Best-selling Author is New Head of English & Literacy
We are delighted to welcome Clare Constant to the Thames staff team as Head of English and Literacy. Clare is a highly experienced teacher who, for almost 20 years, has also been a best-selling author of Key Stage 3 and 4 English curriculum materials published by Pearson Education, Heinemann and Longman, and exam materials for Edexcel and NEAB (AQA). Clare studied English and for her PGCE at Cardiff University, then taught in three inner city schools, rising to Director of Curriculum.
Clare is particularly enthusiastic about empowering pupils to develop the learning and thinking skills to enable them to achieve their full potential both academically and in their personal life.
Excellent Maths Results
Congratulations to Year 11 who achieved over 50% A*/A grades in their recent GCSE Maths module.
Thames Scoops National Art Awards
We were extremely pleased with the news that Thames Christian College has won the Good School's Guide Art Award for 2009 in both the boys' and girls' categories. This means that Thames has achieved the best GCSE results in Fine Art of any independent school in England from 2006 to 2008. These awards aim to highlight excellent teaching in individual subjects. David Adkins, our proud Head of Art, said, "I am delighted with these awrds which reflect the hard work and attention to detail put in by pupils over the past three years. We aim to build on these in the future." One new Year 9 pupil who loves Art commented "I'm really glad I moved schools because now I'll do much better at Art than I would have done at my previous school."
Feeling Good - Really Good
For six weeks in February/March, five of our boys were trained by top London choreographer, Lizzi Gee, in a street dance routine from the West End musical Billy Elliot. They were followed by TV cameras in this amazing journey from audition, through strenuous and exacting twice-weekly rehearsals to final filming for The Feelgood Factor, hosted by Myleene Klass and Eamonn Holmes. None of our boys had previous dance experience, but this did not matter, as the point of their participation was to show that dance is fun and good exercise. At the end of March, Yonnatan, Matthew, Theo, Joe and Ronan performed the 'angry dance' with Tom Holland, who plays Billy in the hit show. To familiarise them with the dance, the boys were taken to the show in February and were filmed meeting Tom backstage afterwards. This incredible journey culminated in two days of final rehearsals and filming in ITV's Manchester studios. The fact that the studio was right next to the Rover's Return and Coronation Street was the icing on the cake! The boys took everything in their stride, however, and were an absolute credit to the school and their parents who are so proud of them. As an additional reward, each boy was given a year's free subscription to Stagecoach Theatre School so they could continue their new-found hobby.
If you missed the fruit of their hard work shown on ITV1 on Saturday 28 March, you can catch up on this episode and the one where Myleene came to Thames to spring the surprise on them on Youtube.
School Redesigned
Our GCSE Art students had a fantastic opportunity to experience life in an architect's practice when they went to a workshop entitled Redesign the School. Project35, in Herne Hill, closed its offices for the afternoon and the four architects dedicated their time to our pupils. Initially they worked in one group, learning in broad terms what architecture is and discussing how the structure and layout of the Thames building could be improved. They then split into three groups, each with a lead architect, and were given a specific area of the school to work on: to redesign the facade; to add more floors; to redesign the entrance hall. They shared their ideas with each other and will be finalising them over the next half term to present their finished designs to Mr Holsgrove.
David Adkins, Head of Art, said that it gave the students an interesting insight into architecture, adding that if he had been given such an opportunity at school, he might have been tempted to follow architecture as a career! Ben, in Year 11, said "I was really inspired by the workshop and it confirmed that I do want to be an architect." Many thanks to all the staff at Project35 for giving up their time to allow our pupils to enjoy this unique experience.
Thames on National TV
Levi Roots, of Reggae Reggae sauce and Dragons' Den fame, and whose cafe provides our school lunches, was filmed by the BBC for a follow up programme to the "Dragon's Den". The cameras followed him for a day and filmed him preparing our school lunches and serving it to our pupils. Levi makes a point of using his experience to inspire young people and he was filmed talking to our GCSE Business Studies class about entrepreneurship. This was shown on BBC2 as part of Peter Jones' story on Sunday evening, 16 November.
