Head's Newsletter 17 June 2016

Dear Parents We seem to be moving very rapidly through the summer term and much has happened in recent weeks, with much still to look forward to before the term ends. Having done their exams, boys in Years 7 to 10 have been receiving their results and papers back since half term. This is an important time to reflect upon not just the exam performance but progress and performance across the year as a whole. There has of course been much tremendous work and we will be celebrating this at our end of term individual awards ceremonies. Year 11 and Year 13 are still doing GCSE and A level exams which we hope have gone very well; they are, I'm sure, looking forward to their completion! Year 11 will then be embarking upon their work experience before we see them again in the final week of term. It was great to have year 12 back on Monday, and they will be spending much time over the next few weeks looking at universities and life beyond school. The Higher Education Festival next week, with our many guest speakers, is a fantastic opportunity for Year 12 to really focus on their futures, and take on-board valuable advice. They will also each be given the opportunity of an interview with one of our guest interviewers; many thanks if you are one of the parents involved in this. The wider work of the school has continued a pace as usual. The cricket season is going well although it has been significantly disrupted by poor weather. Tennis and rowing also continue to flourish and the rowers are looking forward to the Henley qualifiers in two weeks’ time.

I am also delighted to announce that we have been successful in our joint bid with Kingston Rowing Club for £75,000 of funding from Sport England to renovate parts of the boathouse. We look forward to seeing the environment of the boathouse improved over the next few months, encouraging even more students and young people to take up the wonderful opportunity of rowing on the Thames. The Performing Arts continue to flourish. The Music Department are currently preparing for a number of significant events including singing at St Paul's Cathedral on July 11, and touring Italy after we break up. We are also looking forward to the fantastic and customary performance of the Oratorio, sung by a choir composed of many different parts of the Tiffin community; do get your tickets and support this great event. Also, the dance has been very active with all Year 7 engaging in the Bhangra workshop, as well as boys in Year 8 rehearsing for a performance at the Rose Theatre, and in Year 9 holding a dance workshop at a local primary school. In Drama we are very much looking forward to the Key Stage 3 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ; again, please get your tickets and support the boys. Finally I am delighted that we have been able to announce the names of the two new Houses: Turing Nightingale and Darwin Wilberforce, as we expand the House system from 6 to 8 Houses. You can read about this process in this newsletter. Yours, M D Gascoigne, Headteacher

IMPORTANT DATES

Open Evening; school finishes at 12.40 pm

Tuesday 5 July

Stop the Clock Day: Yrs 7-9 out on trips

Thursday 7 July Friday 8 July Sunday 10 July

Tiffin-in-the-Garden 5.30 pm Oratorio, Sports Hall at 7 pm

Lyrix Organix Dance Project For the past few weeks year 8 students have been working with a professional performance company Lyrix Organix to devise a choreography for a performance as part of International Youth Arts Festival in Kingston. Dancers explore their personal histories with aspects of Kingston through movement. All movement created has been generated by Tiffin students through choreographic tasks (see right) B hangra Dance workshop took place on Tuesday 14th June. Boys heard about the history and origins of Bhangra as well as the music and its importance. Dancers learned and performed a set piece of choreography to live music which they all performed at the end of the workshop.

and we look forward to seeing these sides progress as they move up the School.

Yusuf Jackson 1stX1 (Seaborn Trophy match)

The 1st XI have been a very good side and played some excellent cricket particularly up until half term. There were quite brilliant games of cricket against St George’s and Hampton which the side lost by just 5 runs and 8 runs respectively. But with impressive wins over Reed’s, Kingston Grammar School, Lord Wandsworth College, Emanuel and Reigate, the first half-term was splendid. Conor Fulton has scored bundles of runs and Krishan Sachdeva hit the only century of the

Conor Fulton 1stX1 (Seaborn Trophy match)

Aum Joshi U15 Cup Match v Trinity

Bashir Bhatti 1stX1 (Seaborn Trophy match)

season against Kingston Grammar School in early April. At one point he was averaging 150! There is terrific enthusiasm for the game everywhere in the lower school. The U12 teams have played some good cricket and Chris O’Connell has been turning a relatively inexperienced group into a competitive outfit. Under 13 and U15 levels have produced some outstanding results and the U15 play KCS Wimbledon for a place in the semi-finals of the County Cup this week. There are bundles of good players at A & B level in these year groups

Huw Morris U15 Cup Match v Trinity

Year 7 Trip to Shakespeare’s Globe

listened carefully and many asked interesting questions. In our workshop, the boys were given a variety of different tasks, which increased in complexity as additional instructions were factored in. These warm up sessions and short activities led to various dramatic presentations of short scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , our Year 7 Shakespeare text. We were blessed with warm weather at lunchtime and were able to sit on the grass in front of the Tate Modern and eat our their day to help us run this trip. We do hope they enjoyed the day, too. One of our parent helper’s comments on the day: “Congratulations on organising such a worthwhile venture! Our 7GB boys were wonderfully behaved and took part in the workshop with gusto. Our group leader Tom Davey was first rate and brought out the best in our group. “ picnics. We would like especially to thank the parents who gave up

