Dear Parents and Friends, Half term saw the most amazing range of activities here at Royal Russell, which certainly provided fantastic stimulus and opportunity for our pupils. The Royal Russell International Model United Nations Conference, held over the first four days of half term, was a stunning success with over 150 Royal Russell pupils taking part, providing everything from Presidents of the General Assembly to Press and Media teams and Secretariat. The success of this conference is very much down to the engagement of these students and the amazing team of supporting staff. My congratulations and thanks to all involved. If you are interested in finding out more, further information on the conference can be found on the MUN website at www.royalrussellmun.co.uk and videos at www.royalrussellmun.co.uk/muntv During our half term we also staged a successful Drama Trip to New York, where pupils experienced the buzz of Broadway, as well as a Football tour to Madrid and a Netball tour to La Manga. During the middle weekend, over 80 Cadets attended the CCF camp and others followed on to Duke of Edinburgh training. At the end of half term the Sixth Form French exchange students returned to Orléans. The start of this week has been no less busy, with a full range of fixtures, events and activities running alongside our core academic curriculum. On Tuesday, some of our Year 9 pupils enjoyed a thinking skills day in the Library and on Wednesday I was able to join the Choir to sing Evensong at Southwark Cathedral. The combination of the Choristers, Barbershop and Choral Society members made wonderful music in a magnificent venue and it was a great privilege to be part of this special event. The next music event is the Autumn Concert, held on Friday 13 November at 7.00pm in the Auditorium, all our most welcome to attend. Wednesday also saw Football, Netball, Hockey and table tennis fixtures for a wide range of teams with some excellent results. The 1 st XI Football team remains unbeaten after nine matches this season and are setting the standard for others to follow. The boys’ House swimming gala was won by Oxford House on Thursday evening. We welcomed parents from Finton House on Thursday morning, who were given a tour by Year 9 guides, selected mainly from Hollenden and Oxford House. The Finton House parents asked me to pass on their thanks to the excellent tour guides. On Thursday evening, Mr Greaves and the Boarding team, combined with Ms Willis and the Catering team, put on a very spooky Halloween themed bonfire night which was hugely enjoyed by the all of the boarding community. My thanks to Mr Baron and Mr McKenna for organising the fireworks and to Mr Tebbutt and his team for managing to get the bonfire lit on a very damp evening! I look forward to seeing the first of the Year 7 Design Technology Parent and Pupil workshops this evening and to the fixtures on Saturday morning vs Kingston Grammar School. On Sunday, our Remembrance Service will start promptly at 10.00am in Chapel and will be followed by an Act of Remembrance in the Memorial Garden at 10.45am. Next Wednesday, 11th November, the whole School will gather at the Memorial Garden to mark Remembrance Day and parents will be very welcome to join us from 10.45am outside Hollenden House. With Best Wishes, Headmaster’s Weekly Newsletter 6 November 2015 Chris Hutchinson Headmaster
Transcript
Dear Parents and Friends,
Half term saw the most amazing range of activities here at Royal Russell, which certainly provided fantastic stimulus and opportunity for our pupils.
The Royal Russell International Model United Nations Conference, held over the first four days of half term, was a stunning success with over 150 Royal Russell pupils taking part, providing everything from Presidents of the General Assembly to Press and Media teams and Secretariat. The success of this conference is very much down to the engagement of these students and the amazing team of supporting staff. My congratulations and thanks to all involved. If you are interested in finding out more, further information on the conference can be found on the MUN website at www.royalrussellmun.co.uk and videos at www.royalrussellmun.co.uk/muntv
During our half term we also staged a successful Drama Trip to New York, where pupils experienced the buzz of Broadway, as well as a Football tour to Madrid and a Netball tour to La Manga. During the middle weekend, over 80 Cadets attended the CCF camp and others followed on to Duke of Edinburgh training. At the end of half term the Sixth Form French exchange students returned to Orléans.
The start of this week has been no less busy, with a full range of fixtures, events and activities running alongside our core academic curriculum.
On Tuesday, some of our Year 9 pupils enjoyed a thinking skills day in the Library and on Wednesday I was able to join the Choir to sing Evensong at Southwark Cathedral. The combination of the Choristers, Barbershop and Choral Society members made wonderful music in a magnificent venue and it was a great privilege to be part of this special event. The next music event is the Autumn Concert, held on Friday 13 November at 7.00pm in the Auditorium, all our most welcome to attend.
