The Skinners’

School Newsletter

Term 1 2012.13

In this issue:

1. Headmaster’s Foreword

2. Skinners’ 125th

3. Anniversary

4. Sports Hall News

5. London 2012

6. Speakers for 6th Form

8. Halloween Treats

9. Heal news

10. The Great Skinners’ Bakeoff

13. STEM news

14. Solar Power @ Skinners

15. Science Challenge

16. Club 2000

17. Dates ahead

HEADMASTER’S FOREWORD

The last few weeks seem to have been an unbroken series of festivities here at Skinners’. As I write this I am able to look back with satisfaction on a wonderful Autumn for the school. Skinners’ Day was a fitting celebration of the achievements of the staff and pupils. All who were there commented on the “family” feel to the occasion, where the whole community came together to reflect upon the year past and look forward to the next 125 years. In the morning of Skinners’ Day, the Master of the Skinners’ Company, Mr William Fell CMG, formally opened our new Sports Hall. He and the other members of the Court of Skinners’ Company were very impressed with the facilities and the way in which the pupils are using them. On Monday 12 November the school held its Remembrance Assembly. We were honoured to be joined by Corporal Johnson Beharry VC. Corporal Beharry is the first living recipient of the Victoria Cross since 1965. He spoke to Years 7 to 11 in our formal remembrance service and then for a longer period of time with the Sixth Form. All who met him were impressed by his bravery and self-sacrifice. Let us hope that he will be an inspiration to our pupils. Elsewhere in this newsletter you will learn more about the many different aspects of the life of the school, all of which deserve celebration in their own right. Pupils are fortunate to be able to learn in such a vibrant and exciting school, made so by the dedication and hard work of the staff. We have much to celebrate and have certainly enjoyed the recent celebrations. The words of the school song ‘Floreat Sodalitas Pardorum’ were never more apt and true.

Mr S Everson Headmaster

On 15th September many past, present and future Skinners’ friends and the wider community joined us to celebrate the school’s 125th birthday. Luckily the weather was kind to us (better than for the birthday cricket match!) Throughout the day Skinners’ basked in sunshine and bunting. We were delighted to be joined by special guest Derek Underwood who opened proceedings.

Amongst the speeches, school displays and exhibitions, we were fortunate to be entertained by the CCF, senior and junior wind bands, as well as rock band Chameleon; jazz band 7Four and the very colourful Blocofogo samba band added further colour and celebration to proceedings. Sustenance was kindly provided by Speldhurst Sausages and local coffee shop Juliet’s - all duly washed down with Pimms and Skinners’ own branded beer. Lillie’s Cakery baked us an enormous cake replica of the main school which tasted as good as it looked and for many it was the first opportunity to take a look inside the new Sports Hall. A big thank you has to go to all the staff, pupils and volunteers who helped to make the day such a success. Camilla Nichols Development Manager

After months of waiting, the new Sports Hall finally opened its doors at the start of term. Inside and out, it is absolutely stunning with facilities that wouldn’t look out of place in a five star leisure club. However judging by the faces of the boys as they are put through their paces in the gym, the experience is far from leisurely! The climbing wall dominates one end of the main hall emblazoned with the school crest and matching hand and footholds, whilst the remaining space supports a range of activities from basketball and badminton through to table tennis and football. Adjacent to the Sports Hall are two newly refurbished tennis courts which are overlooked by large coloured disks representing each of the four houses. The disks also double up as lights which made a fantastic feature at the recent Open Evening.

It’s hard to believe that this has all been achieved in the last two years and is testament to what can be achieved with the backing of the Skinners’ community. Thank you to the many hundreds of you who have supported us on this journey.

Camilla Nichols - Development Manager

THE SPORTS HALL

IS OPEN!

A group of 20 Sixth Form students attend the penultimate day of the

London Paralympics. Here we enjoy the medal ceremony for the

Goalball final won by Finland.

