By Zuriela O (Year 6) and Blake H (Year 5)
It was a pleasure to be invited to Edge Grove's String and Guitar Platform on February 3, 2023. All the pieces were stunning, and we thank Ms. Saville and Ms. Wyatt, who helped make this performance possible.
The grand opening performed by Raphael Purusse in Year 4 was a prestigious piece, accompanied by Ms. Wyatt on piano. Aarman Melwani and Atlas Devrimoz both played enchanting pieces on the guitar and were very proficient. Aarin Shah, George Roper, and Iyanu Lawal played a composition in a trio with Ms. Wyatt. Aayan Aarif played the guitar and shocked the audience with his precision. Osubare Ibitola from Year 6 played a short but excellent piece. We spoke with Samira Melwani, Arman's mother, about how she felt about his son playing the guitar, and she was a proud mother who was pleased with how musical her son was.
Overall, the strings and guitar platform was a brilliant way to end the evening, and we look forward to the upcoming concerts. It was fantastic to see and hear about so many students of all ages, their talents, and their proud parents.
By Sophie G, Year 6
On Tuesday, 31st of January 2023, the Year 3 to 8 final of the Edge Grove House Lexathon competition took place. Excitement was building in the Apthorp Hall and the five teams were huddled around their tables - everyone was getting excited!
Ted, the year three finalist for Gills told me how he felt:
“Before the Lexathon started, I felt nervous as I was not sure what it was going to feel like with an audience. Once it began, however, I could tell it was going to be great fun, and I was looking forward to some great group activities with the other Gills finalists.”
Standing up in front of lots of people answering questions against the clock was exhilarating! Ted said his favourite activity was the jumbled up words and also solving picture puzzles.
When it was time for the results it had been so close throughout, that the winner was not obvious. Hedgerows had come into the final ahead from the Year 1 and 2 final held last Monday and led for the first three rounds. The scores were read out slowly, and you could feel the tension in the room building. When Gills was read out last as the winners, Ted couldn’t believe it ! It was just so exciting! Each member of the team was given a book as their prize as well as the Hedgerows finalists from Year 1 and 2.
What a great house competition! Well done to all the finalists and all the teams - it was such a close thing - I hope we do it every year!
By Alexis C-O, Year 5
On Friday 3rd of February 2023, Ignite students from Year 5-8 at EdgeGrove School took part in a UK-wide code breaking language competition called the Linguistic Olympiad. There were four different levels at which we could enter the Linguistic Olympiad but we started with the first ‘Breakthrough’ level. This is the easiest level. If you are successful at this level you can then progress to the next level known as the Foundation level.
The Ignite fellows sat the test in the library, working together to ‘crack the code’ and decipher how a selection of languages work. We had to work in groups and were allowed to form groups with people that we could work and collaborate well with. Year 5-6 fellows had to decode the languages Gilbertese, an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati which belongs to the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages; JamSai, one of the Dogon languages spoken in Mali and the only one spoken in Burkina Faso apart from a few villages of Tomo Kan; and Umbrian, an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria.
Most groups were assigned one language per group member, however, some of the bigger groups used different tactics such as splitting up the sections and having multiple members work on the same language. Although we all used different tactics, everyone steadily completed the paper which was surprisingly more difficult than we had anticipated, but we tried our best, using the knowledge we had acquired from similar papers and riddles we had completed. If we were stuck on a section of the paper we were allowed to trade answers with other groups that had already completed it, that way we were all able to complete our papers at the designated time.
The Linguistics Olympiad was challenging but we all did our best and we are hopeful that it was enough to get us to the next level of the competition.
