Holly Bowls us Over
Holly Colvin, the youngest player ever to have played Test cricket for England, visited the Dragon on Tuesday. She gave the pupils from A to E Block valuable coaching tips and talked about her route to success. At only 15, Holly lived the schoolboy’s (or schoolgirl’s) dream of helping out at the nets. She joined the England Women’s side for a Test against Australia and helped win the Ashes in 2005 and retain them in 2007-08; she also hit the winning runs in the World Cup. All of this while studying for GCSEs and A-Levels; she is now at Durham University studying natural sciences. The Dragons enjoyed a mixture of fielding and reaction drills, with some batting and bowling, and a Q&A session. An additional highlight was watching Mr Pickup suffer a hatrick when facing her left arm spin.
Musical Dragons
Last Saturday, the Dragon’s String Ensemble and Piano Trio participated in the regional heats of the Music for Youth Festival. If successful, the ensembles will appear in the finals in Birmingham in July; if successful they would play in the Schools’ Prom in the Royal Albert Hall in November. Both ensembles played very well and received encouraging comments from the adjudicators. ‘An accomplished ensemble - much enjoyed’ and ‘Very promising and highly disciplined’ were two of the remarks. The results will be announced at the end of April.
Sandy, Loamy or Clay?
This week, Year 3 children worked outside in the wonderful spring sunshine. They explored the components of soil by looking at sandy, loamy, clay and good quality garden soils, and sorted and sifted for living organisms and non-living objects. Pupils discussed the effects of dropping non-biodegradable litter into the soil, such as plastics and aluminium, and also thought about the best habitat for a worm. It was decided that “although it’s not like a 5 star hotel – organic soil was the best because it was soft, cosy and dark”.
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May the Force Be With You
Last week’s science focus at Lynams was on ‘forces’. Pupils spent time investigating, predicting and observing the effect of forces on things around them. They looked at the common pushes and pulls in relation to our bodies, the air, gravity and magnets. They enjoyed finding out how to change the shape of objects through the forces of stretching and squeezing. They also explored how to slow down and stop, or speed up, a moving object.
Poetic Expression
Year 3 children all took part in the Daisy Pratt Poetry Recitation on Wednesday afternoon. (See main photo). Daisy Pratt spent nearly thirty years teaching at the Dragon and for twenty five years was in charge of the ‘Baby School’, now Year 3. It is largely due to her that our current pupils regularly learn and recite poems. The improvement in the children’s projection, self-confidence and expression was very noticeable after the recitation. Congratulations to all Year 3 children who took part and to the 8 individual finalists. The finalists recited their poems in front of an adjudicator who gave each of them very insightful and encouraging comments. The winner gave an outstanding performance of ‘The Sea’ by James Reeves.
Greeks for the Day
On Tuesday, Year 2 pupils sported their laurel wreaths to attend an Ancient Greek Morning. A special ‘Ancient Greek’ visitor spoke to the children about life in Greece and let them try on different types of children’s costumes. The girls were surprised to hear that only Ancient Greek boys were allowed to go to school, attend the market and participate in the Olympics, whilst Ancient Greek girls stayed at home. The children listened to a variety of Greek myths and were introduced to a number of Greek Gods. They then acted out scenes from their favourite stories and many depicted the slaying of Medusa! It was a fantastic morning and the children absorbed a lot of information about life in Ancient Greece.
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