Newsletter - Summer Term - 15.05.18
Cottesmorians are working especially hard as examinations are on the horizon, yet at the same time they are giving their all in sport, in music and across a wide range of activities. The juniors relished their challenges at Ultimate Laser Games recently!
Academic News
Our Common Entrance examinations step up a gear this week, with French and Spanish oral and listening exams, along with the Maths Aural. We wish everyone well.
Geography Field Trip to Juniper Hall
Our 4th Formers had a gloriously sunny day for their trip to Juniper Hall near Dorking, for a day of environmental outdoor studies. We look forward to their news!
Sports Round-Up
Cricket
1st XI v Duke of Kent: won by 9 wickets
A comfortable win for a disappointed Mr Walker, who had been looking forward to a good, long game in the sunshine!
He reports: “Bowling & ground fielding were very good. Digby & Bert combined well for a run out from fine leg; Will & Freddie took their opportunity with 2-10 and 4-11 respectively.
Will & Sam batted sensibly and wrapped it up inside 9 overs, which gave us an hour to watch the Colts (who also won).”
“This is our 4th win over Duke of Kent in 9 attempts since 2010 (P9, W4, D2, L1, Abandoned 2). Our batting average against them is 20.29, which is 3rd highest (behind Dorset House & Handcross).”
2nd XI v Duke of Kent: won by 9 wickets
Men of the Match were Alan (3 wickets) and Christopher (24 no). Mr Butler said: “A good win and finally some good weather. The team played well and hopefully we will now have a good season”.
3rd XI v Duke of Kent
Finally, after cancellation heaped upon cancellation, the Mighty Thirds got to flex their cricketing muscles! Traditionally this team is composed of boys new to cricket so the seemingly endless run of training sessions has had an effect, but there is no substitute for real match play.
Their excitement and anticipation were finally unleashed last week against the third team of the Duke of Kent. We won the toss, put them into bat first and slowly erased them, taking our time to dull their attack and with extra sharpness in the field to bully their batsmen into running less and less between the wickets. The psychological battle of the opening spell was decisively won when their number two batsmen announced to his team mate that we were “good”, and the bowler need watching as he was “tricky”.
Asad promptly underlined this wisdom with the next delivery which clipped the undefended off stump and dismissed their opener for one run. After that, slowly but inevitably, the thirds closed their grip on the Duke of Kent batting order. The wickets tumbled in fairly regular succession: a bowled out, a stumping by Juan in his first outing as keeper and a run out from impressive movement in the field by Pablo and Johannes. Bertie’s first-ever bowling spell produced a wicket, alas not credited to him as the batsman played his ball on. Yet more fell to our bowlers, especially Asad and soon they were all out for 31. We started to bat with two hours to make the required runs.
Impetuously, Golden, who opened the batting with Asad, called for a second run from a fairly mundane sweep to deep and ran his captain out. Decidedly unhappy, Asad walked with dignity and then proceeded from the side-lines to instruct his team in no uncertain terms that they had all afternoon and didn’t need to chase the score. Wise words from the young captain which were well heeded by his team, who ran up the required runs without further loss of a wicket. Winning by nine wickets is a jolly good start to the season.
Undoubtedly, the teams ahead of us on the road may not be so easily vanquished but this was an incredible start from a team with real potential. Difficult to believe that just a few weeks ago seven of them had never played. The learning curve has been steep, but you know they have learned well when the new Russian pupil asks “Should I stand deeper at square leg because the batsman looks quite powerful?”
Colts A v Brambletye: match abandoned due to rain
With so many fixtures lost so far due to the weather, Mr A-B was hopeful that this one would play out, but sadly is was not to be. He says: “Matchday 5 and another rain-affected affair for Colts A. A shame as an electric bowling performance demolished a pretty useful batting side before the rain took its toll. Confidence was high after our first game last week with a commanding victory over The Duke of Kent with Huw F (49*) narrowly missing out on his maiden fifty. Let’s hope the weather hold up for the rematch with Brambletye at the weekend!”
Colts B Round-Up: v Dorset House: lost; v Windlesham: draw; v Duke of Kent: won by 9 wickets
After a slow start to the term and a slightly larger number of beginners to the game than in previous years, the boys have responded to their training well and are learning the sport steadily. Every practice session is given maximum effort and everyone is involved the skills of cricket, regardless of the weather.
