an Open Day at RGS, so please do come and tour the school anytime.

Year 7/Year 8 Information Evening will be held virtually on Wednesday 12th January on TEAMS please follow the link below.

Marika Farrugia, Principal

Christmas Jumper Day

Well done to students and staff who took part in the Save the Children Christmas Jumper day on Wednesday with over £220 being raised for such a worthwhile cause.

Wednesday also saw our annual Christmas Dinner day. Many thanks to Chartwells for the dinners and Mr Dinnegan and the SSLT girls for making it such a fun afternoon. Party games, a whole school quiz and a singalong provided for a special atmosphere and getting us ready for the end of term!

Our very own Mrs Smith took part in the Reading Rotary Santa Run on Sunday 12th December.

In case you missed it or would like to watch it again, below is the link to the RGS Christmas Concert 2021.

Doctor, doctor, we’re making Christmas Trees using fractals!

Two parts with a Christmassy twist finished the STEM programme for 2021 when we were visited by Dr Jack Amiry, General Practitioner locum for Emmer Green Surgery, Dermatologist and Medical Trainer at Oxford University who visited our Year 7 girls to speak about his experience of school, training to be a doctor and becoming a medical professional.

He also enriched his talk with an interactive activity of taking a medical history of a (fictional) medical condition with Mr Marsh who was unfortunate that morning to have come down with indigestion! This was a great opportunity for the Ambassadors to participate in taking a medical history using the SOCRATES method under the guidance of Dr Jack as the audience attempted to guess the medical condition that he was trying to diagnose with the Ambassadors.

The girls loved the activity and as the diversity and inclusion lead at Oxford University, Dr Jack fielded some extremely deep and probing questions about life and culture of the University and its drive to widen participation for all.

After break the girls extended their knowledge and understanding about careers in the NHS with research and writing their entries for this year’s “Step into the NHS” competition after researching all of the 350 different careers that are possible with our health service. That’s quite a large number which needed job adverts. The completion prize deadline is April 2022 with a chance for the girls to win £50 of Amazon vouchers for the best job advert showing their research and information about the job they chose to write about.

Katia and Lyra’s entry about NHS Nursing

The end of the day was all about the Mathematics of a type of geometry that we find in nature from coastlines to Christmas Trees! A fractal is a repeating pattern that allows us to build larger models from smaller repeating units of the same shape. We put that knowledge to good use to build ourselves a fractal Christmas Tree!

Brooke suitably shocked over the size and complexity of the fractal tree under construction. Can you see how the shapes build up and up by repeating the same pattern to make the tree?

It wasn’t always easy and the girls had to work hard to make their final creation which was even topped with a very difficult shape of three more fractals which made up the star! Our final creation was over a metre tall, took over 196 tetrahedrons to make and is now taking pride of place in the Year 7 dining area for all to see!

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of the girls in Key Stage 3 and hope that everyone has a restful and restorative break over the festive season.

A group of Year 10 students visited the University of Reading this week. Year 10 students work with university students and staff to find out what university life and study is like, how it can benefit them, and how to develop study skills. This includes four events with the university over the year.

Fortunately, this year the first event was an actual visit in person to the Whiteknights campus, and it was great to be able to visit in person. Students particularly enjoyed the tour of the campus seeing the Student's Union, the huge library building which includes various study areas, cafes and shops, and the sports facilities near the main entrance.

As well as visits and activities, the students will be learning how to do a research task and produce a research poster. The year 10s enjoyed an interactive session with the University's Student Ambassadors leading them through considering research questions and finding good reference sources.

Thank you to the University of Reading for providing this great day. We are looking forward to the next event in February.

Year 7 Book Gift Bags

What could be better than curling up with a new book and a sweet treat? As part of our drive to encourage and promote reading for pleasure, we gave all our Year 7 pupils the opportunity to do just that.

The girls were given a bag containing a book, some hot chocolate and some biscuits. We hope they enjoy their gift and would love them to let us know what they thought of their book.

Season’s greetings and happy reading!

Our successful Book Fair!

