Our Year in Words – by Year 8 and 9

Review about my favourite moment at school:

My favourite, or rather memorable moment at school this year was Hendred’s Charities Day. I was in a team with several Y8 students, and we were going to do face-painting.

However, only Bella and I were able to attend the Charities Day as others weren’t there. Therefore, us two had to do the face painting by ourselves. We weren’t prepared entirely, so we were quite rushing to get things in order. We brought paint-brushes and set up our stand in the main hall. At first, Bella and I were so nervous that we had to do face painting, when we hadn’t done it often. Although we were nervous at the start, we slowly got more confidence and (maybe) started to paint better. More people started to come over to our stand to get their face painted. In the end, we raised quite a lot of money and both of us were proud of ourselves, on how we did all that, despite our worries in the beginning.

Suhyeon Oh, Y8CS

Our Year by Keira and Senge

We have had very memorable moments in Year 8. One of the most fun was our weekly Accelerated Reader lessons. They were always fun not only because we all have a love for reading but because we got to enjoy the comfy beanbag seats and spinning chairs.

Unfortunately, there was not a lot of them so we would constantly fight over them. Very famous battles include Senge pushing Keira off a chair when the teacher was not looking and Milly pulling a bean bag from under Frances when she was about to sit down. These always ended up badly with the chair being taken away from the people arguing. But that didn’t stop us from trying to get it back. We got in more trouble but at least we got the seat. Obviously, we wouldn’t fight over the chair for the whole thirty minutes but it is really funny to look back on.

Drama in Year 9 – a perfect combination of challenging and exciting!

We started of with a play by Brecht called the Caucasian chalk circle, where we practiced line learning and using language that can be difficult and hard to decipher. We were given our own parts, and this made us feel responsible for the outcome of the play. After we finished the play, we moved on to adapting scenes from The tiny wife by Andrew Kaufman. We followed 2 different characters and saw their development over the course of the play. We were able to adapt and dramatize the separate scenes into smaller plays and experiment with different forms of drama. As well as our Drama lessons, we took part in the senior school play, Bugsy Malone. We played members of a gang, and it was challenging to explore the dynamics of the play, but it helped us grow as actors. Our characters had a song and dance routine, and this stretched us out of our comfort zone, and we were allowed to have input on our dances that we took part in. Bugsy Malone was a new experience that helped us improve and progress, as well as try new things. Overall, Drama this year has helped our confidence grow and has given us the skills we need for GCSE Drama.

By Martha and Lucie, Year 9.

Hockey club by Lydia and Aoife

Every Monday lunchtime we would go with some of our other friends to hockey club. We learned many skills like shooting passing and defending the ball. We would get changed after having lunch and then go to the hockey pitch and start dribbling the ball to each other as a warm-up.  We had two matches this school year and we would normally win.

Remember, Remember the 5th November

Everyone really enjoyed the firework night because it was a very eventful and memorable evening. We especially enjoyed it because we got to spend extra time with friends, not in lessons, and the food was amazing! Many of us also indulged in the chocolate fountain, and we all had way too many fizzy drinks. We saw the first firework light up the sky and we all sprinted through the forest and pushed through the crowd of people in the field, to watch the amazing display- that made the evening spectacular. It was also great to see old friends that had the chance to come back and visit for the exciting night. Once the fireworks had finished we all made our way to the stalls, that had been together by our lovely PTA, and we ate our body weight in cake and sweets. We had an amazing and can’t wait for the next one!

Tangerine Party – have you heard of our tradition?!

The highlight of the year was the Tangerine Party because it’s when all the years come together and sing Christmas songs, tell jokes and eat tangerines. The tangerine party is so fun because we are all already very excited because of the other Christmas events that Rye puts on such as the pantomime and the fair and with all of the excitement of the Christmas season and the activities we have done, the tangerine party is just a build-up of all the excitement of the school term and is a great way to round off the Christmas term.

As I mentioned the pantomime is also fun festive activity done at rye where the older years and the teachers come together to put on an amazing performance for the pupils and teachers and is another exciting activity in the calendar. I loved this year’s pantomime it was the first rye panto I had been to and I loved it. It was a highlight because it was a time for the pupil and staff to relax and enjoy a brilliant performance, it was hilarious and it brought spirits up for the rest of the term, it was definitely a highlight of this year.

Isa Stevens

My Year:

Year eight has definitely been a different year compared to the others I’ve spent at Rye. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable however and I’ve spent lots of time with my friends and learning new things (of course at an acceptable social distance). I did enjoy the play, Bugsy Malone, back when we were in school and joining all the sports clubs, I usually keep as far away from as I possibly can. From some people’s perspective, leaving school back in March to start online learning, meant that Year eight was already over. I disagree with this, I think the change from normal school to online learning, although at first a rather intimidating prospect, was an important one. It taught me how to work independently and take initiative. One of the things I did find while in lockdown, was a website to publish creative writing on. This is where my whole lockdown changed since I would have something to do and be kept busy with, instead of just sitting around waiting to return to school. I was also given the opportunity this term to organise and be the editor of the Year Eight C-S magazine. This new project to counter lockdown boredom has been a great thing for me, teaching me how to read and analyze work to see which bits would be interesting to read and being able to interview my maths tutor for an exclusive interview about how the biggest testing lab in the U.K. works, and I am very grateful and honored to be chosen for that task. I’m really going to miss Rye but I hope it continues growing, as it has during lockdown.

Bridget

Rye St Antony Private School in Oxford is a day school and boarding school offering an outstanding educational experience in an inspirational and nurturing school.