LONDON 2012

Lizzy Emerson

We were once again honoured to have Dr Lizzy

Emerson, Senior Tutor at St Hughe’s College,

Oxford come and talk about Oxbridge entries.

Lizzy delivered a wonderful talk to almost 200

guests, including parents and students from

Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar and

Tunbridge Wells Grammar school for Boys.

Fran Williamson

We were truly honoured to

welcome as this year’s opening

speaker, Fran Williamson,

swimmer, winner of multiple world

and Paralympic medals. Fran was

an inspiration to all who heard her

wonderful story on overcoming

disability and her determination

to compete at the very highest

level.

Truly amazing.

L to R: Richard Taylor, Fran Williamson & Dominic Dark

INSPIRATIONAL SPEAKERS FOR

OUR SIXTH FORMERS

Emma Cole

Emma Cole, who has lived with HIV since

1991, visited Skinners’ on the 9th October to tell

our Upper Sixth of her determined fight to

highlight the prejudice suffered by HIV

sufferers. Emma’s talk was enlightening,

terrifying and yet very funny – an inspiration.

Dr Peter Vardy The sixth form students were truly fortunate to have a conference

led by Dr Peter Vardy as part of their Induction Day programme at

the beginning of term. Peter [recently retired Vice Principle of

Heythrop College, University of London] has played a very

significant role in developing and promoting philosophy and

ethics at A’ level and in the sixth form generally. The conference

was entitled ‘The Big Questions’ and introduced the students to

the importance of philosophy and the skills of critical thinking.

The upper sixth enjoyed an ethical conference the next day which

focused on some ‘world issues’ which will affect them as they

enter the adult world, including business ethics, sexual ethics and

the issues surrounding new medical technologies.

I wasn’t sure whether to expect a reply when I asked our local MP, Greg Clark, to come into school and give a talk to the sixth form, as he is such a busy man. Nonetheless, he accepted and we had the pleasure of playing host to Mr Clark. Expecting him to have prepared a speech, I was slightly surprised when he asked ‘How should we do this then?’. Settling on an interview format ( as we stepped through the doors of school hall) Mr Clark pushed away the lectern and drew up a red chair instead; his message: a man of the people. Having insisted on bringing everyone into a circle, a formal introduction and a vote of thanks seemed out of place all of a sudden. I began the debate with ‘So, how did you come to be interested in politics Mr Clark?’ From there the discussion flowed, covering topics from the Lords Reform to changing the Eleven Plus; intervention in Syria to taxing five-a-side football. A meeting with the Chief Constable five minutes after the end of our debate meant there wasn’t any time for a cup of tea. Despite such a busy schedule, Mr Clark still took the time to answer our questions, for which we are very grateful. It was a fantastic opportunity to question both our local MP and a government minister on his views and the work of the government.

Dominic Dark Head Boy

Douglas Donnachie, pictured above, is also a

dab hand at the bagpipes!

Halloween Treats Our creative Dining Hall Staff

made these Halloween goodies

for our boys before the end

of term in October.

HEAl.. had a very successful night on Open

Evening with a team of around 25 boys from Years 7 to 13. We made around 5 litres of Skinners’ home grown, zero-carbon footprint, organic leek and potato soup, over 600 mini pizzas and around 500 beautifully decorated cupcakes.

Last June we planted some organic wheat in two of our raised beds in the HEAL ( Healthy Eating And Living) Garden. It was part of a STEM project where we would follow the growth of the wheat seeds right the way through from seedling to harvest, and from there, the process of baking - and then eating! - our very own Skinners’ organic bread.

We had never grown wheat before, but the Y7 and8 members of Tuesday’s STEM club willingly volunteered to sow the seeds and then step back and watch them grow! Looking back, we could have prepared the ground much better as some weeds did grow through between them, and we could also have planted more densely. When we came back to school in September, the green wheat we had left before summer was now yellow, ripe and fully grown – it was time to harvest! Again, the Tuesday STEM Club, this time bolstered by new recruits in Y7, ventured out to harvest as much as they could during each lunch break, until we had finally gathered as most of our crop.

