Love and Life’ SpinDrift Dance Company Showcase

The Flavel Centre, Dartmouth was the venue for SpinDrift Dance Company’s evening of contemporary dance, performed to a near capacity audience.

The programme featured seven short pieces exploring themes of trust, jealously, love, stress, containment and freedom in an exciting mix of live performance and dance for camera. All the work was created and performed by over 30 professional South West Dancers including six students from Kingsbridge Community College where co-director of SpinDrift Dance Company, Suzie West, is Head of Dance: ‘I’m so proud of all the students involved – they behaved and performed like true professionals.’

Next month will see another Dance showcase for students, professional dancers and the local community taking place: ‘Breaking Boundaries’ is at Kingsbridge Community College on 23 and 24 February at 7pm.

South West & Wales Biathlon Semi-Final

The standard of performance at this level is unforgiving and only the very best will progress to the next level, the national final, to be held at the end of March at Crystal Palace. Biathlon is a combined swimming/running event with athletes completing a sprint swim followed by a 500m or 1000m run on the track. Points are awarded according to times achieved and added for individual and team results. 3 students from Year 7 (Ottile Whelan, Charlotte Blake and Dan Tucker) were all newcomers to this type of competition but competed with great composure and confidence. A particular highlight was Charlotte’s swim where she finished in 8th position out of 59 competitors.
Much excitement was provided by the Year 8 Girls (Amy Edmonds, Darcey Wall, Elinor Jones) who started the competition with competent performances in the pool, all setting personal best times.

The running event continued in much the same fashion, all the more admirable since both Amy and Elinor had run a very hard cross country race the day before.Their combined points were enough for a staggering team gold, an amazing achievement which will now see them progress to national finals. Having lost both team members to illness, Jacob Collinson, with a heavy cold, competed valiantly on his own in the very competitive Year 8 boys event and produced solid performances both in the swim and run.

Also competing on her own was Year 9 Girl Abbie Tucker who had a good day, finishing in 24th place in a field of 40 competitors.

Rising star Jacob Seldon had a fantastic day; racing in perhaps the most competitive age group, Year 9 Boys, he produced a fabulous swim and then went on the perform the greatest sprint finish of the day on the track. Jacob finished in a terrific 5th position, which now sees him through as an individual competitor to the national event at Crystal Palace.

Year 10 Girls (Harriet Arscott, Hester Stembridge, Alysia Stringer) also competed strongly finishing in a team silver medal position. The Year 10 Boys (Louis Gautier, Michael Carson, Freddie Buckle) they too rose to the occasion and after fierce competition also brought team silver back home. Seasoned athlete Louis Gautier produced a truly outstanding swim, not only winning the gold medal for this event but beating his nearest competitor from Millfield by 3 seconds. His combined individual scores secured a silver medal and an automatic qualification to Crystal Palace.

Year 11 Girls Lily Edmonds and Isabella Richards had to wait all day to compete as theirs was the very last event of the day. Being very experienced athletes, both girls competed to a high standard in a very strong field, Lily finishing in 7th position and Isabella 13th.

This was a brilliant day with great successes achieved by KCC athletes. The Year 8 Girls team, along with Louis Gautier and Jacob Seldon now have guaranteed national finals’ places. Another 3 semi-finals have yet to take place in Macclesfield, Leeds and London, but given the number of points scored by the Year 10 Boys, it is likely that this team will also qualify for finals. It will be considerably tighter for the Year 10 Girls who will have to wait for the results from these events. Fingers crossed!
Well done to all the team who were such fabulous ambassadors for KCC and thank you to all the parents for supporting us.

Bugsy Malone

The whole college production of Bugsy Malone played to sell out audiences over five nights in December.

Over 80 students were involved in all aspects of the show, working as actors, musicians, backstage crew and even co-directing.

The overwhelming characteristic of the show was fun and, as custard pies flew and splurge guns were fired, the big ensemble numbers had audiences joining in.

Many congratulations to all involved.

Young Chef Chloe Tuckwell reaches Regional Finals

Congratulations to Chloe Tuckwell who has won so far the school heat for the Rotary Young Chef, came third in the Southern District Final, second in the District Final as well winning the Southern District Shield.

This means that Chloe gone through to the Future Chef Regional Final in Petroc College on the 8th February and the Regional Final of the Rotary Young Chef on the 17th March in Bridgwater, Somerset. Good luck and well done Chloe!

OUTSTANDING YET AGAIN!

In order to help benchmark standards against those of other outstanding schools, Kingsbridge Community College has recently joined a group called Challenge Partners which brings together schools from all over the country to work together. A group of 4 senior leaders and an Inspector spent two days at the College visiting lessons and talking to students in order to test whether the College still met the Ofsted criteria to be outstanding: their answer was a resounding yes. The Inspector wrote:

• “The quality of teaching at Kingsbridge is outstanding.
• Teachers’ subject knowledge was strong and manifested itself in teachers communicating a passion for their subjects and enthusing students.
• There were excellent relationships in all lessons seen, with good use of praise for positive learning behaviours creating a safe environment for risktaking and having a go”

Principal Roger Pope said, “We are always looking for ways to challenge ourselves to reach yet higher standards. To be judged outstanding in all the categories which the Team looked at, including attainment, progress, quality of teaching and school improvement strategies, was very pleasing indeed”.

KCC HOSTS SCHOOL LEADER

Kingsbridge Community College was honoured to be visited by Steve Munby, Chief Executive of the National College for School Leadership, and Michael Pain, Head of Policy. The National College is responsible for the development of leadership in schools across the country, and recently accredited Kingsbridge as one of the very first National Teaching Schools.

The group toured the College, visited lessons and spoke with students and staff. This was a prestigious visit for the College and a great opportunity to hear the impressions of such a senior national figure who visits schools across the country.

ST NICK’S POSTER COMPETITION

Once again Kingsbridge Community College students have been designing posters for the annual St Nick’s Fair. 

Matt Bindon, Head of Year 8, said: “Response from the students was great and, as usual, it has been very hard to decide the winner!  In first place we chose Zoe Allen from 8DV due to the time, effort and detail that Zoe had obviously put into her drawing; second place went to Raquel Martin and Ronni Jenkins of 7BA and third to Bridget Tucker of 8GD.  A huge thank you to all our students for their entries!”.

Keep an eye out for the winning poster displayed in the College and around the town and be sure not to miss the day’s festivities at the College on  Saturday, 3rd December from 12.30pm to 3.30pm! 

Year 8 study Ecosytems at the Eden Project

Year 8 students from Kingsbridge visited the Eden Project in Cornwall as part of their Geography lessons studying Ecosystems.  The students spent the day investigating the Tropical and Mediterranean biomes and examining how the plants in each are adapted to the unique conditions. Back in the classroom, students are now designing a plant to cope with the planets changing climate.  The best will be entered into an Eden Project competition to win a prize from the Eden shop.

Pictured L to R are:

Elly Stevens, David Tunbridge, Ellie Stewart, Oliver Pound