Welcome to the Second Year Blog!
This week we saw the welcome return of the grand Christmas tree in the main reception area, with everyone feeling festive and very much looking forward to the holidays! It was an energetic start to the week on Monday for our A Team rugby players, who were out competing for the Middlesex Cup! It’s also been a busy week in PSHE, with a live interactive alcohol awareness session, and group oracy presentations on freedom of speech and the right to privacy.
MERITS
Another brilliant long list of merit certificate winners!
Freddie Champion – 10
Owen Parker – 10
Harry Ellis – 10
Alessandro Cardinale – 10
Alex Constantas – 10
Archer Jones – 10
Freddie Thwaite – 10
Yuvraj Sahota – 10
Dylan McNamara – 10
Jack Youster – 10
Jathun Janagan – 10
Kiran Patalay – 10
Max Mudge – 10
Thomas Lincoln – 20
Matthew Chen – 20
Fabio Tapia Pulford – 20
Chris Challouma – 20
Azam Ahmad – 20
Alex Watson – 20
Alex Watson – 30
Joshua Chapman – 30
Arie Biju – 30
Ameya Mathur – 40
Aarush Jain – 40
Aditya Kirthivasan – 40
Joshua Ripon – 70 (WOW!!)
TEACHER INTERVIEWS
In a break from our Tutor Interviews, cricket fan Aadi (2L) interviewed Head of Cricket, Mr Banerjee!
What has been your proudest cricketing moment?
My proudest cricketing moment has been seeing boys playing for their clubs and performing for them.
What breakfast would you have pre-match?
Anything my mum cooks.
What is your favourite Indian dish?
Tandoori chicken.
What was your highest score when you played in the Ranji Trophy?
165 against the Air India team.
What advice would you give to a young cricketer?
To enjoy it and keep dreaming.
If you could have another chance at your cricketing life, would you do it?
Yes definitely!
Who is your favourite player at the moment in the world?
Kane Williamson.
What other sports do you like playing?
I like playing football and I’m learning how to play rugby with my son.
Straight drive or cover drive, which do you prefer?
Straight drive.
Name a bowler from an international team that you would have liked to face in your prime form?
I’d face Waqar Younis and Shane Warne in my prime form. I wouldn’t mind facing any fast bowler.
What was your pre-match routine?
Listening to music.
If you had to explain cricket to someone who had never played it, how would you put it in one sentence?
Watch the ball and hit it.
PSHE – SMASHED IT LIVE
On Monday we left our second period early for a course on alcohol misuse. The people who ran the event performed a play for us which included three actors. The play demonstrated how alcoholism can affect the life of a young teenager and can ruin their futures. After they finished their performance we were asked a few questions which we discussed as a class and typed the answers into the teams chat as it was online. We are very grateful to Mrs Halford for organising this event and if you want to know more you can visit their website https://www.smashedproject.org/ By Aarush (2J).
RUGBY FESTIVAL
This Monday, the U13A team rugby squad went to the Middlesex tournament to compete for the cup. The result was that……… they won the Middlesex cup!!! The squad did extremely well having beaten six teams and only conceding two tries! That day the tournament was split into two halves: the morning and the afternoon. In the morning, everyone was split into groups and all of the Hamptonians were hiding in the mini bus to keep warm! In their group, they had to play against Enfield Grammar School, St Benedict’s School and Latymer School. The U13A squad beat all three of these teams without losing a try and scoring many! Then right after they bundled up back into the minibus to eat lunch! Then in the afternoon, it got a lot harder with the top teams of the morning playing for the cup. The squad played very well, doing hard runs down the middle and spreading it wide and passing it around to get through the other teams’ defences. In the final match, we played once again against Halliford School and they wanted revenge for the Hamptonians previous victory against them. However, this didn’t stop the U13A squad from beating them with the score of 3-0 to Hampton. Finally, the Hamptonians were victorious and won the Middlesex Cup! Congratulations to Harry Drewry (the amazing captain), Stanley Amor, Cyril Bellamy, Fynn Adams, Aiden Hughes, Lucas Stynes Tres, Jack Holden (who did a cool slide when he scored a try and told me five times to include this in the blog), Elamaran Rasapaan, Fraser Kerr, Jack Usther, Alfred Hayes, Owen Parker, Harry Ellis, Tom Boardman and Sebastian Habdank Toczyski. And thanks to Mr Grey and Mr Beattie who were the coaches. We also got cool long coats for the day. Well played! By Lucas (2P)
On Monday the rugby team competed in the Middlesex Cup at St James’s School. When we arrived, the ground was covered in a thin layer of frost; so, at the kick-off of our first game against Latymer it was still very slippery. After great efforts from the whole team we beat them convincingly, then we did the same against St Benedict’s Bs. The final game of our group stage was against Enfield who had also won all their games, meaning that the winner would go through to the main cup in the afternoon. Following the general trend of our tournament so far, we won our group without dropping a try. After lunch we had to play three more games against all the other group winners. Our first game was against St Benedict’s A team where we dropped our first try but still won comfortably. Then in our next game against Gunnersbury we conceded another try. But that wasn’t enough to stop us, as we cruised through to the final against local rivals, Halliford. Since we had each won all our games the winner would lift the trophy. Tensions rose but after a close game we cleared the last hurdle winning three tries to nil and winning the Middlesex Cup in the process. It was a great effort from the entire squad, with the defence just as strong as the attack – according to SOCS we scored 45 tries and only conceded two. By Owen (2W)
Well done boys, what a fantastic result!