On Wednesday 8th June, the whole of our Year 7 cohort enjoyed a great day out at Shakespeare’s Globe in Southwark. On arrival, we were divided into small groups and allocated a workshop leader, who would also double as a tour guide. First, we walked around the whitewashed exterior walls of the theatre’s polygon structure. Students were introduced to the history of the

construction of the original Globe and

the particular challenges and opportunities the reconstructed theatre presents for its actors. We climbed to the highest vantage point and viewed the stage from the

galleries, whilst actors limbered up below in preparation for rehearsals. Here, our guide talked us through the particular spaces of the stage, the heavens, the balcony, the discovery space and the trapdoor,

and the variety of audiences and the frequency of the plays in Shakespeare’s day, amongst many things. All the students

ORATORIO Tickets are now on sale for the annual Tiffin Oratorio concert taking place on Sunday 10 th July at 7.00 pm in the Sports Hall at Tiffin School. James Day, Director of Choral Music at Tiffin, conducts the 200- strong forces of the Tiffin Oratorio Choir and Tiffin Boys’ Choir, together with the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, in Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat Mater , a meditation on the sorrows of Mary at the cross. The choir is joined by a professional line up of soloists including Sofia Troncoso (Soprano), Claire Barnett-Jones (Mezzo Soprano), Robert Burt (Tenor) and James Oldfield (Bass). Friends of Tiffin Music will be serving refreshments before the concert. The concert has been made possible by the kind support of Coombe Residential. Tickets are £15 and £10 available from TicketSource following the link https:// www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/263896 Our year 7 and 8 boys did very well in the UKMT Junior Maths Challenge earlier this term with record numbers being invited to take part in the follow on competitions. Only the top 2% of candidates, from a field of candidates already considered ‘gifted’, are invited to sit the Junior Maths Olympiad or the Junior Kangaroo. A staggering 56 Tiffin boys achieved this feat. 99 boys achieved gold certificates in the challenge.

Tiffin's annual Lower School Production will be performed on Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th June, bringing to a close a superb year of drama, following the massive success of Les Misérables and What the Butler Saw . This year, the celebratory year of the 400 th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, you are invited to spend an enchanting evening among the magical beings, entwined lovers and forlorn players of his all time classic comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, as our Key Stage 3 cast take you on a spellbinding journey through the woods. The production will be performed in the Drama Studio, starting at 7pm, with tickets available now from our online platform at: www.ticketsource.co.uk/tiffinschool. Please do come along and support our fantastic cast who have worked so hard on what is our first Shakespearean Lower School production. It promises to be a really wonderful evening.

Great effort, enthusiasm and interesting ideas characterised the year 9 team participating in the Go4Set programme this year. Working closely with a BP engineer, they presented their research, solar still prototype and impressive report at the closing event of the programme in the Sunbury BP facility, and received a Silver Crest award in recognition of the quality of their work.

April saw the culmination of the 6 month Engineering Education Scheme (EES) projects for 2 teams of 6 Year 12 students, one working with Air Products and one with BP. Each team works on a real project of direct significance to the sponsoring company. The Air Products team were looking at measuring temperature profiles within firebrick insulation whilst the BP team were designing a process to separate oil from water on the oil platform. The independent assessors scrutinised the project reports and listened intently to their 10 minute presentation on the specifics of their project. The BP project was highly praised as being extremely thorough with feedback commenting that the team “Demonstrated detailed understanding of underlying principles” and were “Excellent to come up with a novel concept”. This is a double celebration for Tiffin as their mentor was a former Tiffin student, who is currently employed by BP as an engineer working on erecting a new platform in the North Sea field. An excellent effort by both teams which is rewarded with a Gold Crest award for each team member.

Forty-two 9 students’ ‘spine-chiller’ short stories were Year

recently selected for publication in the Young Writers’ South East Spooks book. Praised for their ‘imagination, perception, expression and creative use of language’, all the boys will shortly become published authors with their work placed in the British Library, providing a lasting record of their achievement. Some of the winning entries include Ross Muncie’s The Elders , Saomiyan Muthetharan’s Ouija Jitters , Harry Lambert’s White Walls , and Andrei Bachnak’s Five Steps . Once again, Tiffin students’ writing has proven to be first rate, and the boys are to be congratulated for this fantastic achievement.

The new Houses are as follows:

NAMING OF NEW HOUSES

Darwin Wilberforce

We decided at the start of the year to expand the number of Houses from 6 to 8. This is to facilitate participation in activities by the widest number of students, who will thereby benefit from engagement in the House competition. Throughout the process the boys have been consulted on their views and their wishes. These have been taken into account in some of the redistribution of pupils which we shall do as part of the creation of the two new Houses. New Heads of House have been appointed and new colours selected. All boys will now be encouraged to wear their house ties. The naming of the new houses entailed much debate. It was decided in the end that they should follow the existing theme of significant figures in British history. The boys nominated names which were then put into a shortlist; following assemblies with different boys presenting on the individuals, the boys cast their votes. The boys’ enthusiasm and engagement with the whole process has been really encouraging; indeed the turnout to vote on the suggested names was very high indeed, showing a real commitment and interest in the long-standing House system.

· Tie: navy stripe on silver · House colour: silver · Head of House: Mr Karski

Turing Nightingale

· Tie: burgundy stripe on silver · House colour: white · Head of House: Mr Costello