Regents Review Winter '17

The Regents Review Winter 2017

DEPARTMENTAL NEWS Battlefields Trip On Friday 17th November we took 46 Year 8 students to the Battlefields in Ypres, Belgium. It was a very early start - 5:30am and a long day but the students had a fabulous experience. Our first stop was Essex Farm cemetery, the site of the grave of the youngest solider to be killed. He was just 15 years old. Then we moved onto the trenches! Students got to see how cramped conditions were and how badly they flooded! We walked through and you could feel the eeriness of what the soldiers experienced! Then our final destination on our tour was the Tyne Cot cemetery. This was particularly poignant as all the remembrance wreaths were still in place. Students had real sense of the enormity of the loss of life when they read the names on the stone tablets and started to count the number of graves.

In the evening, we had the privilege of seeing the Menin Gate by night. Some students even found some soldiers that shared the same names as them. This was a wonderful experience and the students all respected the occasion. After a visit to the chocolate shop, a group of tired students and staff headed home feeling lucky to have experienced the day and feeling grateful to those who served and died for us. “I really enjoyed the History Trip to Belgium, it was brilliant fun and educational! Visiting the graves of the people from the war was a great experience. The museum was fascinating because we looked at the uniforms, guns and equipment which was really cool! I also really liked the chocolate shop as they chocolate tasted good! Overall the trip was one of my favourites ever.” Hassan Khalil - Year 8

Geography On 31st October, classes were treated to a special ‘Geography of Halloween Day’. This compromised of finding ghosts around school using grid references and learning how different countries celebrate Halloween around the world. For example, did you know that in the UK Halloween used to be celebrated by carving beetroots not pumpkins! Future Geography events to look out for: • The Great Geography Bake Off open to all year groups • Year 10 trip to Portsmouth. Ask your geography teacher for a letter • Year 11 revision every Wednesday in Room 24

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