TUNBRIDGE WELLS GIRLS’ GRAMMAR SCHOOL

Creative Design by Hannah Billett and Phoebe Stewart

It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the TWGGS review for 2015-16, a fitting celebration of some of the diverse activities and trips which have extended girls’ learning opportunities this year. I am sure you will agree that it has been, once again, a busy, successful and happy year! Linda Wybar, Headteacher

2015 2016

ARTS AWARD

Over 90 Year 8 pupils were successful in passing their Bronze Arts Award and 20 Year 9 pupils gained the Silver Arts Award and produced some lovely projects in their areas of speciality ranging from art, music, photography, textiles, creative writing, drama, cake-decorating and dance. A huge thank you to Miss Johnson for leading the Award, and to the teacher-advisors who supported the girls.

CCF

WWII DESTROYER

SURVIVAL CAMP

This was another action-packed year for our school contingent with activities ranging from specialist courses in mountaineering and iceclimbing, First Aid competitions, joint operations with contingents from other schools, range days, fieldcraft, shooting, survival weekends, a trip down into the underground tunnels at Dover Castle, a bridge-building challenge at the Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham and an overnight stay on a World War II Destroyer at Chatham Dockyard. We are particularly proud of our smart, welldrilled cadets who took part in the Tunbridge Wells Town Remembrance Day Parade and who behaved with impeccable discipline during this prestigious and solemn public memorial. The highlight of the year, as usual, was the week-long annual camp which saw over 40 cadets of all ages and 8 officers heading off to Penally, Wales for a challenging week of activities which included inter-contingent competitions, shooting and an overnight expedition.

FIRST AID COMPETITION

REMEMBRANCE PARADE

ANNUAL CAMP

GEOGRAPHY The Sixth Form Geography trip to Iceland was a huge success with 50 girls and staff braving the extreme temperatures in order to be able to appreciate the incredibly diverse landscape which took them from warm geysers to icy peaks.

ICELAND

YEAR 9 COLOGNE TRIP

GERMAN

Year 10 German pupils had a highly memorable and enjoyable stay with their partners at the Clara-Fey Gymnasium in Bad Godesberg. During the week they not only had the opportunity to speak the language but also enjoyed days out visiting the area and learning more about German culture; especially the Haribo factory.

91 girls were lucky enough to spend 3 days in Germany visiting the world-famous Christmas markets, tasting the local delicacies and trying out their German. They enjoyed seeing the cathedral, the Museum Ludwig and even entertained the passengers on the Rhine River Cruise with a rendition of “Lasst uns froh und munter sein”!

YEAR 10 EXCHANGE TO BONN

DEBATE

Debaters from all age groups surpassed themselves this year. Eve Drysdale and Mariam Ahmed won the King’s School competition in Canterbury, Eve and Rachel Weatherley qualified for Oxford Finals and 3 teams competed at the International Competition for Young Debaters Finals Day. Eve and Charlotte Martin were English Speaking Union’s Regional Champions in the Mace competition and Hannah Naismith, Elise Overd and Imogen Ellis won the Public Speaking Competition. We qualified for the Debating Matters Regional Finals and came an amazing second amongst over 400 teams in the Public Speaking event at Cambridge.

DRAMA Drama continues to thrive with well-attended events performed by pupils from across the school. The GCSE and AS pupils were praised for their hard work; the A Level devised pieces were shockingly well-presented; and the Sixth Form Drama Prefects led the Year 7 Drama Club members in a superb Teatime Theatre production of Roald Dahl’s gruesome stories.

A LEVEL

AS LEVEL

GCSE

GRIMM TALES

We ended another highly successful year with the L6 summer production of Grimm Tales of which the girls should be incredibly proud.

YEAR 8 SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL Year 8 form groups worked hard in preparation for the Shakespeare Festival and should be proud of their performances; 8T Midsummer Night’s Dream’, 8I ‘Macbeth’, 8G ‘The Tempest’, 8S ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and 8W who were overall winners with ‘Hamlet’.

YEAR 9 DRAMA FESTIVAL

The Year 9 Drama Festival demonstrated the talent and successful teamwork of the individual, form groups who were patiently supported and encouraged by their teachers from the Drama and English Departments. Each performance received highly positive feedback from our adjudicator, Mr Ian Drysdale, and the overall winner was 9I with ‘The Roses of Eyam’.

20 Sixth Formers set off during The Design Festival week, sketch books in hand, to spot new design talent at one of the longest running contemporary design events, the 100% Design Exhibition at Olympia.