THE GREAT SKINNERS’ BAKE OFF

The next step was to ‘thresh’ the wheat to separate the ears from the stalks. We did this by placing a bundle of heads in pillowcases and then getting angry with them – the boys enjoyed that – by bashing the pillowcase on the ground, but it seemed to do the trick as we gathered a good half-bucket of grain by the end. Along with the grain comes a significant amount of unwanted material called ‘chaff’ and this needed to be separated by a process called ‘winnowing’. Teams of boys loaded the wheat/chaff into trays on a particularly windy day and winnowed away, tossing the grain into the air so the lighter chaff could be blown away. We now had a good pile of wheat grain, ready for grinding… We bought ourselves a Vittorio hand-powered mill, then hit upon a simple solution for the relatively tedious task of grinding the wheat into flour – namely, get someone else to do it! Therefore, at the last October Open Evening, on our STEM stall, we had opportunity for our for visitors to ‘have a go’. It was an inspired idea as it proved to be a very popular activity with the young visitors, and by the end we had 1.5 kilos of hand-milled, finely ground organic flour ready to use.

Our wheat was ground to flour ( bottom right) by visitors at Open Evening – a good move! Baking of Skinners’ Focaccia bread took place by getting all the STEM team together during morning registration to make up the dough. We knew the mass of the flour, so added the appropriate quantity of water along with our home-grown ‘sour-dough’ yeast, which had been started at Open Evening and then ‘fed’ with more flour and water since then. During first break we ‘proved’ it, added some chopped rosemary and olive oil, and shaped it into trays before letting it rise again until lunchtime. The slowest part of the whole process was waiting for the DT ovens to warm up to their hottest temperatures for the bake – they took ages! The wait was worth it though as after a quick sprinkle of sea salt, and a 10 minute bake at 200 degrees Celsius, the focaccia smelt great and was ready to come out and cool down. It seemed a long wait until the end of period 5 that day, but when the bell finally went, a horde of hungry students descended on the cooled bread, which was divided fairly into bits so each boy could take some home to tell their parents how they had made it. The remaining portion was (ahem) ‘confiscated’ by the science staff, who all declared it ‘delicious!’ Skinners’ bread – grown, harvested and baked on the premises! Surely the lowest ‘Food Miles’ bread around! Mr Moody would like to thank all the STEM team for helping out on this project – from the sowers, to the harvesters, winnowers, chaffers and bakers. It was great fun – let’s do it again next year!

Mark Moody

The STEM ‘Teen Tech’ trip at the Riverside Centre Tonbridge was an interesting as well as enjoyable expedition for a group of Year 8 pupils. Sponsors included Universities, The Royal Navy, Google, GSK and BT. The activity that I found most interesting was the ‘City University London’ zone. This zone displayed computing and gaming technology, written by undergraduate students, including one which had a body movement sensor as a controller for a game – we had to control a miniature helicopter flying around a room. We also saw the latest developments in lasers, took part in a forensics examination and discovered how electronic circuits can be printed onto ordinary paper, then made into interactive posters for the wall. These activities gave me a stronger interest in engineering and technology development. Another activity I liked was the ‘Pavegen’ systems demonstration, which explained how every time a person walked over a Pavegen tile, reliable and renewable energy is accumulated from the footstep. The kinetic energy generated is converted to ‘piezo-electric’ energy which can be stored and used to power a variety of applications. Renewable energy from footsteps is unusual, but an interesting way to generate electricity. It has already been installed in a school in Kent and it would be particularly useful to have Pavegen tiles in Skinners’ - such as in corridors or in the sports hall to make use of our footstep energy!

Two highlights for the Skinners’ Team were when we were interviewed by BBC South East Today, and when we won the ‘Design an App’ challenge by creating a logo icon for a smartphone, based on a ‘closed loop’ game we had designed. Overall, the STEM trip was a very enjoyable and challenging expedition. I learnt many new things on that day, and one day I would like to go back to do more technology work with Teen Tech! Thank you to Mr Moody for organising our visit.

