Welcome to the Second Year Blog!
This is my last blog of the term, and it comes with warm wishes for a happy Christmas to all Second Years and their families. Lunch breaks have been packed with interform events starting with badminton and table tennis, swiftly followed by volleyball and chess. This week we have a review of the Alumni Art Exhibition of work by old Hamptonians working in creative careers such as furniture design, architecture, and game design. We also hear from our quizzers who competed in their first quiz match of the year.
To get us all in the Christmas mood, we have a Christmas Carol Service at St Mary’s Church on Monday evening and the Chamber Choir will sing at our final assembly. If you haven’t already, take look at the school calendar full of cute photos of Harris, our School dog, it’s on sale with proceeds going to the form charities.
Don’t forget to dust off your Christmas jumpers for the last morning of school!
MERIT MILESTONES
Another bumper week for merits! Well done to the following Second Years:
Monty Roberts – 10
Willoughby Ewing – 10
Ekam Randhawa – 10
Charlie McNeil – 10
Huw Chapman – 10
Shiv Verma – 10
Ian Burguillos – 20
Inwoo Yoo – 20
Edison Yip – 20
Gabriel Knowles-Szuniewicz – 20
David Wu – 20
Alex Andre – 30
Alex Hodges – 40
Devam Kumarswami – 40
Jonty Gwynne – 40
Manav Krishna – 50 (Off to see Mr Knibbs!)
Siddhant Shetty – 50 (Fabulous!)
Armaan Virdee – 60 (Super!)
Alumni Art
In the Art Department there is currently an exhibition on past pupils’ work. I have walked around the exhibition quite a lot as my classroom is close by and so I have seen a lot of great creations. If you go look yourself, you can find architectural drawings, poster designs to a sculpture of a chair. The one that stood out to me the most was an artwork based on Alice in Wonderland. It was drawn by Momotaro Ushido but he was given ideas from other people as well. The drawing depicts a fantasy world with floating islands and portals which I found fun to look at. If you want to check it out yourself, it is to the end of the art corridor near the English department.
By Max G (2W)
Interform Action
It’s been a busy week of interform action, with competitions galore. On Monday, Second Year Hamptonians competed in Table Tennis and Badminton, with 2W being crowned victors in both competitions.
In the hotly-contested Basketball competition, it was 2H who emerged victorious. Take a look at some of the action from this week’s Interform Basketball competition:
There was also an interform Chess competition, with 2W being named champions. What a busy week!
Football Roundup
Benji J (2W) tells us about the most recent U13B football match:
On Monday, the U13B team went up against Radnor A team. We had lost or drawn our previous games and knew that this was THE one. The game was very tense from the start, but Hampton had the upper hand. Then, Tom P launched a shot from outside of the box but was stopped by the hand of a defender. Penalty. The penalty taker stepped up but sadly the shot was wide of the right post. The game ended at half time with a score of 0-0. The next half kicked off with a start when Tom P swung the ball in from the box and on to the head of me who did a diving header to head the ball into the back of the net from outside the 6 yard box. 1-0. In the dying embers of the game, Tom P tapped the ball in from close range. 2-0. The final whistle blew and we all rejoiced that the match had ended in a victory.
Fingers on Buzzers
Fred O (2B) is just one of the Second Year Hamptonians
Last week was the first round of the Junior National Quiz Competition for the First and Second Year A team. In this round, we took on King’s Worcester with our quizmaster being Miss Noble. The match was in the same format as the BBC TV programme University Challenge. In the beginning, we were neck and neck with the other team, and then they took a slight lead of 70-40. However, we then began to fire, answering question upon question correctly. Before we knew it, we were leading by 100 points. The questions were on a variety of topics from football (my personal favourite) to the English language, and we ended up winning with a final score of a whopping 490 points to Hampton and 250 points to King’s Worcester. Thank you to Mr Malston and Miss Noble for setting up a team for this competition. Let’s go and win the second round!
Junior Linguistics Club
Kavin W (2H) gives us an insight into Junior Lingusitics Club:
Last Wednesday, one of my friends persuaded me to try Junior Linguistics club. It is based on decoding types of text from a different ancient or current language and then translate it into English. I must admit, I was very reluctant to go as I did not really depict myself as a languages person, however, I really enjoyed it! There is a 2H clan of pupils who go and I met a group of Third Years who also go there. Last week, the text we had to decode was Inuit writing; we also played Quizlet and Blooket’s ‘Guess the language’ and, to my surprise, I won one of the games! For pupils who enjoy cracking codes or decoding foreign languages, I would recommend coming to S30, where it is held by Miss Winstock at 1:10 every Wednesday!
Get off your phone!
The screen time experiment over the last two weeks was interesting and two of our Second Year forms were winners. Congratulations to 2J and 2P for reducing their usage significantly and taking time to be with family and friends.
Evensong
Ekam R (2B) shares his experience of performing Evensong with the Hampton choristers in the beautiful setting of Queen’s College at the University of Oxford:
I wanted to share my experience performing at Queen’s College Oxford with the Chamber Choir. The choir had a lunchtime rehearsal in the second half of lunch and when the bell rang for afternoon registration, we got on a coach and set off for Oxford. After a two-hour journey, with extremely comfy seats, we arrived in an marvellous castle-like building which was surprisingly modern almost like an extravagant hotel inside. We rehearsed for about an hour and a half, fuelled by sandwiches and Freddos.
The concert was exhilarating, and I sang three songs, one with the Consort of Voices, and two with the Chamber Choir including my personal favourite choral song EVER! ‘Evening Carol’. After some terribly timed voice cracks and more glorious high notes, before we knew it, the concert had ended.
