Last week, the English Secondary Department organised an enjoyable and successful English Week with a variety of activities that kept us actively involved in communicating in English.

From the early mornings in Homeroom, students were given English word puzzles to solve. Some were rather tricky, but there were quite a few astute individuals who were able to find the correct answers. During lunch times, there were even more activities! We had competitions between classes who were contending for first place in the “Wheel of English”. This involved teams of students answering questions, according to where the wheel stopped, about grammar, vocabulary, idioms, literature and figures of speech. The finalists met on Friday afternoon to compete for the mystery prizes, but more about that later!

Reading was also a major part of our week. Teacher Kelby Hines arranged for her Grade 6 and 7 students to read their original Gothic stories and myths to the Grade 3s and 4s on Wednesday and Thursday. What’s more, these Secondary students even created their own books to read to the younger age groups! From what we’ve been told, the storytelling was a most welcome and amusing experience with a very well-behaved and captive audience!

On Wednesday afternoon, the staff and students also enjoyed an afternoon of drama performed by the White Horse Theater, a group of young international actors, who have been presenting plays to audiences in several countries around the world. We had the pleasure of watching two plays with exciting sequences of events and superb acting that grabbed the attention of us all. Still, there was more to come!

Our grand finale was staged on the 5th floor in Block B. The finalists met together for the thrilling “Wheel of English” quiz which turned into quite a fascinating battle of the wits. Despite excellent attempts by all teams, there could only be one winner in each section – congratulations to Grades 9 and 11A who took first place and went home with some delicious Hershey chocolates! Other prizes were also handed out to two other students who won awards for the most creative and humorous costumes of English story characters. Well done Polina and Yujin!

Of course, I cannot finish this article without a big thank you to Jocelyn Webb, our English Department Head, as well as David Krieger, Edwin Pell and Kelby Hines. Jocelyn and the team worked tirelessly both before and during the week preparing and hosting the events that resulted in a most rewarding and entertaining English Week! We’ll be back for more next year!

Chris Danaher
Head of Secondary