Akim Beckett 8H

‘TEEN-TECH’ STEM trip report

SKINNERS’ SOLAR Power Panels provide power for

the school

On the 16th October 2012, three intrepid teams, each consisting of three Skinners’ boys, boarded the minibus destined for Beacon Community College in Crowborough. Our task was to compete in the Inter School Science Challenge. Our aim, if possible, was to win! After a briefing by Mr Moody about the harsh the judging process and how friendly banter could look like argument, we entered the Beacon 6th form College. The organiser gave us some words of warning and encouragement, noting that Hailsham were the previous winners, which made us all the more determined to gain a victory. The opposition was tough, and schools such as Uplands and Lewes Priory were taking part. You could sense a hunger for victory amongst them. The first round was a general knowledge science quiz, which was tricky, due to the ambiguous questions and multiple answers which each team could have. After consulting with the other teams, we were all still feeling fairly confident at this point. The next task was an experiment which consisted of finding out the mass of an unknown object by preparing an oscillation graph of a hacksaw in a clamp and using the oscillation time of the object to work out its mass. This was a tricky task as we were limited to half an hour to find the solution. Eventually, we came up with an answer that we felt reasonably confident about, spurred on by hearing another team saying that they “would faint if they even got a single point!”. The final part of the competition was to view through a microscope and calculate various measurements of different objects, purely by observation. Due to my team’s thorough checking and keen sight, we did not find this task as much of a challenge, but getting an answer to 2 decimal places of a millimetre required some precision, which was difficult to do.

After the judging had taken place, we no longer felt so confident, having seen one of the judges scowl at our graph. At presentation time, we felt that our chances were nil. A breakdown of the marks was given, and after the general knowledge task, we were joint fourth with several other schools. Indeed after the second task, we were in the same position. Feeling as though we had lost at this point, we saw another team from Skinners’ claim third place and it was then announced that there was just a single point between the winners and the runners up. The runners up turned out to be Lewes Priory School, who had looked unstoppable all day. Then the winner was announced. When we saw the number ONE written next to our team name, there was a wave of euphoria as we realised that we had actually done it.; we had actually won the competition, a feat that we had never really dreamed of achieving. As we stood there, waiting to have our photo taken, there was a sense of pride and achievement that only comes from being victorious. Despite all the excellent competitors, we had done it, pipped the other team at the post and really achieved something that we hadn’t ever really thought was possible.

Jack Taplin – 11Y

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Dates Ahead………………….. December 2012

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

3 Year 11 Mock exams all week.

4 Year 8 Parents Evening 5pm-8pm

5 TW Eco-Forum in G2, 4.30-5.30pm

6 Year 12 Civics P3 in School Hall: Financial Education (Rathbones) Year 11/12 TS trip to The National

7 PA ‘Wacky tie Day’ (cakes for Xmas Bazaar) U12 A/B Rugby vs Ravenswood

8 PA Christmas Bazaar & Farmers market 11-3pm Rugby vs. Ravenswood

9

10 MUNGA @ Benenden

11 ‘TearDown Lab Roadshow’ (STEM) in Dining Hall 4pm-8pm.

12 CCF Officers’ Christmas Dinner Carol Service @ St John’s 7.30pm

13

14 Drama Schools evening 7pm in the Thomson Theatre (FL)

15 Rugby vs. Hampton

16

17 18 11B form trip to ‘One man, Two Guvnors’ (evening)

19 Christmas Lunch 12pm-2pm

20

Term 2

Ends

Full School Assembly Periods 1-3 as normal. Dismiss at 2pm. Progress reports issued, Years 7, 9, 10 & 12. Year 10 DTP vaccinations from 9.30am in School Hall Year 12 Civics P3 in School Hall: Hospices of Hope

21 22 23

Term 3 starts on

7th January 2013