Welcome to the Fourth Year Blog!
It has been a very busy half term for our Fourth Years here at Hampton. They have shown great enthusiasm in joining the Hampton ‘House of Commons’ for its first few sessions; there have been some superb debating skills on show! Interform Rowing was a prime example of the friendly competitiveness which the form groups share, whilst the round-up from our hard-working team of newsletter writers also includes Mr Blachford’s innovative and popular ‘El Cuerpo’ Spanish lesson, some electric and unforgettable performances at the Rock Concert and the latest from our U15 Rugby sides. Mr Leafe would like to thank Zaidan, Monty, Gabriel and Harresh for their efforts in creating the Newsletter which follows.
Hampton ‘House of Commons’
The Hampton House of Commons is now in session! Zaidan A (4G) tells us about an exciting new club which launched this half term:
This half term, as Hamptonians began to get into the swing of things again, a new club joined the fold of the extensive list of opportunities offered here at our school. The Hampton ‘House of Commons’ provides all year groups a chance to engage in British Parliamentary-style debate and negotiation. Debates focus on salient issues ranging from inflation to the imbalance of wealth in our society; all of which have been tackled with conviction and a common-sense attitude. However, anything is possible in the Hampton House of Commons. When I attended last week, I was met with a Conservative-Labour coalition as the serving majority – how unusual! Moreover, the Lecture Theatre is not short of any political drama as a tie-breaking vote foiled the Tories’ plan to pass revolutionary legislation on public school funding. If you enjoy debate and politics, I wholeheartedly recommend that you come along for a try!
U15 Rugby Roundup
Monty S (4A) tells us all about the exploits of our rugby teams in their final game of the season:
After an up-and-down season for Hampton’s U15 Rugby sides, they prepared and trained hard for the final game of the 15-a-side season against St Benedict’s. On an early and rather cold Saturday morning, the teams were ready for their final game. For the As, the game started off superbly with Leo L scoring a superb try of power and pace which ended in the corner flag being snapped clean in half; thankfully, Leo emerged without injury! The B team also started off well with some quickfire tries against their opponents. The U15A side continued their run, scoring a further two tries before a powerful pick-and-go from one of the St Benedict’s players to put the score to 21-7 by half-time. The second half was much of the same fortune for both teams as the Bs continued their flow of points from tries and conversions and the As held their defensive line and cut through with quick passing. The B team were clearly no match for their opponents and finished the game with a whopping score of 57-0. The A team also finished the game with a win: 42-7. Huge credit must go to the performance from winger Leo L, who scored a hat-trick of tries. What a superb showing from the As and Bs and a great way to finish the season. Now on to 7’s!
‘El Cuerpo’
There have been lots of exciting lessons for Fourth Year Hamptonians this half term. Gabriel K (4E) tells us about a Spanish lesson with Mr Blachford.
Unsuspecting of the exciting lesson planned for the day, the class entered – curious – as to why there were bandages and Doctors’ equipment ready in a corner at the front of the class. This half term, we are studying ‘El Cuerpo’ (meaning ‘The Body’ in English) and, midway through the lesson, suddenly the bandages and eye-patches were out. The fun started when Mr Blachford handed out a speaking transcript which we had to re-write based on the illnesses or injuries we had, according to where the bandages or plasters were placed. An ‘injured patient’ paired up with a ‘Doctor’ at the front of the class and spoke for a few minutes about their injuries and how they could be treated. Teachers and pupils walking past the classroom looked across, wondering how every pupil in the class had sustained an injury! The lesson was extremely enjoyable and taught us a lot about the topic we are learning about. Despite the classroom being filled with laughter, the conversations in Spanish were great and the whole class agreed that we had learned a lot of useful information.
Rock Concert
Eddie H (4G) was just one of our Fourth Years who took to the stage at the recent Rock Concert, let’s hear how he got on:
On Friday 27 January, the eagerly-anticipated Rock Concert took place in the Hammond Theatre, seeing a wide range of acts across all year groups. The show opened with some live mixing of Starboy, performed by Alex T, before the first act featuring Fourth Years took to stage in the form of the Intermediate Rock Band, including Ethan Q, Avi B, Louis W, Felix L, Ruben B-R and Eddie H, performing ‘The Bends’ by Radiohead and ‘Ace of Spades’ by Motorhead. This was followed by Will M’s guitar rendition of ‘Master of Puppets’ by Metallica on guitar. The tempo was slightly lowered but kept high nevertheless by the next two bands with Last Minute Monkeys and Deadline performing ‘R U Mine?’ and ‘Pressure’ and ‘Time’ respectively, with the latter featuring once more Ruben B-R, the first of three Fourth Years to feature in multiple acts. Threerepublics dropped the tempo once more with ‘Apologize’, before ‘Dogman in Dogtown’ rocked the audience. This was then followed by Conglomeration, the penultimate act before the interval, with the returning Ethan Q and Eddie H being accompanied by Ewan M, performing ‘Californication’. The Second Year Junior Rock Band ended the first act in style, performing two classics: ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ and ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’. The second act was opened by Snail Chase, performing ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’, followed up by Charlie D’s performance of the pop ballad ‘When I Was Your Man’. Falling Into Existence followed this up with another crowd favourite in the form of ‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police. Scatter then performed the song ‘Get Out Of Here’ written by their frontman, Felix VdG. The final Fourth Year act followed, with Arun B, Arjan W, Pablo B, Oliver P and Oscar L, under the name Nova, performing the popular hit ‘I’m Still Standing’ by Elton John. Daniel T returned to stage to perform the Rock ‘n’ Roll classic ‘Johnny B. Goode’, by the father of the genre himself Chuck Berry. Braekglasinkasov followed this up with a performance of ‘Fire’ by legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, before the other Junior Rock Band took to stage as the penultimate act of the night, performing rock classics ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. The show was ended in spectacular fashion by the Senior Rock Band, performing together for the final time. Their three songs were ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, ‘Everlong’ and ‘People Say I’m Over the Top’ by Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters and Royal Republic respectively. The latter ended with every member of the band taking to the drums to perform together one last time. All in all, the Rock Concert was – as always – performed to a very high standard, with all acts putting together excellent performances to make the night one to enjoy.
Catch up on some of the highlights from this year’s Rock Concert:
Interform Rowing
Competition was fierce at this week’s Fourth Year Interform Rowing competition. Hats off to Form 4D on their well deserved victory!
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
It was fantastic to see some of our Fourth Year Hamptonians treading the boards in this year’s Junior Musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Well done to Arun B (4C), Ryan C (4D), Aleks L (4B) and Arjan W ( 4C) on their superb performances across the week.
Take a look at some of the fantastic photos from the show:
UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO)
Harresh J (4J) tells us about a recent competition he took part in at School:
The UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO) is a brilliant challenge for keen linguistic enthusiasts or really anyone who is interested in languages. It involves finding patterns in the foreign languages and their English translations to work out grammar rules, vocabulary and – as a result – full sentences. In this year’s Olympiad, there were a range of interesting languages, including Albanian, k’iche’ (Guatemalan), Lardil (Australian) and others. In total, there were five languages to translate and two-and-a-half hours to complete the task in. At the start, I was hopeful of finishing at least three of them; however, as time ticked on, I realised that this would be much harder than expected. Fortunately, there are three difficulty levels: breakthrough, intermediate and advanced. We did the advanced one in this year’s version, but all the other difficulties are available for practice on the UKLO website. As time came to an end, I was happy with what I had completed. I would highly recommend the UKLO to anyone interested in languages or anyone who likes to decode puzzles with a logical approach.
