Dear Parents,

At last it looks as if Spring has arrived! It has been a long cold winter but we are looking ahead to a warmer last few weeks of school, packed with exciting activities and events.

We have had a productive term so far. The School ski trip was a great success, no injuries, some excellent skiing and from all accounts some excellent après ski activities. Thankyou to Mr Lord and Mrs Spaxman for overseeing the trip and ensuring all went well. Students at the JSC enjoyed the company of our visitors from Uruguay and made them very welcome. They were served traditional English tea and crumpets on their last day.

Closer to home, we have seen some excellent Assemblies from our infant pupils and I do hope all parents enjoyed seeing what the children have been learning this term. The Juniors are looking forward to sharing their achievements with you over the next few weeks.

Highlights of the term so far include the fascinating day given over to a lecture and workshops run by Dr James Grime, a Mathematician from Cambridge University who brought along a real Enigma Machine.  Caribbean class have been utterly absorbed in their IPC topic on the Circus, rounded off with great excitement with a trip to the Corn Exchange to see the Chinese State Circus. IGCSE pupils learned a great deal at their hands on trip to the Curwen Print Making Centre. Lucy Mazur was delighted at how engaged the students were and how beneficial they found the trip for their Art studies.

Congratulations

We have been delighted with the recent achievements of our some of our senior pupils. All four Year 8 girls who sat an IGCSE achieved an A*, hugely impressive at the age of 12 and 13! The Year 11 students received their IGCSE results for English and Science which they took early and once again we were delighted with the high results they gained, with an impressive number of A and B grades.

Excellent news too, in the recent UK Intermediate Maths Challenge with a very hard to achieve Gold Certificate being awarded to Jonathan Stocks, also gaining Best in School and bronzes to Ed Young, Petar Pintar and Haris Zaman.

Haiti Readathon

As an immediate response to the earthquake in Haiti, the school held a bring and buy sale, cake sale and non-uniform day. We raised over £300 on this day which was very pleasing. However, this has been added to most spectacularly, by the amazing efforts of the Juniors and Coral and Caribbean who participated in a Readathon designed and organised by Jennifer Mudge, mum of Justine and Aidan. Her Assembly went a long way to motivate the children and the end result is truly amazing. Over £1,200 was raised from the Readathon which, added to the early fund raising, means CIS has been able to contribute just under £1500 to help alleviate in some small way, the terrible suffering in Haiti. Thankyou, so much, to all parents and children who helped to make this happen.

School Sleep-in and Evening Walk

The Senior School will get a chance to show how tough they are at the end of the term! As part of our ongoing commitment to the schools in Kasiisi, Uganda, and our support of the Porridge Project, students from Year 7 upwards will be asking for sponsorship for their evening walk which will end at Cherry Hinton Hall where we then plan to sleep in school! I am not sure much sleep will happen but I do believe the event will be memorable. Parents are VERY welcome to join in both elements of the evening. The more help, the better! We are also looking for a welcoming house where we can be offered hot chocolate and moral support half way through the walk, if anyone wishes to offer?!

Welcome

We have enjoyed welcoming several new families to the school this term. It is just wonderful to see how quickly the children settle in, and to see a shy new student transformed before the week is out to a smiling enthusiastic pupil who rushes into school. This term we have welcomed children from Norway, France, Germany and the UK. We have been pleased to get to know Caius, Olivia, Vetle, Erle, Louis, Milo, Louisa, Haneefa, Aadne, Live, Yasin, Malachy, Max, Phoebe and Guy and hope they all have a successful, memorable and happy time with us.

Forthcoming events

Over the next few weeks we will be very busy with various academic, musical and sporting activities. Cambridge Science Festival commences this week. Children will be involved in a range of events for the next fortnight. The Astronomy presentation to Juniors and Year 7’s, the junior and senior school trip to the Space Museum in Leicester and the Science Across the School Day on March 18th all promise to be very exciting.

Adriatic and Arabian are attending a Wind Orchestra Concert this Tuesday presented by the University of Cambridge music department. Aral and Aegean are looking forward to performing their own musical, composed by themselves, at the Mothers’ Day Assembly on March 12th. All Juniors will attend a woodwind, brass and percussion concert at school on March 19th.

Tyr and Ion are sure to have an amazing day at Hampton Court on March 22nd. An early start is required, to make the most of all the opportunities available to them.

We have several sporting fixtures coming up. A football friendly against Heritage School on Monday, the U11 Football Tournament at King’s School Ely on March 13th and two more matches against Sancton Wood Seniors (dates to be confirmed)

Our major trips this term are the media studies trip to New York for years 10 and 11 and our recently arranged visit to see two of our former pupils in Holland. We had expected to take ten or so children but find we are flying a group of 32 to Eindhoven, coming back via Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Museum.

Please look out for memos relating to all these events, so that everyone is in the right place at the right time doing the right thing!

Good Luck

Fingers firmly crossed over the next two weeks as some of our students enter public competitions. On Friday, Jasper van Beurden, Isabella Weglowski, Andy Clegg and Emily Glover will represent the school at the regional heat of The Times Spelling Bee competition at Cineworld at 9.15am on Friday. On March 16th Isabella Weglowski and Arcadio Fernandez from Year 7 will read a version of one of Aesop’s fables in Latin as CIS enters for the very first time the Cambridge Classical Reading Competition. All the children have been practising hard and we hope all of them hold their nerve on the day!

Response to Questionnaire

We were very touched and heartened by the response to our recent questionnaire concerning possible expansion and investment. We do not have any firm plans to announce as yet, but directly we do, we will keep all parents very closely informed. The essence of our plans relate to increasing the space available to us by a variety of different means, including enlarging our playground space at Cherry Hinton Hall and possibly buying a new property for our Key Stage 3 (years 7 to 9) Senior School provision.

Although our Open Mornings for current pupils had a reasonable number of parents coming, I know some of you were unable to come. You are welcome in school any time, do please let me know if you wish to come and look around and see not only what your own little darling gets up to, but what everyone else does all day! Please remember that even if I look busy when you see me, I always want to hear from you if there is anything causing you concern, and, equally, if you just wish to say how happy you are! Please do email or ring with any issues and they will be addressed immediately.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the Mothers’ Day Assembly at 2pm at United Reformed Church, and, hopefully, absolutely all of you at the Barn Dance the following evening!

With best wishes to you all,

Harriet Sturdy