Christmas Concert Rehearsals
Tonight is the Christmas Concert, which we were all looking forward to. I was involved in the ROAR!’s rehearsal of the Circle of Life from the Lion King. We practised the song many times and I am one of the chosen people to sing the solo at the beginning. I really enjoy singing this song because the melody is really beautiful and it’s also a song from one of the most famous Disney films, so it was very familiar to me. We are also singing Come and See the Child in the Carol Service, which is on next Monday. Thanks very much to all the Music Staff for arranging this concert and I definitely enjoyed it a lot.
By Oliver Y (2P)
Meet Mrs Kirby
Our weekly interviews are a great opportunity for you to find out a little bit more about your Tutors! So, thank you to Shiv V (2W) who interviewed Mrs Kirby, Art teacher and one half of 2W’s tutor team!!
What are you looking forward to about Christmas?
I am looking forward to having a slower pace to the day mainly! We also have a tradition in our family where we go to a show in London on Christmas Eve then have a meal. We have seen some amazing productions. A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic has been a favourite as it really puts you in a Christmassy mood. I am also interested in stage set design and am fascinated to see how the designers use the stage in creative ways and use minimal means to make entirely different scenes. One of the most memorable was the Royal Ballet production of Alice in Wonderland where the Queen of Hearts is wheeled on inside a huge 10 feet tall red dress.
What was your favourite subject at school apart from Art?
My focus was always art, but I enjoyed physics and maths. I took O Levels, which dates me a bit! I always planned to do art later in life in some shape or form. One thing I wish I had had at school is the facilities and equipment we enjoy here.
What do you like to do on a Saturday afternoon?
I like to relax, especially going to Bushy Park for a calming walk, or swimming in Hampton Pool. At the weekend I tend to be running around taking my children to some kind of sport or social event/fixture. We are also doing up an old house at the moment, so I am also usually sorting something out for that. Who knew looking for taps could be so time consuming!
What’s your favourite comfort food?
I love most food. My comfort food is chocolate. I have given it up for 100 days in the lead up to Christmas as I eat FAR too much of it. As a treat I buy fancy chocolates form Melt in Notting Hill, but my most memorable chocolate was bought home by my husband who worked with the granddaughter of a Belgian Chocolatier. I have never tasted anything so perfect and it was just simple large ‘buttons’ of chocolate.
What is your favourite Christmas film?
When I was young there were the ‘usuals’ on TV – The Sound Of Music, It’s A Wonderful Life, and disaster movies like The Towering Inferno (not Christmassy at all!) Not sure which is a favourite but I did have to sit through The Wizard of Oz a lot…
What art style do you like teaching?
What can I say? All art is exciting. I love teaching all of it and there are always new ways of using materials and techniques, it is just the BEST subject!
TUTOR QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Each week the pupils decide on a question to ask all the Second Year form tutors. This week we are still on the theme of films, but with a definite Christmassy feel.
If you could transport yourself into any Christmas film, which one would it be and WHY :
- Home Alone
- The Grinch
- Elf
- It’s a Wonderful Life
- Paddington
Mrs Whitwam and Mrs Kirby (2W) both chose Paddington. Mrs K loves the staircase with the tree mural.
Miss Winstock picked Elf for the epic snowball fights and ice-skating! Mrs Owen too because she too likes ‘maple syrup on everything!’ Where would you go?
SHOEBOX APPEal
Hamptonians spent the week organising, filling, and wrapping over 100 shoeboxes to donate to Solace Women’s Aid. Solace is a leading specialist charity in the UK supporting women and children experiencing domestic abuse. The lifesaving support that Solace provides to over 20,000 women, children and young people each year is so important. Each form donated items including stationary, toys, vital hygiene products, games and so much more. The donations will certainly make a huge impact on those in need and the life changing work that Solace do. On behalf of Form Charity and Solace, we would like to thank all Hampton staff and pupils for their valuable contributions to the shoebox appeal this Christmas.
Thank you to everyone who contributed!
SPECIAL SHOUT-OUTS
We love to hear about what you have been getting up to outside of school and to celebrate your successes in the Second Year Blog! Please do send any information about any of your achievements through to Mrs Whitwam v.whitwam@hamptonschool.org.uk
QUIZ OF THE WEEK
Well done to everyone who had a go at last week’s quiz. Big shout out to Form 2F with the most entries. Merits go to:
2J: Siddhant S, David W, Josh B, Henry S
2L: Armaan V, Rajvir S, Macsen B
2W: Anthony S, Dean B, Brooklyn N, Isaac d Q, Laurie L-T, Inwoo Y
2B: Joe B, Devam K, Alex G, Sebastian W
2H: James G, Jojo O’S, Kailan Y, Joshua L
2F: Adharsh A, Daniel S, Aiden F, Dean F, Oscar F, Yule O, Jack P
2P: Oliver Y, Samrith P, Sion K
Take a look at this week’s questions – have a go yourself or challenge people at home and see if they know the answer. Points for the Interform Competition will be awarded to the form with the most entries over the term.
This week’s brain-busting Christmas quiz questions come to us from Huw C (2W). Why don’t you have a go and enter your answers here.
Here are the answers from last week’s quiz:
What is the capital of Burkina Faso? Ouagadougou
Which country has been named happiest country in the world for the sixth time by the world happiness report? Finland
Who was the player of the tournament in this year’s cricket World Cup? Virat Kohli
What wonder of the world can be seen is located in Jordan? Petra
How many countries does the equator pass through? 13
