The Pocklingtonian 2021-22 | Page 31

CURRICULUM & ACADEMICS //

MATHS

This year saw a return to competitions for our Mathletes . In the singles UKMT , there was a huge amount of success , with merits for Ansh Sarkar-Hunter in the Junior Kangaroo , followed by Freddie Taylor and Henry Hudson in the Senior Kangaroo . Zac Stewart was likely the best placed Lower Sixth student in the country – achieving a 24th ( out of 1500 ) place finish in the British Olympiad , followed by a merit in the follow up round . This was a huge success and Zac is hoping to be selected for the training camp next year for the national team .
The Fourth Year team competed well in the Year 10 Maths Feast , held at Bootham School , and the senior team successfully navigated their way through to the final challenge of the RitAngle challenge – in the process , becoming one of the few teams globally to get to this far in the two-month competition .

LANGUAGES

The Great European Bake Off this year , was another huge success with some amazing European-themed bakes – it was so difficult to choose winners as they were all so tasty and astonishingly creative ! We raised £ 218.56 for MacMillan Cancer Research , which is a fantastic total . A huge well done and thank you to all participants .
OVERALL WINNERS :
Winner :
Fiona Tilsed
Runner up :
Isobel Stones
MIDDLE SCHOOL : Winner : Runner up :
LOWER SCHOOL : Winner : Runner up :
Scarlett Cooper Clara Stewart
Liliana Pemberton Lisa de Klein
In September , in celebration of the European Day of Languages , our Sixth Form linguists read fairy tales in different languages to Prep School pupils – and what a fantastic job they did too ! They make brilliant role models and ambassadors for language learning .
Our school were privileged to welcome pupils from Instituto Yapeyu de Buenos Aires , Argentina earlier this year . Our pupils got to know our visitors through language exchange workshops and pupils from Instituto Yapeyu put on a great show doing role plays using language from their region . Our Fifth and Sixth Form pupils showed the group around our school , and made the most of the opportunity to practise their Spanish skills at the same time !
Another highlight of the year for the languages department , was seeing how many pupils got involved with Poesia : the international foreign poetry and art competition . Our pupils really enjoyed taking part in this amazing competition , where they had to perform poetry in a foreign language or create a piece of artwork to represent a poem .
We were so proud to have had winners in several categories in the global competition out of over 250 schools worldwide ; what an amazing achievement that is !
HUGE CONGRATULATIONS MUST GO TO : Isabel Moorhouse ( First Year , Spanish ) Amelie Kilner ( Second Year , French ) Rose Newbould ( Fifth Year , French )
Finally , the languages department joined with the history department to invite guest speaker retired Major Stuart Whatford to speak about the role of BRIXMIS in the Cold War in Germany . It was fascinating to hear about his experiences of espionage , including some hair-raising experiences , during this period in the country ’ s history .
THE POCKLINGTONIAN 29