Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
At last, the frost has arrived on Monday prompting a discussion in the bike sheds with hardy students about the quality of gloves as we lock up our bikes in the shed at school!
More hardy girls took to the racecourse in Newbury on Saturday to compete in the Berkshire Schools Cross Country Championships. The U13, U15 and U17 teams comprising 50 Holt girls, competed to become the best cross-country team in Berkshire. The girls ran incredibly well and secured some great places! The U13 girls team dominated the race, with Marnie Fieldsend winning the race, Khadijah Gaye coming 8th, Connie Feeney 16th and Mia Harris securing 27th. Along with the rest of the team, these girls managed to become Berkshire champions and the best cross-country team in Berkshire. In the U15 race, The Holt had the most entries; which was fantastic to see and really showed how much the girls enjoy PE and running. With the U17 race, the girls managed to secure 3rd place in Berkshire! Bethan Howells dominated her race, achieving 14th and receiving a place to compete for Berkshire at the Southern Inter County Schools Cross Country Championships. Abigail Baines also secured a place to represent Berkshire, and we hope Amelia Whiteley has too. Thank you so much to Miss Cardy for encouraging all the girls weekly at cross country club and to Mrs Bolton for giving up their Saturday to attend the championships.
That’s me in the last photo…..at the end of a 5k cross country run on boxing day near Folkestone ..it was so muddy…I came 623 out of 936 …definitely room for improvement – I can learn from The Holt cross country champions!!
On Tuesday, Year 8 had a very creative day designing structures to protect digestive biscuits from being crushed by weights – up to 1 kg. It took over two years to design Pringles and the packaging …..so the girls had to work hard in one day! The girls used their knowledge and imagination to build some beautiful and strong structures out of paper…there were lots of triangles and honeycomb structures incorporated into the designs. The design sheets were of excellent standard as were the prototypes. The technology staff and sixth form technology students were very happy with the results and full of praise for the way the Year 8 girls immersed themselves into the task and took the competition seriously. Spinners won and Goldsmiths came second. Well done to all the girls in Year 8 and thank you to Mrs Williams, Head of Technology who inspired the girls with her presentation on the science and maths secrets behind a sound structure and to Mrs McCarville and Miss Vockins for organising the day.
Year 12 are probably looking forward to the weekend as they are sitting PPEs this week and Year 11 are hopefully thriving on the feedback from their PPEs – there are four months to work on it to reach tip top condition for the GCSEs in the summer. I watched ‘Little Women’ at the cinema on Saturday with my daughters….I would recommend it ….there was a good scene where Jo March didn’t react well to a bit a feedback on her writing…..we had a little chat on the bus home about not getting too defensive when taking on feedback!!
We look forward to welcoming Year 10 parents to Parents Evening on Thursday 23 January.
All the best
Anne Kennedy
Co-Headteacher