Year 7 exams

The Year 7 exams start on Wednesday 5th January 2022 and will last for 3 days. There will be English Language, Maths and Science exams and will include topics covered since September but also topics they would have studied at primary school. Other subjects will conduct exams in lesson times and the class teachers will let the students know what lessons these will be in.

Mrs Winton explaining the exams timetable to Year 7

They will all sit their exams together, in the sports hall, under exam conditions. The students will need to bring the following equipment to all of their exams: black pens, pencil, ruler, rubber, calculator and Maths equipment in a clear pencil case. Water is allowed in the exam room but must be in a clear plastic bottle with no labels or patterns.

You will be sent a timetable for your daughter, as well as them getting a copy. The link below takes you to some posters giving some information relating to the exams.

Mrs Winton, Exams Officer

Latest covid guidance

Due to the latest Government guidance, I would like to confirm the arrangements for the in-school Covid-19 testing on Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th January 2022. The link below will take you to the full details on our website. Please ensure your daughters DO NOT attend school until their test time.

In line with the government guidance, please be aware of requirements relating to Covid-19 and isolation in particular:

  • If you do not have COVID-19 symptoms, but you have a positive PCR test result, you must stay at home and self-isolate.
  • If you live in the same household as someone with COVID-19, you must stay at home and self-isolate if you are not fully vaccinated or if they have been identified as a suspected or confirmed case of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
  • If you live in the same household as someone with COVID-19 that has not been identified as a suspected or confirmed case of the Omicron variant, and you are fully vaccinated or aged under 18 years and 6 months, you are not required to self-isolate.

At Home Testing

As the number of Covid-19 cases continues to increase in the local community, we continue to be vigilant. We continue to request that your child takes a lateral flow test twice a week - every Wednesday and Sunday and report the results using the link below.

Increasing Student Participation

“Talking Tokens”

Talking Tokens are issued by the classroom teacher and/or teaching assistant to pupils who participate to questions and/or ask questions during lessons. Pupils are encouraged to write their name and year group on the back of the 'Talking Token' and place them into the relevant 'Talking Token' collection box for their year group. At the end of each term, all 'Talking Tokens' are placed together and a pupil is selected at random. The more 'Talking Tokens' a pupil collects for contributing answers to questions in class, the more chances they have to win a prize.

At the end of this week the following number of 'Talking Tokens' collected across the whole school are 2557. Well done to all those who received a token for their contribution in their lessons. We are currently on a grand total of 8620.

“Has your lesson been REAL (Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning)?”

Using REAL tokens students have the opportunity to give instant feedback to staff about their experiences within the lesson.

Students are provided with a token and at the end of the lesson, are asked if their lesson has been R.E.A.L. (Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning). Students then place their token into the 'Yes' or 'No' box, which is in every teaching classroom. Staff then uses this information to make any modification to their delivery of their lesson. These tokens are then collected in at the end of every week and counted.

Results for this week:

  • YES – 1252
  • No – 19 tokens

Many of you will be aware that the RGS car park is busy this year and this is of course due to the continued growth of the school. Maximum speed limit is 5mph. Please ensure that you are not driving any faster than this as you enter, during and when you exit the car park. Parents who do not comply with this speed limit will be asked not to drive through the car park.

How can we all help with the congestion at the beginning and end of the school day?

  • Where possible girls to walk/ cycle to school
  • Parents to team up and run car shares so that less cars are coming to RGS, in addition to helping the environment!
  • Any cars who do have to come to RGS will be required to TURN LEFT out of the school carpark from MONDAY 13th SEPTEMBER

A reminder also that it is not permitted to stop on the very busy Northumberland Avenue.

Stevensons - your local and online school uniform supplier

The Family Information Service has created a dedicated page that listed essential services for parent carers and young people, around support available during the holidays. FIS will continue to update the page as more information as it comes through. The links to the page is below.

Christmas & New Year 2021/22 Local Services & Support Information | Reading Services Guide

We are delighted to be launching a second-hand uniform shop at RGS. Please send in any good quality uniform you no longer need. Mrs Emmett will be awaiting your deliveries! For further information please email selliott@readinggirlsschool.net