Back in November, we asked students to consider writing an entry for the Harpenden Society’s ‘Tell Me A Story’ Writing Competition. We had lots of great entries and selected several for submission. The competition is open to all Harpenden Schools and we are very proud to announce that Neomi Y in Year 9 came 3rd in the age 14-15 year group, winning a £25 book voucher and Jessica H in Year 8 won the age 11-13 category, winning a £100 book voucher and winning a £100 donation for Katherine Warington School as well!

Feedback from the Judges was amazing, with Jessica’s story being described as “a beautiful and mature piece of writing.” with “a rhythmic, poetic quality” and “emotional maturity”.  Neomi’s horror story was described as “A brilliantly descriptive piece with a … pervasive melancholy and  powerful undertones of horror.” They even said “We’d strongly encourage Neomi to keep writing and would not be  surprised if she rivalled Stephen King in the future!”. Their full comments can be seen here. 

Congratulations to both girls and we’d encourage all of our students to keep writing!

Mrs McPartlin

Toastmasters was a six week project that helped me to improve my speaking skills. Every week, the group would write and present their speeches. If you were not partaking in this then you would be given a role. There were many roles to take if you did not want to say your speech like:

• Timer – keep the people in time by using the traffic light system
• Grammarian – comes up with a word for the whole session and see if people use it
• Ah counter – counts the amount of filler words used
• Quote master – finds a quote for people to use
• Evaluator – go over other people’s speeches and give 2 goods and one improvements
• Prime minister/toastmaster – leads the session for 3 weeks and introduce and finish each speech

I learnt a lot from the session. I learnt how to keep the speaker engaged by not using too many points and using the power of three. I also learnt how to manage my use of space and not move too much so that it was not so distracting. I have taken away the power of 3, only using 3 points, and using space properly. 

I think that this is a good thing for people to do in future to not only improve their speaking skills but their general oracy skills. It is a good skill to use in the future for things like interviews. Even If you believe you are already good enough there’s still room to improve as you get custom feedback from the Toastmasters leaders. It is also nice to speak to people you know so you feel safe to talk to them and you feel comfortable and safer when you speak in front of others. 

I would recommend Toastmasters to others!

Tendai M

On 29th February, some Year 9 students that are interested in a career in Health or Social Care attended the ‘Future Heroes Expo’ in Hatfield.

Students had the opportunity to talk to professionals from different health and social care sectors, including occupational therapists, physiotherapists, nursing, midwifery and adult mental health, from both within the NHS and private practice.

Students chose which sectors to visit and which presentations to attend, according to their own career aspirations. Most students even got to experience life with dementia or life with autism on the ‘Experience buses’ – these proved really enlightening for the students.

Miss Phillips