Wednesday also saw Football, Netball, Hockey and table tennis fixtures for a wide range of teams with some excellent results. The 1st XI Football team remains unbeaten after nine matches this season and are setting the standard for others to follow. The boys’ House swimming gala was won by Oxford House on Thursday evening.
We welcomed parents from Finton House on Thursday morning, who were given a tour by Year 9 guides, selected mainly from Hollenden and Oxford House. The Finton House parents asked me to pass on their thanks to the excellent tour guides.
On Thursday evening, Mr Greaves and the Boarding team, combined with Ms Willis and the Catering team, put on a very spooky Halloween themed bonfire night which was hugely enjoyed by the all of the boarding community. My thanks to Mr Baron and Mr McKenna for organising the fireworks and to Mr Tebbutt and his team for managing to get the bonfire lit on a very damp evening!
I look forward to seeing the first of the Year 7 Design Technology Parent and Pupil workshops this evening and to the fixtures on Saturday morning vs Kingston Grammar School.
On Sunday, our Remembrance Service will start promptly at 10.00am in Chapel and will be followed by an Act of Remembrance in the Memorial Garden at 10.45am.
Next Wednesday, 11th November, the whole School will gather at the Memorial Garden to mark Remembrance
Day and parents will be very welcome to join us from 10.45am outside Hollenden House.
In our School services this week, we heard how Halloween was originally the first of three days honouring those who have gone before us. Hallow means holy. Halloween, meaning All Hallows’ [=Saints’] Eve, precedes All Saints’ Day (November 1st, a festival for all heroes of faith from previous ages), which, in turn, is followed by All Souls’ Day, when we remember the faithful departed. On All Souls’ Day we lit candles and prayers were said for deceased relatives and friends. A child, when shown a church stained-glass window, was asked if she knew what a saint is. She replied, ‘Someone who lets the light in’. Our Chapel window depicts St Christopher, in purple and pink clothing, and the Infant Jesus, radiating gold. Unfortunately, as it is at the north end, the sun never gets the chance to shine through. However, the Chapel has two special types of lights within it: the ORs who died in war and whose names are read out each Remembrance Sunday – the Chapel was built in the 1920s as a memorial to those who fell in the 1st World War - and current members of the School who allow Christ’s light of goodness to shine through them, as he told his disciples to do: You are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven [Matthew 5]. Perhaps the 12 lights that are now along the drive and path from the School entrance can be a symbol of all Russellians who follow the examples of the 12 Apostles.
On Wednesday the Chapel Choir sang Choral Evensong in Southwark Cathedral. The Cathedral’s lovely retro-choir [the area behind the High Altar] has a chapel dedicated to St Christopher. The altarpiece contains a roundel image of St Christopher carrying Jesus, which appropriately links our School Chapel with our Cathedral.
Answer to Chapel Quiz 55: ICXC is a four-letter abbreviation of the Greek words for "Jesus Christ" (i.e., the first and last letters of each of the words). On icons, this Christogram may be split: "ΙϹ" on the left of the image and "ΧϹ" on the right, most often with a bar above the letters indicating that it is a sacred name. It is sometimes rendered as "ΙϹΧϹ ΝΙΚΑ", meaning
"Jesus Christ Conquers."
Chapel Quiz 56: What is the meaning of ? Prizes to the pupils with the best answer.
Bible Quote of the Week: Shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness, faith, love, and
peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:22)
November 8th
Remembrance Sunday: A Chapel service at 10.00 a.m. will be followed by
From The Music Department On Wednesday of this week, over sixty students made the short journey to Southwark Cathedral to sing Evensong. It was a super occasion, where the students (assisted by the Choral Society), sang very well and were commended by the Cathedral staff for the singing. Many thanks to all parents who came to support, and to all the staff who assisted with the event. Next week, on Friday November 13th, our Autumn Concert will be taking place in the auditorium at 7pm. This concert will feature most of our major ensembles, and there will be some soloists as well. All are very welcome to attend, and no ticket is required.