The boys are now confident with the hard ball and hands are slowly being preferred to feet when fielding. The bowling is coming on very nicely with most of the boys able to bowl wicket-taking deliveries every over. The batting is proving to be strong and more strokes are being learned every week.
The team is really well led by Rufus LO, superbly supported by senior players in Rufus B-T and Timor. Oliver A is leading the way superbly for the younger year group and he is proving to be a real talent for the future.
Colts B v Brambletye A: lost by 2 wickets
The match was played in continuous rain, however the boys persevered and played brilliantly. Everyone bowled very well with an increasingly wet ball. Sadly, despite efforts to keep the ball off the ground and therefore dry the boys were unable to do this so it became increasingly more difficult to bowl, which ultimately cost us runs in extras and thereby the match. We came so close but couldn’t quite take the final 2 wickets before the conditions got the better of us. Man of the Match was awarded to Rufus LO.
Girls Cricket
Colts A v Brambletye: won by 41 runs
Well done to the girls who managed this convincing win on a particularly rainy afternoon.
Rounders
U10 Rounders v St Christopher’s: won 21-17
An excellent match with three Girls of the Game: Rosie, Layla and Nancy. Miss Flower offered a special note of congratulations to Angel, who scored half a rounder despite only picking up a bat three weeks ago!
Pre-prep news
The upcoming Royal wedding is a feature in the Pre-prep this week – and so are pirates. As always, there’s a great deal of excitement, whatever the topic!
Reception
The youngest members of the school have an exciting week ahead learning a little about our Royal family, as well as celebrating the Royal wedding on Friday with a special lunch. They will be thinking about family trees, designing a card, an invitation and coming up with their perfect wedding menu.
The children will also share a very funny book called “The Queen’s Knickers” and design a special pair! In Maths this week they will be continuing their work on odd and even, counting in 2s and 5s and will be learning about doubles and halves. The children will continue to care for their plants and add to their bean diaries.
Year 1
This week in Creative Writing Year 1 will be writing their news from the Bank Holiday and be starting the story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. There will be the regular Phonics Play session on the computer to help revise the children’s initial sounds and their spellings will be words ‘oi’ words. In Maths the children will be weighing using non-standard and standard weights and revising Time. In Science pupils will be finding out about the life cycle of a butterfly. They will also be painting scenes from ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and starting some castle model making.
Year 2
Our Year 2 pirates are marooned on a desert island this week! They will be thinking about adjectives to describe their setting and then use a writing plan to help compose a postcard from the island. On Thursday the stranded pirates will write a message in a bottle to ask for help. In Maths the class will revise their recognition of all coins, know their value, and use them to make amounts; recognise £5, £10, £20 notes; make amounts using coins and £10 note; write amounts using £. p notation; order coins 1p – £2 and notes £5 – £20; add several coins (writing totals in £. p notation) and add two amounts of pence, using counting on in 10s and 1s. In Science Year 2 continues to monitor and record the growth of their sunflowers, radishes and beans; in Art the children are starting to look at the work of the artist Monet.
Year 3
During their English lessons this week Year 3 will revisit writing and punctuating direct speech. They will also look at features and structure of adventure stories and discuss how the Robin Hood tales fit with this model, before beginning to plan their own Robin Hood story.
During their Maths lessons the children will continue to solve word problems involving addition and subtraction. They will then revise written long multiplication and begin to solve word problems using this function too. In their History lesson they will investigate crime and punishment during the Tudor period.
In RS Year 3 will discover that pictures of Jesus tell us about people’s personal beliefs about him. They will investigate how shadows behave in their science lesson and in Art will begin to make Tudor houses.
Dorm Doings
Two stay-ups were held last week with Humphrey’s National success in the IAPS clay-pigeon shooting competition being celebrated, as well as the top dorms so far this term being rewarded for their efforts.
Sunday Fundays
On Sunday the juniors competed against each other in teams at Ultimate Laser Games near East Grinstead. Three brilliant challenges brought out the best in team work, ability and bravery as the blue team (Mr Revill’s team) fought the red team of Miss Dove. The slippery conditions made it enjoyable for all and painful for the staff!
Open Morning
A fine and dry morning greeted our guests for another successful Open Morning and as always there were compliments galore! Our visitors certainly enjoyed all that they saw and we look forward to meeting them again soon.