Success in Rotary Youth Speaks competition

Two teams from d'Overbroeck's College Leckford Place took part in the Rotary Youth Speaks Public Speaking Competition recently. Both teams were a real credit to the College.

Henry Frend entertained the Rotarians with his speech on “Lo-Riding” and amongst other things showed the technique of walking whilst wearing low-slung trousers. He was very well supported by Ellie Arden and Isla Stone. The Year nine team won the competition and go on to the zone final later this week.

Sophia Saban chaired the proceedings, and was picked out as being the best chair of the evening, whilst Laurel Benjamin gave a most entertaining, humorous vote of thanks. Jamie Jackson-Jessel delivered a beautifully ironic speech on the abuse of the word “like”. Well done to all the participants!

You can find out more about the Rotary Youth Speaks competion here: www.ribi.org/youth/competitions/ribi-youth-speaks

The Winter Concert

This year's Winter Concert was a tremendous event with some wonderful performances by students. What was striking was the variety of talents from dance to cello to drama.

English Schools Cross-Country Competition

The English schools cross-country competition was held on Thursday 4th October at St Helen and St Katharine School near Abingdon.

(Left to Right) 

Jacques Michael, Lukas Hovland, Pat Wilson, Greg Weeks, Luke Baxter

The results for our pupils were as follows:

Junior boys - 3km

Luke Baxter (Year 7) Came 13^th out of 40 runners with a time of 12 minutes 16 seconds.

Jacques Micheal (Year 7) was second in for d’Overbroeck’s coming 20^th with a time of 13 minutes 5 seconds.

Luke Baxter

Intermediate boys 4.5KM

Kester McLennen (Year 10) came 20^th out of 30 with a time of 20 minutes 5 seconds.

Hamza Khan (Year 10) was second in for d’Overbroeck’s coming 21^st with a time of 20 minutes 7 seconds.  

(Left to Right)

Lukas Hovland, Pat Wilson, Greg Weeks

Congratulations to all our runners who did very well.

PGL Liddington

PGL Liddington is a new adventure activity centre in Wiltshire. Henry Frend, a Year 8 pupil at Leckford Place describes a recent visit.

"PGL Liddington was probably one of the most special experiences of this year. We really got to know the new Year 7s. At first we thought about how small and young they were compared to us but then we thought again and realised that they were US!!!

So on Wednesday we all climbed onboard the coach and set off for Liddington. We were all very intrigued about what was going to happen on this trip. I was in a dorm with all my friends and at first we had that war over who had top bunk at who got forced down to the bottom; this showed who really was the Alfa male of our dorm, but unfortunately one of us is asthmatic so obviously he HAD to have the top bunk. 

We had a brilliant couple of days - the food was good apart from the custard bowl you could turn upside down and it would stick to the bowl (we called it cardboard custard) and our  activities were brilliant . We did fencing, zip wire, raft building, crate challenge, mountain biking, night time ambush and initiative exercises.

Id like to say thank you to everyone who took us there and made the days brilliant."   

Bristol Science Centre

Four Year 7 students (two of whom are pictured below) give their impressions of a recent trip to the Bristol Science Museum.

Jaques Michael and Izzy Bowen-Lowe

Jaques Michael
"On Wednesday the 12^th of September Years 7 and 8 went to the Bristol science museum. When we arrived we were shown to the picnic area. Then we got to explore the 1^st floor and I went on the two slow motion cameras. One of them filmed you jumping up and the 2^nd one scared you. There was also a water one when you have to try and get the water from the sea to the receiver and the final thing I did on the first floor was when you attach a rocket to a rope and then it dropped. After the first floor we went to see a show called the boggling brain show showing us how the brain works. The show was for half an hour. After the boggling brain show we went to have lunch at the picnic area. Then we saw a show called the planetarium showing us a lot of the stars a planet and other galaxies in space. Then we went to the top floor where I spent most of my time in a film studio and a house that was on its side. The Bristol science museum is my favourite museum school trip."

