A Visit from Expert Nutritionist, Christine Bailey

Year 11 GCSE Food Technology pupils were lucky enough to receive a visit from Christine Bailey in June, as the expert nutritionist delivered a presentation on healthy eating to the class.

Bailey, who has over sixteen years experience of working in the food and health industry, talked to the pupils about the role of nutrition and the importance of specific diets over the course of an engaging discussion. The presentation covered many aspects of the GCSE course and gave a fresh insight on areas of the topic.

Head of Department, Mrs Dray, said the presentation was both ‘enlightening and interesting’ and the chance to hear an award-winning nutritionist will certainly benefit the students in their examinations and their understanding of the subject as a whole.

Chloe Bateman (Year 13)

Food Tech Five Cook up a Treat

Visitors to the Riverdale Centre were treated to a range of treats last Tuesday as five eager Year Nine pupils packed up their recipe books and headed off to cook up some snacks. Florence Wilson, Abby Griggs, Phoebe Stainton, Onahi Idikwu and Emily Coomber made carrot cake, flapjacks, mini pizzas, pin wheels and that food technology favourite, fruit salad, for visitors to the children’s centre. 

Mothers and toddlers enjoyed the food on offer and watched a demonstration of the pupils’ healthy lunchbox recipes, with many parents promising to try out the food they had tasted at home for themselves. Not only did the pupils demonstrate their culinary talents, they also proved a useful asset to a visiting class who are studying English as a second language. These visitors found it beneficial to hear the talk about preparing the food, and we also able to practice their vocabulary with the pupils.

Organiser of the trip, Mrs Dray, could not praise the girls enough, while Family Worker at the Centre Lesley Rees said that Riverdale ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ having the pupils demonstrate their healthy recipes and described the five as a ‘credit to Maiden Erlegh’.

Chloe Bateman (Year 13)

Again, this year, Maiden Erlegh School celebrates success in the Performing Arts!

Year Nine’s Akancha Gurung was successful in her acting audition to join the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain! The NYT is a very prestigious young people’s theatre company for budding actors and backstage crew aged between 13 and 21 and, this year, over 4400 young people from around the UK auditioned!

Akancha will now complete a 2-week acting course in the summer holidays. Following this, she is then a full member of the company, enabling her to audition for the company’s main productions that are staged in London’s West End during the summer.

Successful students follow in the footsteps of names such as Sir Derek Jacobi, Dame Helen Mirren, Jude Law, Daniel Day-Lewis, Orlando Bloom… Year 13’s Ashleigh Weekes, Year 12’s Iola Evans, Gareth Miller, Jessica Moon and James Mould, Year 11’s Matthew South and Year 10’s Leah Haile!

Year 13’s Hannah Hillyard was also successful in her audition with Youth Music Theatre again this year. YMT is the country’s most vibrant and active music theatre company for young people aged between 11 and 21. A truly national company, each year they look for over 200 talented young people to work on their new stage shows.

During July and August, Hannah will be rehearsing “Mort,” a musical based on the novel by Terry Pratchett. It will be performed at a London venue at the end of the course.

The Drama department is delighted with our pupils’ success!

The French Café

During March, or should that be Mars! - year 8 pupils decided to run a café for year 7 pupils and staff as an extension to their French lessons.

Over the course of the project, the year eights learnt many new project management skills, particularly in the area of presentation and marketing.  The first initiative was to promote the café by giving presentation both in a year 7 assembly and to staff.

The next stage was creating the menu and deciding on what roles each pupil would take – the Drama Department were particularly helpful in their loan of props.  On this part of the project, the group learnt to work well together by developing negotiating skills whilst also learning some new French words along the way!

A particularly enjoyable time was decorating the café with the tricolour streamers and pictures of places in France.

On the day of the café, the year eights were up early at 7.30am to set up.  With help from the canteen staff, they served up warm croissants and hot chocolate before enjoying the continental breakfast before the inevitable cleaning up.

Year 8 pupils involved and their roles were: Jacob Barnes on the door, Felix Clements providing entertainment as a dancer, Penny Absolom, JP Burt, Rebecca Moore and Naseem Mahmood and Tim Wong as waiters.   The project was overseen by Miss Allen with assistance from Teaching Assistant, Ms Graham.

