THE SKINNERS SCHOOL. Newsletter May 2016

THE SKINNERS’ SCHOOL Newsletter – May 2016 Skinners’ 1st XI and the MCC in front of the Nevill Pavilion at the conclusion of their match earlier in M...
Author: Herbert Bryant
68 downloads 0 Views 3MB Size
THE SKINNERS’ SCHOOL Newsletter – May 2016

Skinners’ 1st XI and the MCC in front of the Nevill Pavilion at the conclusion of their match earlier in May. The school held on for a comfortable draw, having been set a huge target of 271 to win. We remain unbeaten against MCC in four years.

HEADMASTER’ S FOREWORD Firstly, continued good luck to all taking exams over the next six weeks. GCSEs are well underway and A levels kick in properly next week. Secondly, as the end of the school year approaches, an update on staff news:

to thank them properly for their work at

Skinners’, but I am pleased by the obvious quality of their replacements, as I am of Russell Moore, currently teaching in London, who will join the Art department in

Janet Morris will be leaving at the end of the summer to take up a Science teaching post at

September in succession to Livia Tamburrini.

Reigate Grammar School. We have two Chemistry teachers joining us to replace her, Sarah Lowe and Ruth Tonkin. Sarah has recently been teaching at Weald of Kent Grammar School and Ruth at Cranbrook

Congratulations to Rob Hardy who has achieved the accolade of West Kent Science Teacher of the Year – thoroughly deserved of course!

School, having also worked here at Skinners’ (as Ruth Howard) a number of years ago. Charlotte Schillinger has been appointed as Head of History at the Bennett Memorial School from September; we will therefore be joined by Ross Montgomery, currently teaching History and Politics at the Howard

Parents will also be aware that Laurence Taylor’s freelance work with students as LAMDA coach ended at Skinners’ at the end of April. As this has proved popular, we are looking at options for the school to maintain this offer from September.

School, to replace her. Both Janet and

Charlotte are a significant loss to the school, and there will be time at the end of the year

Edward Wesson Headmaster

NEWS FROM THE ART DEPARTMENT The Art Department has had a productive time recently, with students visiting Tunbridge Wells International Art Fair where some of their work was exhibited, taking part in a printing workshop by Helen Brown, preparing for the annual GCSE & A level art Exhibition, a weekend in Berlin and designing for Skinners’ Hall. The visit to Berlin in January saw students visiting the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, The East Side Gallery, which is a section of The Berlin Wall, the Reichstag and Bauhaus Museum. On 17th March , five Skinners’ students took part in the Corpus Christi Skinners’ Company Art Project. The project was to design and build a themed ‘puppet’ for The Worshipful Company of Skinners’ annual election day celebration which includes their traditional ceremony of “Cocks and Caps” in London. Five unique puppets based on the Skinners’ 5 Cockayne Cups were commissioned to be made. The students worked with an artist Ana Driftmier: a fantastic opportunity. The cups, which were late 16th Century drinking vessels in the form of Golden Cockerels, were used in a performance following the ceremony. Pictured below is a design sketch and students working on the project.

TUNBRIDGE WELLS ART FAIR – WORK BY SKINNERS’ PUPILS

A LEVEL STUDENTS VISIT BERLIN

GCSE & A LEVEL ART WORK

PHILOSOPHY PROVING POPULAR AT SKINNERS' There has been a very sharp increase in students wishing to study A Level Philosophy and Ethics at Skinners' this year. Exam success at GCSE has been phenomenal in recent years and students wish to continue with the academic rigour of philosophical debate. The growing popularity may also, in part, be due to three very successful lectures from eminent philosophers, Peter Vardy, Michael Lacewing and Professor AC Grayling, organised by RS teacher and author, Fergus Cannan-Braniff. Vardy is a renowned philosopher of religion, while Grayling is a noted atheist. These polar opposites academics inspired our students to think critically and consider ethical principles. They taught them to question truth and contemplate our place and purpose in the universe. Lacewing, lecturing at the University of London, is an expert in moral psychology, metaethics and psychoanalysis. He captivated the boys' imagination through lateral thinking within a framework of complicated ethical dilemmas. In the past term we also saw two former Skinners' students, Jordan Wilkes and Richard Poole, now studying Philosophy at university, return to address our current cohort. Kevin O'Brien Head of Religion and Philosophy

Philosopher, Michael Lacewing, pictured with Skinners' Philosophy students

PHILOSOPHY STUDENTS RETURN TO SKINNERS’

Jordan & Richard (front centre) at the school

TWO former Skinners' students have given the current Lower Sixth a taste of university Philosophy via a stimulating masterclass. Richard Poole and Jordan Wilkes left us in 2015 and are currently studying Philosophy at York at UEA respectively. They studied Philosophy and Ethics at A Level at Skinners'. They talked about their experiences at university, complete with membership of societies and the rigorous demands of third level education. Richard and Jordan spoke about the numerous philosophical concepts they are studying at university, the difficult reading requirements and the demands of essay writing. They also spoke confidently of the varied career prospects open to those who study Philosophy and encouraged the Skinners' students to continue with the subject in A2. It was wonderful to welcome back the Skinners' boys who speak fondly of their time at Skinners’.

