Welcome to the Second Year Blog!
This is our last blog of the spring term! We made it! Ahead of us lies the promise of chocolate eggs, cherry blossom, and plenty of cricket. This week we had the LEH and Hampton Design Innovation Challenge where Second Years worked in mixed teams to come up with a product to help teenagers sleep. Other delights included the joyful Spring Concert and a Talk! On Dr Who with two directors describing their experiences with monsters and villains through the last 50 years of the show. We had a flashing tardis in the cloisters all week but no one has time travelled (yet).
Wishing you all a super holiday!
MERIT MILESTONES
Another bumper week for merits! Well done to the following Second Years:
Joshua Aron – 10
Thomas Hintzen – 10
Peter Lomizov – 10
Peter Lomizov – 20
Thomas Hintzen – 20
Jack Perry – 20
Josuha Aron – 20
Macsen Brown – 20
Arik Kuzmis – 30
Shishir Vaddadi – 90 (excellent!)
Manav Krishna – 90 (fabulous!)
Siddhant Shetty – 100 (congratulations!)
Lion merits
Shishir Vaddadi – 10
Danyal Pasha – 10
Keyboard Festival Workshop
How to memorise your piano pieces?
As a part of Keyboard Festival, I attended a workshop session on memorising piano pieces. We learnt that it was much easier to memorise a smaller section of music hands separately or hands together than a bigger section of music. As for the left hand, which is usually made of quavers or semiquavers as broken chords, we wrote down the name of the chords just below the broken chord. For the right hand, which is usually the melody and is also quite repetitive, it should just stick in your head if you play it a few times, as the melody is the main tune and is easier to remember. Additionally, we wrote fingerings for every note in the right hand to make it easier to play. Overall, it was a fantastic experience and I found this session very useful.
By Oliver Y (2P)
Talk! On Dr Who
On Monday, I was lucky enough to go to the Doctor Who Talk!, hosted by two previous directors, Tim Combe and Jamie Magnus Stone. Tim Combe was an early director for the first three Doctors and directed two series, ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ and ‘Mind of Evil’. He then sadly stopped with Doctor Who as he went over the budget for ‘Mind of Evil’ when he used a helicopter in a scene.
The other speaker, Jamie Magnus Stone, is a more recent director who directed the first female Dr Who “Spyfall, part 1”, “Praxeus”, “Ascension of the Cybermen”, and “The Timeless Children”. Jamie Magnus Stone returned to direct Doctor Who for the thirteenth series, with the episodes “The Halloween Apocalypse”, “War of the Sontarans”, and “Village of the Angels”, as well as “The Power of the Doctor”. My personal favourite part of the talk was to see how Doctor Who had evolved from an early period to nowadays. Another fun part in the talk was learning the director’s favourite villains; it was the Master for Tim Combe and the Cybermen for Jamie Magnus Stone!
By Leon Y (2W)
Cricket Club
This week we had the final Cricket Club and were treated to a special indoor game in which we had to hit the ball into gaps then run. I was behind the stumps and had the job of catching the ball when the batter missed. This is especially important as you don’t want the batter to get an easy run if you drop the ball.
I’m very passionate about cricket and I loved going to these sessions. Next term we will finally enter the cricket season and I can start playing games then! I think that these sessions really helped my cricket and I will look back at these sessions fondly.
By Siddhant S (2J)
Lesson of the Week
In Design Engineering, we’ve just started a unit on Arduino, a small motherboard, which we program to take different inputs, like the amount of light received or whether a button has been pressed and give different outputs, like an LED (Light Emitting Diode) or a buzzer. Miss Woodward retaught us how to use Arduino IDE to program as well as how to write analogue and digital inputs and outputs. It was a fun lesson on how to use the boards and produce something interesting.
By Shishir V (2J)
LION PRINT COMPETITION
Looking for something to keep you busy over Easter?
Do you enjoy writing?
Are you a budding creative writer?
Do you currently have a draft in the works?
Submit your writing as part of Hampton School’s Creative Writing Competition. This competition is open to all year groups, new writers and wise wordsmiths. Top Entries will receive Merits. Winner and Runner Up with receive a Book Voucher!
The following themes are suggested, however alternatives are acceptable:
- Rebuilding
- Memories
- Hiding
And the genres you can submit are as follows:
- Micro-stories (approx.50 words)
- Prose (max. 1000 words)
- Poetry
- Dramatic monologue
- Scene from a play
To enter, email your entry to Miss Alexander in the English Department by 4pm on Tuesday 16 April 2024. Get your thinking caps!
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. Merits go to:
2J: Joshua A, David W, Siddhant S, Danyal P, Neil T
2F: Daniel S
2W: Siyul P, Laurie L-T, Benjamin J, Shiv V
2B: Joe B, Alex G, Sebastian W
2H: James G, Manilo C
2P: Oliver Y, Samrith S P, Bevan 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 quiz questions have a distinctly eggy theme and come to us from Alex P (2W)! Why don’t you have a go and enter your answers here.
Here are the answers to last week’s questions:
- Who played Dr Who in 2007? David Tennant
- How many Dr Who reincarnations have there been? 14
- How many women have played Dr Who? 2
- In what year did Dr Who start? 1963
- Who is the first villain to ever have appeared on Dr Who? Ka