ESFA Round Up
Thanks to Alex W (2W) for a fantastic round up of the U13A football team’s run in the ESFA cup this season. Find out more in the Hampton Sports Chronicle here.
The team progressed to round five of the ISFA Cup this week with a 3-0 victory over St John’s School and play their fifth round ESFA match against Ravens Wood School on Monday. Good luck boys!
THE HISTORY OF ADVENT
December has begun! Hooray! I’m sure many of you, if not all have now got an advent calendar at home, and are leaping on to the chocolate/sweets every day until Christmas. But some people might wonder, why is there an advent calendar and why is it called that? In this blog I will explain.
What is Advent?
Advent is actually a Latin word which means ‘coming’. This is basically Jesus coming into the world. Christians use the four Sundays and the weeks of Advent to prepare for the real meaning of Christmas. Advent reminds Christians to prepare for the celebrations. Not just Christians but other religions celebrate Christmas too!
Why is there an Advent Calendar?
There is an Advent Calendar because, like I mentioned earlier, it is a countdown for Christians to prepare for celebrations and with a chocolate/sweet calendar, it makes it easier to remember and not lose track of proceedings. By Aditya. (2B)
THE HISTORY OF ELECTRIC CARS
If you were buying a car in 1899, you would have had three major options to choose from. You could have bought a steam powered car, typically relying on gas-powered boilers. These could drive as far as you wanted, so long as you carry extra water to refuel and don’t mind waiting 30 minutes for your engine to heat up. Alternatively, you could buy a car powered by gasoline. However, the internal combustion engines in these models required dangerous hand-cranking to start and emitted loud noises and foul-smelling exhaust while driving. So, your best bet was usually option number three: a battery powered electric vehicle. These cars were quick to start, clean and quiet to run, and if you lived somewhere with access to electricity, easy to refuel overnight. If this seems like a clear choice, you are not alone. By the end of the 19th century, nearly 40% of American cars were electric, with more in Europe. In cities with early electric systems, battery powered cars were a popular and reliable alternative to their competitors. But electric vehicles had one major problem. Batteries at that time were expensive and inefficient. Many genius inventors including Thomas Edison tried to optimise batteries, but to no avail. Others even built exchange stations in urban areas to swap out dead batteries for charged ones. But these measures were not enough to allow electric vehicles to make long trips. And at over double the cost of a gas-powered car, many couldn’t afford these luxury items.
At the same time oil discoveries lowered the price of gasoline, and new advances made internal combustion engines more appealing. Electric starters removed the need for hand-cranking, mufflers quietened engines and rubber mounts dissipated vibrations. In 1908, Ford released the Model T: a cheap, high-quality gas-powered car that captured public imagination. Before long, the number of electric cars on the road plummeted to some experimental or special purpose vehicles. However, in the 1970s, the tide began to turn, as concerns renewed interest in alternative energy sources. And studies in the 1980s linked car emissions to smog in cities like Los Angeles encouraging governments and environmental organisations to bring back electric vehicles. By this point, car manufacturers had spent decades improving internal combustion engines and not solving the century old battery problem. But other companies were developing increasingly efficient batteries for a new wave of portable electronics. By the 1990s, energy dense nickel hydride batteries were on sale soon followed by lithium ion. Alongside regulatory mandates in Western countries to reduce smog, these innovations sparked the creation of new electric vehicles, including hybrid cars. Hybrids aren’t really electric vehicles, instead they use electricity to optimise the burning of petrol. However, in 2008, Tesla Motors went further, grabbing the attention of consumers, automakers and regulators with its lithium ion battery Roadster. This truly electric vehicle could run for 320 kilometres on a single charge, almost doubling the previous record. Since then electric vehicles have vastly improved in cost, performance, efficiency and availability. They can accelerate faster than gas powered cars while reliably saving their drivers money in the long run. As governments worldwide focus on stopping climate change, electric vehicles are now expected to replace gas powered ones altogether. Currently, mandates and standards in America and EU have dramatically slowed investments in gas powered vehicles worldwide. Soon, electric cars will reclaim their place on the road, putting gasoline in the rear view. By Kanishk (2W)
ACHIEVEMENTS
Well done to Adrian (2P) who recently won a very tricky sounding maths competition! Thank you to Adrian for telling us more about it below:
This weekend, I had a chance to attend a Team Maths Battle, which happened on Saturday 27 November. It was hosted by UCL (University College London) in central London. These battles are supposed to be between schools, and my team of eight was representing the London School of Mathematics and Programming, which hosts coding and maths that clubs I go to.
