Welcome to the Second Year Blog!
Welcome back, Second Years! I hope you all had a happy, restful Easter break and managed to enjoy some quality time with friends and family – whether that was spent travelling further afield or relaxing a little closer to home. After three weeks away, it’s been lovely to see everyone back in school, refreshed and ready for the start of the Summer term.
This week has already been a busy one, with Parents’ Evening providing a great opportunity to reflect on progress and celebrate successes. There’s also plenty of excitement building ahead of next Friday’s ESFA football final, and it’s been lovely to hear so many of you talking about going along to support and cheer on your peers and it promises to be a memorable day, whatever the outcome!
Merit Milestones
A big shout out to the following Second Year Hamptonians:
James Stewart – 20
Diego Cubria-Garcia – 40
Jack Whyte – 40
Arjun Jammalla – 40
Zac Johnson – 50
Moksha Katamaneni – 60
Reyansh Krishnan – 70
Joshan Kalsi – 80
Ojas Prabhu – 80
Ethan Chen – 90
Back to School
After the Easter holiday, I woke up early on a Tuesday morning ready to start the Summer term at school. As I arrived at school, I was still a bit tired as I wasn’t used to waking up this early. When I climbed the stairs to get to my classroom, I saw many of my friends and talked about our Easter holiday. Many of my friends went to many different places during the holiday. As we went to our lessons, we learnt new things and I found the lessons interesting. In conclusion, coming back to school has been fun and exciting. I am looking forward to starting my summer sport which is rowing.
By James C (2H)
Spring Concert
Just before the Easter Holidays it was a pleasure to be part in a few of the many talented ensembles at Hampton in the fantastic Spring Concert. Focused on film music, the audience heard it all from Pirates of the Caribbean to Spiderman and from the Traitors theme tune to a selection of movements from West Side story.
As well as the experience being so rewarding, I enjoyed it so much and so far, the Spring Concert is one of my favourite concerts at Hampton. In Swing Band, we played a very good piece full of character and solos called Shofukan featuring the guitar and percussion section. I really enjoyed playing piano for it and I particularly liked the guitar solo which sounded like a professional jazz soloist and the extremely impressive percussion solo leaving for a very exciting end with the audiences on the edge of their seats to what was a fabulous piece. In Junior Jazz Band I played the piano where we played a very well-known theme tune from Spider-Man with an interesting jazzy twist. It sounded really good particularly some of the really impressive brass solos on the saxophone and trombone and the very impressive drumming from Armaan. At the opening of the piece there was red lights flashing and overall, it was very catchy. In Chamber Orchestra, where I played the violin, we played some really exciting pieces. Firstly, to open the concert we played the theme of the Traitors which I’m sure most people reading this blog post will know and can probably sing it. Personally, it is one of my favourite shows so playing the theme tune on the violin with percussion to make it as immersive as possible was very exciting! Some people in the orchestra even dressed up in cloaks as traitors while the rest of us remained faithful. The traitors walked on first and then the faithful walked on, we played the Traitors theme tune and then the traitors revealed themselves, taking their cloaks/hoods of cloaks off.
I also really enjoyed playing Rapunzel which is a beautiful composition by Sixth Former Daniel who won the composition competition with his piece featuring a beautiful piano part and we also played theme form a horror film called Psycho which had a wide range of dynamics and dramatic dissonance to create an eerie, hypnotic atmosphere, backed up with the very dramatic visual on the projection behind us.
Finally, in Symphony orchestra we played a Lalo Cello concerto with a very impressive cello soloist called Gabriel and we played a beautiful Nigel Hess with a piano solo played very well by Rajveer. To top off an unbelievable night which I enjoyed so much we played a very exciting selection from West Side Story and Mambo, a very exciting and enjoyable surprise to end a remarkable evening.
By Rahul P (2B)
Take a look at some of the superb performances below:
HELP project progress
It has been a great Easter break! Like many others, I have been working on my HELP project over the holiday. Coincidentally, several months ago I had got tickets to a Physics talk called ‘Emergence’ by Brian Cox (he does science documentaries) in Stockholm, and this happened to relate to my project. The talk was very interesting and motivated me to start researching and working on my chosen topic.
I just want to say well done to everyone else who is doing a project and has worked on it over the Easter holidays. I hope you found some inspiration too and are enjoying working on it!
By Axel MB (2B)
Talk!
From the deepening crisis in the Middle East and its shockwaves through global markets to President Trump’s unpredictable approach to international diplomacy, long-standing geopolitical norms are being shaken. To help make sense of this rapidly changing landscape, we are delighted to welcome Fraser Nelson for our final Talk! of the academic year in the Hammond Theatre at 1pm on Tuesday 28 April. There’s no need for Hamptonians to book, find out more here.
Guess the Film – Emoji Challenge!
Each week I will ask a different member of the Second Year Tutor team to tell me their favourite film – in emoji form! Your job is to guess the film and the teacher…!
👧📚👩🏫🍯🥛🍰🤢
Quiz of the Week
Welcome to the Quiz of the Week! Every week, we’ll post five general knowledge questions. 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.
Why don’t you have a go and enter your answers for this week’s quiz here:
Here are the answers to last week’s quiz:
- What is the last word of the last chapter of Roald Dahl’s book Boy? Days
- Nicolae Ceausescu was the dictator of what country? Romania
- Which German book killed more than 60,000 women because people thought they were witches? Malleus Maleficarum or A Hammer of Witches
- Who was the tennis rival of Chris Evert? Martina Navratilova
- Masayuki Mochizuki is famous for what? Backgammon
Well done to the following Second Year Hamptonians who answered everything correctly – Ansh R and Jesse G.
If you’re keen to write some general knowledge questions for the Blog, please email b.tiller@hamptonschool.org.uk.
