News from Head of Prep

This week saw our inaugural Black History Month Showcase. An opportunity for the girls to celebrate and share the work they have done over the past weeks linked to this year’s Black History Month theme, ‘Honouring Communities’.

The Showcase can only be described as joyous; a celebration of learning. Our girls LOVE to learn…and to share their learning with others. Every pupil from Nursery to Year Six was involved, whether that be through art, research, poetry, words or dance. My staff know that I like to think outside the box, they know that I will come to them with ideas and they know that my expectation is that, as a school, we will run with these ideas. With our Black History Month work this year, my staff fully immersed themselves into the joy of teaching and learning. They were ambitious with their ideas and that passion and love of learning shone brightly during our Black History Month Showcase on Tuesday evening.

It was wonderful to be able to share the showcase with so many of our EHS Prep Community and The Octagon, our unique performance space, was filled with parents, family and friends. A real highlight for me was, not only the dance encore which involved the entire school…with a special guest parent! But, when, at the end of the showcase, the audience eagerly explored the exhibition of work created by our Pre-Prep pupils.

Friday saw the final of our Prep Powerful Poetry Competition. A unique poetry recital challenge, which encouraged every single person to learn and perform a poem and, for those who wanted to develop their breadth of learning, to write their poem too. We were delighted to welcome Lucie Burns into school as our Judge. Lucie is an industry leading performance coach and musician, but also grandmother to Aisha who is in Kindergarten. Lucie travelled up from London for us and I was immensely proud of her comments about the standard of performance. Every pupil has been involved and it has been remarkably challenging to whittle down the group of finalists.

The challenge with competitions such as these is two-fold. Whilst we want to encourage the girls to be ambitious in their thinking and have a desire to win, we must also prepare them for life beyond school. One where they will not always win (first time) or find themselves achieving the success they dream of (yet!). Supporting the girls to develop their resilience, grit and determination is key to preparing them for life beyond school. So, I was immensely proud to see how generous the girls were with their peers when congratulating the overall winners of this competition.

After a busy start to the academic year, I have encouraged the girls to make the most of the half term break. Taking the time to rest, to reset and recharge will ensure they are well-placed to enjoy everything that the latter part of the Autumn term offers.

Wishing you all a restful half term break with your families.

Mrs N Hobson

Head of Preparatory School