The café was a resounding success and the café was packed out leaving not one crossant in sight!  Everyone involved had a fantastic time.  Admittedly nervous at times when speaking in front of peers and staff a great sense of achievement was felt by all Year 8 pupils.

Jacob Barnes – Year 8

Year 7 Get Set Olympic Art Project Going for Gold

Year 7 Art Club have designed, modelled and stop frame animation-ed their way to becoming one of three finalists from the south east of the UK in the ‘design a mascot for the Olympics 2012 competition’.

Work was underway during the autumn term, in Miss Brumby and Miss Terry’s Year 7 Art Club.  Pupils were challenged to design Wenlock and Mandeville (the 2012 mascots) to represent their school, community and area.

One Olympic-mascot hopeful, Varsha Ramineni said: ‘When I started the Olympic Mascot Club it was really fun as we got to design our own mascots for the competition , but what I really liked was when we got to make them out of plasticine. We chose two of the best designs and got into groups, each making different things. One group got to make the girl mascot and Carlos Perez made the boy mascot. The rest of the groups got to make images of famous landmarks around Reading.  In my group we made the Oracle and the lion from Forbury Gardens.  After that, came my favourite part: we took all the models and made a stop frame animation video clip. We all got to have a go at moving the models slightly and taking a picture each time, so when we put all 370 photos together it looked like it was moving. In the end it all paid off as we are one of three finalists in the south east of the UK’.

Miss Brumby and Miss Terry were impressed with the amount of detail that pupils put into their designs.  The winning mascot is: blue to represent the Thames and the Reading Football Club colours; has a lion’s tail to represent the Royal County of Berkshire, the Forbury Lion and Kingsely (the Reading Football Club mascot); has a quiff to represent ‘Grease’ (the school production this year); and is holding an artist's pallet as Maiden Erlegh is a visual arts school; and he is holding a plate of biscuits because Reading used to the 'The Biscuit Town' thanks to Huntley & Palmers being a key manufacturer in the town.  There is a permanent exhibition of Huntley & Palmers’ Biscuits memorabilia at Reading Museum and Town Hall and they have a website dedicated to the topic www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk.  Reading Museum has kindly provided Carlos with a box of biscuits to take with him to the finals.

Good luck to Year 7 and their Wenlock and Mandeville figures!

Well done to all those involved:

Hannah Chaplin 7E1
Sonia Khan-Jauregi 7E1
Bethany Wallace 7E2
Ellen Willis 7E2
Varsha Ramineni 7E3
Carlos Perez 7E3
Robyn Wheeler 7E3

Abigail Jones 7LK
Suvansh Prasad 7M1
Aleyna Hobbs 7M2
Jasmine Paonessa 7M2
Sam Benford 7M3
Alex Lewis 7M3
Ella Mortimer 7M4
Lauren Perkin 7M4

Young Chefs Win Through

On 19 January 2011, Maiden Erlegh schools young chefs were put to the test in the Rotary Young Chef Competition. Joined by Bulmurshe School, there were eight students taking part – six of them, from Maiden Erlegh. There task was to prepare a healthy two-course meal for under £10 in less than two hours. The winner of this heat was Joshua Lockwood, followed by Samantha Graham, both from Maiden Erlegh School. Joshua cooked two impressive starters of healthy mint, pea and pork risotto followed by a sophisticated dish of poached pears in red wine. Sam's main course was called “Chicken Surprise,” consisting of slices of spicy chicken breast nestling on bacon lardoons and served with colourful vegetables and rice. He finished off the meal with a sweet desert of baked apple bathed in sultanas, golden syrup and brown sugar.

Joshua went onto the second heat, competing against students from Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Middlesex. The heat was hosted by the High School, High Wycombe, and involved eleven students preparing and cooking a healthy three-course meal for two people for under £12 in less than two and a half hours. Joshua prepared a tasty starter of scallops on pickled vegetables, followed by a main course of pork in a prune and cream sauce accompanied with wild rice and vegetables and a delicious desert of tarte tatin with sugar baskets. It is great to see a Maiden Erlegh student get so far in a competition.

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