DESIGN TECHNOLOGY

Year 9 Christmas Bakeoff competition winners enjoy trip to the Rhokett Desserts factory to see how their delicious food is created and sample some lovely recipes.

One of the best A2 Design and Technology projects: a model of a shelter to house a small art collection situated on a vacant plot of land in Camber Sands, with a promotional leaflet and ticket, by Hannah Davis.

A superb AS Design and Technology project to create a promotional item: a box for a USB pen as a free gift for the launch of a new range of interactive curved televisions and to raise brand awareness, by Hannah Billett.

Congratulations to Francesca Johnson who took 1st place and Francesca Stevens for Highly Commended in the TechSoft 2D Design Competition for their lamp projects.

L6TH SKI

40 lucky Lower Sixth and teachers headed out to Killington, Vermont for a superb week of skiing followed by an amazing two day trip to New York, which included the obligatory shopping and plenty of sightseeing.

Lies, half-truths and deceptions seemed to be the unofficial theme of the Carnegie shortlist for 2016. With books covering issues ranging from historical school segregation, gender issues, war, arson, divorce, alien invasion, child-snatching, to conjoined twins and death, the Carnegie panel certainly set the bar high again. But we love a challenge and thoroughly enjoyed reading and discussing all the books. At our annual Carnegie Shadowing Debate, on 15th June, our biggest Carnegie book group ever (over 60 girls) then relished the opportunity to defend their favorite book in a fierce debate in mixed teams including pupils from Skinners’, SKA and TWGSB. And, true to the theme, the pupils’ favorite Carnegie book 2016 turned out to be Robin Talley’s “Lies We Tell Ourselves”. It seems that sometimes lies do pay off……what a dangerous idea.

ENGLISH

CARNEGIE SHADOWING

SCIENCE POETRY COMPETITION

SIXTH FORM POETRY WORKSHOP WITH TEMPLE GROVE ACADEMY

POETRY PARTY

Third year of success for TWGGS budding creative writers – TWGGS wins 4 slots in National Short Story Week Young Writer 2016 competition (again!) The TWGGS creative writers were on a roll; for the third year running we scooped a number of prizes in the 2016 National Short Story Young Writer competition. The entries for this year’s theme, “The Lie”, by Amber Lahdelma, Charlotte Morgan and Lara Cumming in Year 8, as well as Katie Chatfield, Year 7, will be published in the anthology. We already know that we have a lot of creative literary talent in our school but it is rewarding to have that externally validated.

SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Poetry Party 2016 treated an enthusiastic audience of parents, relatives, friends, teachers and pupils to some of the best poetry from TWGGS girls and also many of the local primary schools. The theme for the TWGGS poetry competition 2016 was “Space” and there were close to 300 entries; winners and runner-ups from several categories were selected by Dr Jennifer Cooke, published poet and Senior Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. We began with the winners of the Science competition and then for the school poetry competition Dr Cooke, spoke about each poem, explaining what had particularly impressed her and led to them being the winning poems. The poets read their poems superbly and the standard was highly impressive.

TEEN BOOK AWARDS South East Schools Teen Book Awards – The 10th Anniversary Gala Evening South East School Themed Book Awards, of which we are a member, celebrated its 10th Anniversary with a fantastic Gala Evening at Kent College, Pembury. The theme , “First Impressions – Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover”, had been as challenging and wide-ranging as any we have had and and the award went to “Stargirl” by Jenny Spinelli, and Malorie Blackman’s “Boys Don’t Cry”. Authors Sally Gardner and Tim Bowler talked about creative writing and its challenges and inspired and motivated our girls to continue with their reading outside the book group. And, on a final note, we were very pleased that the winner of the SESTBA 10th Anniversary Bookmark Competition was Lara Cummings, Year 8, whose bookmark design will now be used on the official SESTBA merchandise. Congratulations Lara!

World Book Day 2016 proved once again that the girls at TWGGS are not just brilliant academically, but have real talent and flair for creative projects, too. Like every year we invited our Year 7 girls and staff to celebrate World Book Day by dressing up as a character from a novel. We saw book characters as diverse as Alice in Wonderland with Rabbit and the Mad Hatter, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Peter Pan and Wendy, a Manga Ice Queen, and a collection of wonderful characters from the Hunger Games books. But most imaginative and impressive was Arabella Smalley who had turned herself into a book about her own life and won the Best Individual Costume Prize for her effort.

WORLD BOOK DAY

MATHS FUN DAY

The whole of Year 7 enjoyed a fun-filled day of maths, with music events, code-breaking, tessellation challenges and rocket building thanks to the help of Mr Speller from the Physics Department.