MUN is really great for pupils because it gives them a different experience you wouldn’t get in a classroom; an exposure to the world of politics and events. Pupils take the role of a country and debate topics that affect all people across the globe but that aren’t necessarily front page news. For example in this year’s RRSIMUN we have discussed the declining number of bees, euthanasia, Guantanamo Bay and role of women in private sector directorship. Before RRSIMUN pupils learn the debating procedure in weekly Monday night sessions. This gives them good practice for our conference and the many other conferences we attend over the school year. During the conference pupils develop, through discussion, negation skills and an insight into the World’s problems which leads them to have greater empathy for other countries and the difficulties they face. On Saturday 17th October, over 600 delegates from 16 countries (including the U.S.A, Turkey, Japan, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Norway, Egypt and France) arrived to participate in the 34th Annual International Model United Nations Conference. Over the 4 days, pupils had an intense programme of debating, journalism, filming and editing, security and administration. Saturday started with delegates submitting the resolutions that they have written to the Approval Panel and culminated in Opening Speeches, in the Great Hall. Each country’s ambassador makes a short speech to outlining their countries views and positions. On Sunday debate begins in committees, all of which have slightly different focus areas. This year’s conference has also seen the 10 year anniversary of MUNTV, which has evolved into a huge addition to the experience of all those attending. Once again we hosted a tremendously successful International Court of Justice, lead by Mr Stern. This year’s case was The Marshall Islands v. United Kingdom, and the verdict was delivered by the President of the ICJ on Tuesday morning, following their four-hour deliberations. This year also saw the introduction of a new committee, the Special Committee on Globalisation, topics for discussion included HIV / AIDS and tobacco based industries. Secretary General Bart Konechni oversaw the smooth running of the conference, with the assistance of his Presidents of General Assembly, Presidents of Security Council, Committee Chairs, Heads of Secretariat, Heads of Media / Events and Heads of Press. The students, although exhausted by the end of the day Tuesday enjoyed hosting a very successful conference; a conference of students, run by students, for students. “MUN is the highlight of my year! I love meeting new people from across the world, and forming friendships” “As part of the Press Team we were under real pressure, as we had to produce a 16 page newspaper every day! Trying to meet the print deadlines was stressful, but so rewarding to see everyone reading our articles in G.A.” “In Media we’ve created 21 videos over the weekend, as well as producing a Game Show to entertain the Royal Russell pupils on Friday night and an X Factor competition on Sunday night! I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard, but so far our videos have been viewed over 2000 times!”
Media Success for Maria Year 13 Media student Diana Malynskova has been short-listed by the British Film Institute and the WJEC exam board in their film-making competition.
Her music video was one of six chosen as the best in UK last year. Diana found out about her nomination whilst filming General Assembly as part of the MUN TV team. She follows in the footsteps of the star of her video, Alisiya Kalashnikova whose video was also nominated last year.
You can watch her video at https://vimeo.com/125894281
On Monday 26 October, fourteen cadets, including me, set off on our two day Bronze DofE expedition. The expedition was challenging both mentally and physically. We started the walk on Monday in high spirits but after five hours of walking and several 'creative' route changes, spirits started to drop. But none the less, we persevered and made it to the designated camp site. This was where we all put up our tents and came together to cook and chat about our day and the rest of the route we had to walk tomorrow. The next morning was difficult to say the least... particularly seeing as everyone was woken up at 6:30am in the freezing cold. After a slightly rocky start and a few less tent pegs than we had hoped for, we begun our walk. The walk progressed swiftly and everyone was hopeful and raring to get home. And after only a four hour walk and less creative turns than the day before, we finally made it to the end of our expedition. Having all passed, everyone was ecstatic with the result and we can't wait to take on our next challenge in Silver! Cadet Stevie Palmer
In the early morning of the 17th October a team of seven cadets from both Army and RAF sections of CCF, departed from Royal Russell bound for the Cadet Training Centre at Frimley Park in Surrey to take part in the Elworthy Trophy, the country’s only tri-service cadet military skills competition. The first activity of the day for us was Archery, where our team did well, with a number of us getting very good shots. We then moved on to the Raft Building activity, our aim was to build a raft, row to an island in the centre of a lake, and row back - no easy task, but luckily for us we had practised raft building on the CCF Summer Camp in July! Having successfully built our barrel and plank raft in 20 minutes, we had only 10 minutes to test out our raft and to sail across and back again. Our raft floated, we didn't sink, and managed to make it to the island and back - a great effort from our whole team! Next up was the 4x4 car pull! We began by spreading the team out down the rope, and managed to gain a good speed up the incline. We had to perfect our method slightly when we came up against another incline, but managed to complete the task in just 6 minutes. We felt we had earned our lunch after that! We moved on to a rowing activity - row as fast and as far as we could in 3 minutes, followed by an Observation Task - finding as many 'unusual' objects as we could in 5 minutes, and First Aid - the whole team performed really well on all of the tasks, but our best was our final activity, the Command Task. We were given our brief, we had to get to a coded message that had been dropped on the ground, without touching the ground. We set about with the planks, tyres and other objects that we were given to get to the message. It was a tough challenge, but we got to the message, and with some quick thinking, and a good knowledge of the Phonetic alphabet, we cracked the code! In the final parade and prize giving, we were awarded the prize for the Command Task - which was a fantastic result as we had some fierce competition from the other units which had been taking part. Overall, we had a really successful and challenging day! More videos and pictures from the day can be found on the CCF Twitter account: @RoyalRussellCCF
Boarders’ Halloween Bonfire Night
On 5 November, our Boarding community enjoyed a frightfully enjoyable night of Halloween Trail, fireworks, bonfire, supper and hot chocolate and marshmallows to keep warm! Our Boarders certainly got into the spirit!
