Maths Student of the Week

Bella 8C - Stalwart of I Want More Maths with a Merit in The Junior Mathematical Olympiad.

Well Done!

Count on Us London Competition

A big congratulations to the Camden Squadrilaterals, a group of year 9 students who took part in the Count on Us tournament Final on Thursday 6 July and came second overall, out of sixty schools across London.

Count on us is a London wide maths tournament with five competitive maths puzzle rounds, and the team did the school proud.

They committed many lunchtimes and after-school sessions to practise the puzzles, which led them to success. They were highly praised by teachers from the competing schools for their quick thinking and algebraic skills.

Well done to Yoanna 9R, Maja 9T, Mathilda 9T, Loveday 9C and Nilima 9C !

The maths department is very proud of you! Go Squadrilaterals! 

Rafidah Al-zeer

Maths Subject Lead for the NMAPS SCITT North London Hub

Teen Tech Awards

Congratulations once again to CSG STEM Club for making it to the TeenTech Finals!

This is a HUGE achievement; the standard of entries was outstanding, and 3 of our projects stood out to the judges. CSG set up their Innovation Stations at the IET Savoy Place and spent the day pitching to judges and networking with other finalists from around the country.

Well done to everyone that entered, securing Silver and Gold TeenTech Awards for their teams and another Silver Award recognising Camden School for Girls as a centre of excellence and innovation! It’s been a pleasure working with such talented students.

Ms Ronayne and Mr Semsedini

Cambridge Chemistry Challenge Results

The Cambridge Chemistry Challenge is a competition aiming to stretch and challenge students interested in chemistry and providing an excellent experience for anyone considering taking their studies further. Set by an experienced team of teachers and university chemists, it is designed to be accessible to Year 12 students but will take them significantly beyond the syllabus and encourage them to think about science in the way they would at university

On Wednesday 21 June, 35 of our Y12 students participated in the challenge, gaining 6 Silver and 13 Copper Awards.

Gold Awards were 38 marks and our top two students were on 36 and 37 marks - nearly!

This is an amazing level of participation.  Well done to all the students taking part!

Certificates and awards will be distributed in September.

Susanna Butterworth
Chemistry Teacher

Year 8 Geography quilts - "Our relationship with nature"

In May 2023 Year 8 geographers had a visit from Dr Jessica Jacobs, Geography Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. She spoke about a project that she had run over COVID lockdown which invited people up and down the country to think about how they engaged with the natural world.  Collaboratively, this resulted in the creation of a quilt, each panel of which represented a very personal reflection.

We decided to repeat the exercise with our Year 8 geographers. Each student made a panel in appliqué.  We have been impressed and delighted with the collective imagination and the quality of craftwork displayed by the students.

 

Martin Evans
Head of Geography

Key Stage 3 English: Creative writing club competition

This year A Level English students Violet, Rose, Zena and Anya ran an inspiring weekly lunchtime creative writing club for younger students. To end a successful year they launched and judged a creative writing competition open to Years 7, 8 and 9, using the below images as prompts. They were impressed by all the entries but eventually decided on the following winners: Ceci 7R, Thuba 8R, Megan 8R, Loveday 9C. Each winner receives a book token to kickstart a summer of reading. Well done Year 7, 8 and 9 writers and thank you Year 12s!

Here are the winning entries

Ms Trench

 

Debate Club News

This last term, Debate Club has been ramping up in preparation for the first CSG Debate Competition, taking place on the 14th and 17 July. A number of students from all across KS3 have been teaming up and preparing to do verbal battle on a variety of Debate topics, including “This house would make voting compulsory” and “This house believes that the creation of social media platforms has done more harm than good”. The students have been very dedicated in their preparation, and been keen in developing their oracy skills and practising during Debate Club.

This has been aided by a few of our more experienced KS4 students, who have done a fantastic job in mentoring and leading some sessions, giving advice to our first time competitors and helping them develop their thinking towards the different motions. Their own experience in competing, such as at the Oxford Schools Debates earlier this year, has been invaluable for our students. In fact, Moya and Melita Y10, and Gloria Y11, have recently all been selected to join the National Debate Squad Development Teams, meaning that they could potentially be representing England in the upcoming years in global competitions - a huge honour, and a credit to their hard work and dedication!

Very well done to all our debaters! You have made us exceptionally proud, and we look forward to watching you in the competition, and view your continual progression into excellent debaters.

History News

Y8 Trip to Greenwich

In June, Year 8 visited the National Maritime Museum.

