‘Scribes’ is a brand-new creative writing club for Key Stage 4 students. Club members will work on crafting submissions for some of the fantastic poetry and prose competitions on offer locally and nationwide. Through creating their entries, members will develop their writing skills and benefit from giving and receiving constructive feedback in our fortnightly workshops.

Here are a few of the competitions we have our eye on this term:

• Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival Poetry Competition – Theme: Let Nature Thrive
• Young Writers Integer Prose Competition – Theme: Inspired by Numbers – 100word short story
• Young Poets Network Song Lyric Writing Challenge – Theme: Identity – winning poems will get the chance to turn their poems into songs with professional composers!

One of our Scribes has already submitted to the ‘East Ridings Festival of Words Poetry Competition’ with the theme ‘My Wonderful World’; you can see Chiara’s emotive entry below.

Ms A Natley

Teacher of English

All KS4 students are welcome to join Scribes – see Ms Natley for more details.

On the weekend of 26 and 27 November, Grace (7PA) competed at the UK National Kuk Sool Won Tournament and also took part in the Masters Demonstration. Grace competed at the rank of 1^st Degree Black belt (Joh Kyo Nym) in the under 12 female division, across the categories of Sword, Staff, Form, Techniques and Sparring. Grace was successful in winning silver in 4 categories and bronze in another. Grace later went on to join the Masters Demonstration team, where, in front of a large number of spectators, she performed Staff and Sword forms, and then closed the ceremony by joining the ‘Nak Bup’ (Break Fall) Team for a thrilling acrobatics display.

On Sunday 27 November, Grace attended the Black Belt Workshop, where she received expert tuition from the Grand Masters Son, 9^th degree Master Alex, to refine her Sword and Staff Forms. She was also then taught the art of Traditional Korean Archery.

Kuk Sool Won is a systematic study of all the traditional fighting arts, which together comprise the martial arts history of Korea. It is known for its comprehensive collection of combat techniques, in particular, an extensive set of offensive and defensive moves designed to take advantage of the human body’s pressure points. There are many elements of Kuk Sool Won which include: striking, kicking, throws, joint lock techniques, falling/acrobatics, body conditioning, meditation, animal-style techniques and weapons.

Well done to Bella who attended Loughborough University for a 5 counties tournament, where she represents Nottingham County. She played Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire and won against all the counties.

On Thursday 10 November, two teams from Year 9 attended the regional finals of the Raytheon Quadcopter Competition. Teams of four students were challenged to design, build, modify, and fly a quadcopter to compete in the UK wide competition run by Raytheon UK.

Well done to the sisters Lucy and Charlie who competed at the Head of the Don. Lucy won the WJ18 single race and Charlie won in the WJ17 coxless quad.