MUSIC

LEAVERS’ CONCERT

It is a real pleasure to see such genuine enjoyment in music and enthusiasm for taking part in choirs and orchestras throughout the year; well-attended Junior Concerts, the Year 7 Festival, smaller year-group performances, Speech Day, KS3 Awards Ceremony and the annual Christmas concert left audiences impressed by the talent and commitment of our musicians and singers. Thanks to Mr Corse, the staff choir is going strong with regular performances, some of which are even arranged by our very own choirmaster himself. Regulars are all grateful for his leadership, hard-work and patience.

JUNIOR CONCERT

YEAR 7 MUSIC FESTIVAL

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

CROSSCOUNTRY

Congratulations to the team of 12 runners who competed in the Knole Junior Run and to those who joined our intermediate and senior competitors at the regional and national cross country finals.

GEORGIE GRANT

We are so very proud of our Triathlon Team, Miss Fischer, Mrs Freeman and Miss Grove who raised over £1,300 for our Ghana Education charity. Further donations gratefully received on https:// www.justgiving.com/ fundraising/TWGGS-TeacherTeam

Another incredibly successful year for rower Georgina Grant who was nominated The Courier’s “Sports Personality of the Year”, represented Great Britain at the World Junior Championships in Rio, came first in the GB Junior Long Distance Trial, attended Team GB Junior Potential Camp in Spain and was a medal winner in Munich.

GHANA FUNDRAISER TRIATHLON

STAFF WIMBLEDON

Staff Wimbledon proved highly popular this year – or was it all about the strawberries and cream? Congratulations to the winning doubles partnership: Mr Russell and Mr Speller.

U15s WEST KENT SCHOOLS’ LEAGUE CUP WINNERS

SOUTH EAST KENT SCHOOL GAMES FINALISTS

U12 SUPER 8’S ATHLETICS FINALISTS

SAILING SUCCESS FOR ELLA LANCE

PSYCHOLOGY ZIMBARDO LECTURE

London Psychology lecture with Professor Phillip Zimbardo: 88 Psychology pupils attended an A Level Conference in London, where they were lucky enough to meet Professor Phillip Zimbardo in London, who was lecturing on the human capacity for heroism.

SAFE

SAFE Mental Health Ambassadors Congratulations to the 20 Lower Sixth girls who completed their training and for their work across the school in raising awareness of mental health issues.

SILVER DUKE OF EDINBURGH

34 Year 11 girls navigated, hiked and camped their way around the New Forest in groups to successfully complete the expedition section of their Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award. Congratulations to the girls for overall completion of the Award and thanks to Mr Breeze and his team for supporting the walkers.

WORLD LANGUAGES DAY

20 Year 8 pupils were selected to spend the day with other schools at the University of Kent World Languages Day, where they enjoyed creative workshops in salsa dancing, theatre in Spanish and French, taster sessions in Japanese and Russian and a competitive language quiz.

SPANISH

A-LEVEL TRIP TO ANDALUCÍA

40 girls studying A Level Spanish spent an amazing week with their teachers on a cultural tour of Andalucía in February. They made the most of every opportunity to try the delicious food, found the time for some shopping and were reportedly genuinely inspired by the amazing sights of Málaga, Córdoba,

SPANISH EXCHANGE

For the Spanish Exchange this year, 28 girls had the experience of living with their Spanish host families in and around the town of El Escorial in northwest Madrid. During the week they had the opportunity to explore the historical sites in El Escorial and they visited Madrid and Segovia.

YEAR 7 CARROTY WOOD

All the Year 7 pupils got the chance to know each other and their tutors at the beginning of the year during an activity day at Carroty Wood. They had great fun abseiling, climbing, team building, mountain biking and doing team-building challenges.

YEAR 9 DEVON TRIP

Year 9 had a great week in Devon; water-skiing, surfing, crabbing, ribriding, abseiling, climbing, canoeing, tunnelling and team-building. The weather was lovely, and the girls had a superb week with staff.

BUSINESS ENTERPRISE DAY

The focus of Year 10 Business Enterprise was to establish a catering company to host an extravagant dinner in celebration of the Queen’s 90th birthday. Teams worked efficiently and cooperatively in order to meet deadlines, which involved composing business cards, producing a brand logo, a finance sheet and ultimately a short presentation to persuade the judges that their company was the best. The day was both challenging and immensely fun, bridging the gap between the world of business and school life. Here is the proud winning team.