It was an opportunity to visit historical sites such as the 17th century Queen’s House and to get up close to historical artefacts on a range of topics studied this year, including Elizabethan exploration, British colonialism in India and the origins, impact and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.

Students had the opportunity to visit the famous ‘Armada portrait’ of Elizabeth I and to engage and contribute to some of the work the museum is doing on updating its transatlantic slavery gallery. The students were fabulous and I hope the experience was as enriching for them as it was for us!

With special thanks to Ms Gall Gray and Ms Miller for organising and resourcing the trip.

Year 10 Trip to the Migration Museum

In July, our Year 10 historians visited the Migration Museum in Lewisham. The museum shines a spotlight on the many migrant stories that have shaped the UK in recent history, bringing to life the experience of migrants and the legacy of migration in the UK today.

We were led by two terrific museum educators who challenged the students to think not only about the vast array of migrant experiences but also to critically consider what and who has shaped the narratives around migration; to identify the ‘historical silences’ that are present and empowered the students to take their place in shaping how we tell the story of migration to Britain. This trip supported our History GCSE unit 'Migrants in Britain, c800-present'.  

With special thanks to Mrs Spalter for organising the trip.

Mrs Wroe and the History department

Assembly Speaker - Monday 3 July
Jack Lvely, Writer

In the sixth form assembly on Monday we had the lovely Jack Lively (a literary pseudonym) come to visit us. Lively started his career as a film director working on documentaries, music videos and commercials, with aspirations to make feature films, until he tried his hand at writing which he loves. Inspiring us with the French saying “There are many ways to skin a bear”, he outlined to us that there are many potential career journeys until we find our very own. He discovered this through his own determined, single minded and risk taking approach to finding the right career path. Throughout his teenage years he was profoundly bored living in the suburbs with no TV and no internet but being surrounded by an endless array of books belonging to his father he turned to them for entertainment. At 18 Lively started producing music (as he had desires to be a musician) and in total he made 4 tracks learning that in order to know what works you need to actively try things out - this is the motivation he had to discover if he could make films.

Lively established that he eventually needed to get paid for his passions; highlighting that there is a grammatical difference between ‘to have a career’ and to ‘to career’. To career is a verb meaning to move swiftly in an uncontrolled way, using this metaphor to demonstrate that to have a career you need to establish some control and direction after the careering around phase.  He achieved this by searching for interesting experiences; first working at a shop selling slushies but that wasn’t an experience that interested him and he found it too ‘regular’, so in search of something else he pumped gas at a petrol station, then moved on to working in a garbage dump and after that he became a fisherman at 25 years old - he described the incredible elements of beauty of working on a fishing vessel. For him, the point of having all these  jobs was having different experiences, he called it purposeful careering. But he also warned against “The Fall-back Trap” ie having a career to fall back on if you don’t attain your dream job, “when you have something to fall back on you’ll fall back on it” thus creating a trap as you’ll never have the proper motivation to put all into your passion.

Jake completed a PHD at the age of 40 where he felt rewarded for his writing which he has always enjoyed and then he wrote a literary novel about a man who journeys to Ikea and doesn’t leave….But, he decided against getting it published as he knew that the readership for literary novels is limited. He then tried his hand at writing a thriller; based on his enjoyment of the many thrillers he read in his youth. He  never found it hard to write them and this became the genre he embraced. He has now written 5 books in a thriller series featuring the central character of ‘Tom Keeler’ and he has a very large and loyal readership base.

We were left with the central message from Jack Lively to live life as it comes and to not be afraid to take risks!

Flo - Sixth Form Senior Prefect

Danceathon 2023

On Wednesday we danced and danced and danced!

It was our fifth annual Danceathon, and the whole school took part in what was a fantastic day full of fun and energy.

Everyone had worked so hard on their class dances, the preparation was amazing and the creativity higher than ever. Congratulations to 9R for winning the grand final after a very hard-fought competition.

There are still some prizes up for grabs and that’s where you can help. The class in each year that raises the most will win a pizza party next Tuesday, so please if you can and haven’t already donated, sponsor your daughter’s class today. You’ve got until midnight on Sunday:

• You can donate any amount right now through Parent Pay, just choose the Danceathon payment option.
• Or you can send a £5 by text! Simply text your daughter’s form name (eg 7M or 8C etc) to 70507 (100% of your donation will go to the school, details below).

And remember you can pass the text number to friends and family so everyone can join in!

100% of your donation will go to the school. You will be charged £5, plus one message at your standard network rate. Camden School for Girls will not process your mobile number or use it to contact you again in future. If you wish to discuss this mobile payment please call 020 3282 7863. Registered charity number: 312763