Ashfold School

Strictly come Ashfold! A huge thank you to Brendan Cole for generously giving our Ashfold parents the unique opportunity of an amazing dance lesson with him - all in aid of the Oscar Foundation charity we are supporting this year.
We loved it! Keep Dancing!!

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After 31 fantastic years in the Art department, Mr Cave has retired. What an amazing teacher and even more amazing person he is, whom we will miss very much. He goes with our love and best wishes to his new chapter in Yorkshire!

We are so proud of all our Year 8 leavers and everything they have achieved in their time at Ashfold! We will truly miss them all and wish them the best of luck for their next chapter at their chosen senior schools!

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What a perfect way for Form 6 to finish their Post CE programme with a trip to Wet N Wild!

After all their hard work planning, branding and marketing their products for their Dragons' Den challenge Form 6 have enjoyed selling their wares this week - all in aid of charity! We love the human lip balm :)

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Pre-Prep loved getting stuck into Eco Day today. PP4 did a sensational job collecting, tallying and creating graphs of their litter data. They collected an amazing 252 pieces of rubbish! Very well done for looking after our beautiful grounds PP4!

In Form 3, the children loved taking their Classics lesson outdoors for Eco Day to recreate the inventions of Daedalus. This is the moment Daedalus’ son Icarus flies too close to the sun and the wax in his wings melted. In the woods, they recreated the Labyrinth built by Daedalus, and enacted Theseus defeating the Minotaur hidden within it - superb acting Form 3!

It is Outdoor Learning Eco Day at Ashfold! There has been lots of creative learning; Form 4 loved their outdoor science, Form 5 re-enacted a 17th century witch trial and Mr MacIntosh set Form 6 a mysterious challenge.

We are also delighted to share that Digital Schoolhouse has awarded Mr Lovell, our Head of Computing, the Innovation Award, in recognition of his incredible achievements as a leading teacher of creative computing in schools this year!
You can follow all the children's fun in Mr Lovell's coding lessons on his Twitter feed .

We are thrilled to share that Ashfold School has been shortlisted for the 'Independent School of the Year Awards' in the 'Outstanding Educational Partnerships' category, for our creative computing workshops and work with our local community of schools and Digital Schoolhouse.

Fingers crossed when the Finalists are announced in September!

As part of their final week of Post CE Programme, Form 6 were visited by Mr Matt Bull from Bloxham School and OA's Harry and Sam as well as Bloxhamist Flora.
All had lots of information about life in a senior school. The OA's shared their experiences in the first years at Bloxham, whilst Flora gave great advice about friendships.
Mr Bull and the Bloxhamists kindly gave up a day of their holiday to help make Form 6's transition to their senior school just that little bit smoother and we are very grateful to them all.

Superb performances from all our children at this year’s Prep School sports day with so many PBs and new school records – and we just about managed to finish before the rain truly set in!

Check out lots more action photos on our school website gallery: https://www.ashfoldschool.co.uk/244/school-gallery/cat/105/prep-sports-day-2023

The children in Pre-Prep 2 are enjoying the final week of term. They have been astonished to find pages from their English books dated September 2022 with very different drawings and very little writing compared to the work they are doing today in July 2023!

They were also delighted to release a painted lady butterfly from the net where they have watched and cared for the caterpillars on their life cycle. There was wonder and delight as the butterfly fluttered into the sky.

Huge congratulations to Eva, Josh and Bertie who all ran PBs at the National Athletics Finals yesterday at Nuneaton!

Josh and Bertie won silver in the hurdles and Eva came 4th in the 100m final.

They have done themselves and Ashfold incredibly proud! 👏🏻

IAPS

Final QClub for the term! We were very excited to have Julie Hirigoyen, an expert in environmentally friendly buildings (and Ashfold mum!), come in to talk to us about all things environmental, starting with the key question: What do cows and buildings have in common?
We learned an awful lot about how each of us can make a difference to the hugely important issue of climate change - turn those switches off at the wall, share lifts to school, use environmental give-back search engines, and, of course, go and work in one of those millions of new jobs in environmental fields!

Congratulations to Evie, Athena and Nora on their brilliant performances in the Louise Austin School of Dance end of year show!

- this week's bumper Hoot Newsletter is packed with photos from the magical production of Peter Pan, the Big Boarding Camp Out, Dragon's Den, MasterChef, Form 2 Cinnamon Day, PP4 India Day and lots more!

Follow this link to read more:
https://www.ashfoldschool.co.uk/3230/the-hoot-newsletter/post/142/the-hoot

Also check out the Peter Pan photos on our school website gallery:
https://www.ashfoldschool.co.uk/244/school-gallery/cat/104/peter-pan-2023

And if you fancy a bit of pampering our next Form 6 team have the perfect multi-coloured lip balms for you, on sale Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the last week of term - see their advert below and they have requested cash only please!

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And our next team from Form 6's Dragons Den are Sundae...can't wait to sample their ice creams at Sports Day on Friday!

And here is the first advert from a group of our Form 6 pupils calling themselves COOL sunglasses!

We are 'COOL SUNGLASSES' taking part in the post CE program and have created a sunglasses business. We sell coloured, branded sunglasses to you and your children. We thought we should give you a head start before all our sunglasses have sold out! Be sure to buy our high-quality sunglasses at upcoming events including the swimming gala and pickups next week.

As part of their Dragons Den business challenge, Form 6 are working brilliantly together on adverts, banners, flyers and creating a stop-motion advert to publicise their products.

Lots of plasticine, careful camerawork and creativity was the order of the day as the groups vied to make the best little film.