Izzy Bowen-Lowe
"As you walk through the door you can see everything going on at once. We had a bracelet given to us at the beginning, these bracelets or wristbands had a barcode on and on certain activities you could scan your barcode and whatever you did was saved and later you could go on the website and look at what you had done. After a quick talk we were free to go off and explore the museum but we had to be back for a certain time for the ‘Boggling Brain Show’ which explained what different parts of your brain were used for. It was really fun to find out what part of my brain told me when I needed to breathe or even go to the toilet.

After the ‘Boggling Brain Show’ we had about an hour to explore my favourite part of the museum which was the animation area, where you could put Lego or magnets on the service and capture the photo and eventually it was a full cartoon which you could watch all the way through and edit it at home.

I really enjoyed @ Bristol and really want to go again. It never gets old as I have been twice before and I still got so excited when we went. "

Greg Weeks
"When we arrived instantly you could see lots of water features like the one outside, a large wall with water running down the side of it. Once we had entered you could spot many things that you could interact with, one of them was a hamster wheel that you could climb in, when running the large water feature beside you would have buckets lifting water to a different area of the feature (All because we were running on the spot) When you would walk around the feature you almost definitely get wet however this was helped with the help of a teacher Mark the head teacher, to get the passer-by’s wet he would use a mini water mill. Mark found this hilarious that he was getting year 8 and 7 wet. HA!

The water feature wasn’t the only thing we did, we went into a planetarium where we would watch a show, and we would go into a studio where there were buttons where nobody had a clue what they did when they were used right. Even though we got wet and pushed buttons in a studio that did nothing, still we all had a great time!"

Mara Talbot
"On Wednesday we went to Bristol to see an amazing science museum, not the sort with lots of writing, nothing exiting and don’t touch notices everywhere you look. Not the sort with ladies speaking in a low dull voice about the most boring stuff on earth but the sort with machines that make beach balls fly, giant hamster wheels and shows on how to make brains for Barbie dolls and lots, lots more. First we were told that if we stayed in our pairs we could look round the whole of the downstairs on our own for a while; one of the best experiences was living the life of a hamster! Well not quite. Basically there was a giant hamster wheel causing a water fountain to go round. But the planetarium was something I will never forget it was a huge dome where we were told about the planets and the stars and loads, loads more..."

Four days in Paris

At 11pm, on Friday 29th June, 30 students and 6 staff left Oxford for Paris, arriving at 9am the next day. What followed was an action-packed 4 day stay, during which we visited the Musee Rodin, the Pompidou Centre and the Musee d'Orsay. We climbed the Eiffel Tower, enjoyed a boat trip on the Seine, watched a mini opera at Bercy, shopped in the Champs Elysees, visited Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre, Sacre-Coeur and lots more besides.

We negotiated the Metro and joined in with street entertainment on the Pont Saint Louis (in fact the students took over the entertainment, leading the dancing which passers-by joined in with).

On the final evening there were three workshops. Emmanuelle invited two French friends to speak to the French group;  Helen led an art group who recorded impressions of Paris, and Fizza led a drama workshop which summarised the main events of the visit in three minutes. The whole experience was a mixture of culture and fun and I think it's fair to say that every single person thoroughly enjoyed it.  Thanks especially to Emmanuelle (French department) and Fizza (Head of Drama) for masterminding a brilliant, action-packed trip.

Jubilee Street Party

Jubilee Street Party and Non Uniform Day

Huge thanks go to Angela and Tracy – our catering ladies - for having the initial idea of a Leckford street party and for helping to bring it to spectacular fruition with bunting, table decorations, flags, music, picnic food, and the notorious red white and blue ice cream, all of which helped to create a lovely festive atmosphere in our Friday lunchtime playground.

 The non-uniform element of the day - which saw students arrayed in patriotic colours - raised just short of £100- enabling us to plant no less than 5 trees with the help of the Woodland Trust Jubilee Appeal. Well done to all!

A few more images from the day...