I did not know exactly what to expect from the battles as I only participated in individual competitions in the past, but for me it was a great experience and challenge. This is mainly because I was asked to be the Captain of our team, which was more difficult than I imagined.
As the Captain, I had to select tasks for another team from a list of maths challenges. That was a hard task as I had to think deeply if another team would be able to solve the problem or not. One of the ways I did this is by trying to find little details in the task that the other team would have forgotten to put in their solution, making their solutions more likely to be wrong. I was also helping my team solve the problems they got from the other team, by helping them start going in the right direction to solve the problems, or explaining to them how their solutions were wrong and helping them then get the right solution.
I spent the whole afternoon at UCL, learning about how battles work, having the battle, and then enjoying a talk while waiting for the awards ceremony. You probably want to know how my team did. And yes, indeed my team won by a large margin with four times the score of the opposing team, so it was an extra rewarding experience. I am sure that if Hampton School attended the competition, we would definitely win!
NEWS – Ballon D’Or Award Result
By Joshua (2B)
As many of you are aware the results for the Ballon d’Or were announced on Monday night. There was a lot of criticism from people after the result was announced. The winner was Lionel Messi, for a second year in a row. However, he came under criticism from lots of people who felt Robert Lewandoski deserved to win it. Others, like Jurgen Klopp, felt that Mohamed Salah rightfully deserved it and he was the best striker in the world. Another player that disagreed with the decision to award the Ballon d’Or to Messi was Tony Kroos. Speaking on his podcast, he said: “It’s absolutely not deserved.” When Messi came up to give his speech, he said that Lewandoski deserved his Ballon d’Or and that last year everyone had agreed that Lewandoski was the rightful winner.
Stats for comparison:
LEWANDOSKI scored 53 goals in all competitions for Bayern in 2021 and was awarded the Striker of the Year prize.
MESSI scored 40 goals in 2021 – 28 for Barcelona, four for PSG and eight for Argentina.
Ballon d’Or results
- Lionel Messi
- Robert Lewandowski
- Jorginho
- Karim Benzema
- N’Golo Kante
- Cristiano Ronaldo
- Mohamed Salah
- Kevin de Bruyne
- Kylian Mbappe
- Gianluigi Donnarumma
WEEKLY QUESTIONS
Welcome to the Weekly Questions! Every week, we’ll post 10 general knowledge questions, and, if you have a go, you can be awarded a merit if you send your answers to Miss Kugele (r.kugele@hamptonschool.org.uk)! This week’s questions have been set by Joshua and Ben (2J)
- Where does the word ‘Advent’ come from?
- What is the philosophy or religion that rejects the fundamental aspects of human existence?
- What is the third book of the Old Testament?
- What is the current Islamic Year during 2021?
- What is the full name of the person who came up with the character of Candide?
- When was the Golden Temple in Amritsar completed?
- What was Descartes’ famous quote about Cartesian Doubt?
- Which Hindu Gods make up the Trimurti?
- What is the order of colours and themes of Advent candles on a typical advent wreath?
- What are the four pillars of philosophy?
Here are the answers to last week’s questions:
- How many times has Andy Murray won Wimbledon playing singles? 2
- What year was Heinz established? 1869
- In Harry Potter, what is the name of The Weasley’s house? The burrow
- What’s a baby rabbit called? A kit
- How many Olympic gold medals does Sir Mo Farah have? 4
- What flag is this? Seychelles
- What does the AC button on a calculator stand for? All clear
- What’s the biggest animal in the world? Blue whale
- What is the capital of Uruguay? Montevideo
- What is the name of the main antagonist in the Shakespeare play Othello? Iago