Philosopher, AC Grayling, chats with students Sam Breathwick and Josh Barker

Inaugural Len Goldsmith Lecture April saw the first Len Goldsmith Science lecture. Len had been Head of Science at Skinners', so it seemed entirely appropriate that one of his protégés, Professor Richard Holdaway CBE, should come to talk about "Exploring the Unknown". Professor Holdaway has worked in aeronautics and astronautics for over 40 years, in particular as Director of RAL Space, where he worked extensively with space programmes around the world including those involved with NASA, China, Russia, Europe and the UK. He was awarded a CBE in 2013 in recognition of his services to Space Engineering. It was fascinating to learn about the future of space travel from one of the world-leading experts in space technology. In addition, we were able to learn more about Len Goldsmith, an inspirational teacher at Skinners’, who inspired many pupils into Physics and Engineering, and how his legacy lives on at the school. Lukas Ratcliffe Year 13

James Puxty and Dan Seagrove had a good day recently in the Kent Athletics Championships. They finished 1st and 2nd in the U17 1,500m, in times of 4.13.18 & 4.13.43 respectively and both personal bests Pictured left are Dan (no. 313) and James (no. 311).

T R A C K & F I E L D

Junior Game Creators The Junior Game Creator club is an exciting new STEM initiative for the school. It takes place every Tuesday after school and gives Year 7 and 8 pupils the opportunity to become designers and creators of games rather than just consumers of them. There are currently 40 boys who are taking part in the 12 week program. Here are just a few of their comments:

'Amazing, fun to do, magical...' Luca Masoliver 'I've been learning scratch for over a year, and I'm still learning stuff!' Ziemowit Burningham

'This club is absolutely brilliant - I look forward to it every week.‘ Oliver Wynne 'It's great fun and I love being made to think about what I need to do next for it.' James Quill

'Amazing - best club ever!' Seb Martin Even if you don't know the first thing about how games are made, we can teach you! Soon you will be fluent in geek terms such as 're-mixing', 'back-packing' and beta-testing'!

We will be running the club again in the Autumn Term for anyone who has missed out and would like to get involved.

Mark Moody Head of STEM

Coding Club for Seniors – Droning About! Drones often get a bad press, but used correctly, have a big future ahead of them. The challenge we set the senior coders is to learn how to program the drones to complete a task, rather than using a generic remote-control to fly them where the user wants. This is the sort of technology NASA uses to remotely control their ‘rovers’ on Mars for example, and the first task was a simulation to learn to program our crawling and flying drones to pick up a sample then return to Mars base. The catch was that there was a 15 minute delay between sending the code and the drone receiving it, in order to represent the average time it takes for a signal to reach Mars from Earth. Therefore the boys had to calculate exact distances and times (to the nearest millisecond) 15 minutes into the future in order to avoid obstacles. The drones also had a fixed charge of fuel on board so careful planning was needed to make the mission as efficient as possible without running out of power part way; it was great fun and very realistic for the ‘pilots’ to realise the sort of problems NASA has controlling their remote surveyors. The second challenge was to program two drones to dance with each other to music – yes, really dance! Many bands such as ‘Muse’, are now using programmed drones (which look like big hovering globes) as part of their live act. This is achieved by playing the music through the laptop in advance. If you know the beats per minute for the song, then different moves can be selected at different

milliseconds of the song. The program is then sent to the drones (in a big concert there may be up to 12 giant hovering globe-drones), which will start shimmying, flipping and gliding in synchrony with the rhythm. It is a mesmerising sight: do a You Tube search to see for yourself.

Nathan Davey looks on to see if Fred Lynam’s code will work! Both the Junior and the Senior examples above typify the way in which computer coding is becoming an increasingly important part of the curriculum, and shows yet again how new technology is being embraced easily by the boys here at Skinners’.

SKINNERS’ REACH THE TOP IN CLIMBING COMPETITION A group of Skinners’ pupils recently took part in the BB Inter Schools climbing competition where the U16 team gained first place. For a full report please follow this link: http://www.boulderbrighton.com/news/inter-schools-comp-2016-reportresults

Tim Bell, School Architect and former Skinners’ pupil (1985 - 1992) recently participated in a London to Cannes charity bike ride - see below for a little more detail. Our charities committee were very pleased to be able sponsor Tim for his chosen charity, Coram, in the sum of £100 ( www.coram.org.uk ).