It's all very creative as they are learning so many new skills - and all for charity of course.

We look forward to sharing all their advertising here...watch this space...

Four of our Form 5 girls (2 from Art Masterclass and 2 from DT Masterclass) were thrilled to be invited to Uppingham School for a 'Future Makers and Creators Day'.

There were three sessions. The Art session was about creating impressive sketch books. The DT session was about Architecture, where they designed and created a model for a new pavilion. The textiles session involved using mannequins to create paper templates.

Thank you - the girls gained lots of good skills to build on next year!

It's not a trick of the light, but Form 6 were thrilled to welcome Mrs Ridley‑DeMonick's twin sister to Ashfold today for a masterclass in branding and marketing. Form 6 now must put what they learned into their fledgling businesses. They are looking forward to getting their products back and on sale!

Wow, what amazing performances from all our Pre-Prep children at Sports Day today. From our children in PP1 racing for the very first time to the competitive spirit of our older children in PP4, they were all brilliant.

Special congratulations go to our overall individual winners and the big House competition winners, the Dragons!

Thank you parents for your support today, the children loved seeing you all as you cheered them on.

Photos from both events today will be available to view on our school website gallery and social media over the next few days!

Whoop, whoop - Ashfold we have done it! Together we have completed the Big Ashfold Dribble for the OSCAR foundation!

We were left with only 80km to dribble on the last day leaving only 22 laps per form needed to finish. The last ball was dribbled over the line at morning break!

Congratulations to the whole community who really came together. There were many individual dribble heroes celebrated over this week, but it could not have been reached without every single one of you playing your part!

We will share lots more photos on our school website gallery and social media over the next few days.

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We were thrilled to welcome Ben Irving to Ashfold this afternoon for an inspiring Creedo Talk to Forms 3-6. The focus of this annual talk is always creativity, and Ben is well qualified on this subject as the Creative Director for 'Fifth Season', a leading independent global Film & TV studio.

The children were fascinated to hear about Ben's work at the BBC as a Commissioning Editor and Executive Producer, along with stories throughout his career working on a number of high-profile productions, including Doctor Who, His Dark Materials and both Paddington films.

A huge thank you Ben, as you can tell from the number of brilliant questions the children asked at the end, they loved your talk!

A massive thank you to Julian Chester who very kindly arranged through the sponsors, Killick, for 40 members of the Ashfold community to enjoy an amazing day watching the Barbarians vs Rest of the World match at Twickenham - an incredible experience!

We are very proud of old Ashfoldian, Bella who played for England hockey in her first junior international cap last weekend.

Bella played against Scotland and England won each game 4-2. So a series win overall. It was an amazing experience for her especially as she is still so young, having only left Ashfold 2 years ago in July 2021!

Form 6 have had an exciting first week of their Post CE programme completing their Dragons Den projects.

The children were put into groups of three or four and were tasked with creating a business that would help raise money for the Oscar Foundation. The groups came up with a super array of ideas, from selling ice creams to sustainable stationery and a cookie cookbook. With expert guidance from Mrs Shorten, they devised business plans, did market research and sourced suppliers. After a session on presenting skills from with Mr MacIntosh, Form 6 then got PowerPoint presentations ready to show the Dragons who would decide which group's ideas they would invest their £200 in. The presentations were impressive. All contained costings, market research results and many explained how their items would be advertised and sold. The groups withstood some fierce questioning by the Dragons and their peers. This made the job of picking the most viable business a difficult one.

Form 6 are now working hard to turn these group's plans into a money-making reality. They hope you will support their ventures in the coming weeks.

We are super proud of Alex and Henry representing Ashfold at the IAPS Schools Shooting competition. The boys both shot incredibly well and won Gold in the U11s and won Bronze in the U11 Overall Team Competition, with Henry also winning Bronze in the U11 Individual Competition!

Huge well done boys!

Wow - brilliant to see so many parents and children in school for this morning's dribble - we have now hit an amazing 1000km!!!

Parents, please join us for more dribbling at pick up this afternoon as we need your help the children complete the final 2000km in less than 3 days - come on team Ashfold WE can do this!

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Albert loved being⁩ ‘Head for a Day’ and especially enjoyed holding a business lunch in the Head's study and meeting with his leadership team in the pool! Well done Albert!

The Big Ashfold Dribble has gone off with a flying start and we have already clocked up a mind blowing 522km and counting!

However it is a long way to our 3000km challenge and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Please join us for 7:30-8am dribble sessions this Wednesday (tomorrow), Thursday and Friday mornings - either to drop children off or parents join your children to dribble together - footballs will be available ready.

Or how about a bit of dribbling as a family in your garden?

Please do ping us an email to let us know your daily totals so that we can add them to our running tally chart on the Charities' board - all kms dribbled accepted whether footballs, hockey balls, tennis balls.

We look forward to receiving your emails - have fun and get dribbling!

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*** The Big Ashfold Charity Dribble has started - 3000 km in 8 days!! ***

We have set ourselves quite a challenge but in true Ashfold spirit we are confident we can do it...and it is going to be lots of fun!

So please do support us and help sponsor the children, as it is all in aid of the aspirational Football Tour coming to Ashfold in October.

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Form 6 are feeling on top of the world! After an amazing week in the Brecon Beacons, Mr MacIntosh was delighted to tell them they had all passed their Common Entrance exams with flying colours when they returned to school this afternoon - Form 6 you and we are so proud of you all!

Exciting times ahead for this brilliant bunch - it's time to celebrate their hard work and dedication with lots of fun Post CE activities next week!