Year 11-13 French Exchange to Orléans
12 Students from Royal Russell departed on Thursday 29 October from St Pancras to Orléans for the return journey of their French exchange. Students were eager to meet again with their French partners who had stayed in their home for a week and subsequently attended The IMUN conference. All families were extremely welcoming and enjoyed hosting our group. I heard that a spooky Halloween party was also organised especially for the group by one of the families. As a group, we enjoyed the visit of the Chateau de Chambord, the most extravagant and prestigious Chateau in the Loire Valley built by François 1er. Also, students attended lessons in the Lycée Saint Charles which ironically they were not as enthusiastic about! On Tuesday before catching the Eurostar back, we got the opportunity to visit some parts of Paris such as Boulevard Hausseman for the shopping, the Opéra Garnier and Montmartre with the Sacré Coeur. All fun had by all and I know the French and British students will keep in touch and are already planning to see each other again on either side of the Channel!
From the Sport Department Football
The 1XI made it 9 wins out of 9 with a 2-0 away win against City of London – affecting some revenge after losing to City in the semi-finals of the ISFA National sixes in the summer.
Our 2, 3 & 4XI recorded narrow defeats to City of London.
Hockey
On Wednesday our U13 A-D teams welcomed Lingfield Notre Dame for some thrilling matches. The A team showed great effort, with Saffron Wood returning from an injury, coming back after a 0:1 at half time to equalize. Dominating the match, they created chance after chance but could not find their way into the goal. The 1:1 draw is an impressive result against a strong opponent.
The B and C team showed great improvements but were unlucky in losing some tough games. Celebrating a 3:0 win, the D team not only kept a clean sheet but scored amazing goals and their first ever penalty corner!
We are now facing Alleyn's and Lingfield next week.
Boys’ House Sport
Oxford returned to ‘winning the swimming’ in last night’s excellent boys’ gala. St Andrews were 2nd, Keable 3rd, just two points in front of Cambridge, Madden were 5th.
Zambian national record holder Raffy Ryder (Oxford) was the only swimmer to set a new school record in the senior boys 100m freestyle of 57.95 seconds. This also cemented his position at the top of the swimming hall of fame, beating his own record, set last year, by almost 2 seconds!
Oxford remain in the overall lead on 66 points, St Andrews are 2nd on 58, 3rd on 45 are Keable, while Madden lead Cambridge by 1 on 29 points.
Next week it is the junior boys’ indoor football and the girls’ gala.
Netball
The girls have had a busy week back playing netball with home and away fixtures to St Dunstans! With a 50% win ratio the girls were close to winning 100%.
On Thursday, the U13's travelled to Farnborough Hill school for the National Cup. Their performance was superb and those who went to La Manga really put in to practise what they had learnt from the tour. The girls ended up winning 30-21 and proceed to the next round! Royal Russell now have two out of three teams in the last 16 nationally. A great performance by Player of the Match Jemima Longhurst and a good debut for two Year 7 players, Servaise and Rosharna.
This is very exciting time for the school and the girls are all working so hard to achieve even more! A quieter week next week, more time to train for the important matches ahead #keepitup
Action from Wednesday's GCSE PE lesson as the girls taught the boys some netball skills #ThisGirlCan @Royal_Russell
This photo also appeared on our Twitter feed, the place to catch up with the latest in Sport.
www.royalrussellsport.co.uk also has this Twitter feed and it's easy to get a desktop icon for a quick link!
