Modern Languages department

GCSE French Film approaches Study day

On Friday 28th May, a group of Year 10 French GCSE students attended a French film study day at the BFI Southbank.

C’était formidable!

We started off by analysing a variety of short films. We looked at their morals and meaning (en français). We watched Maman regarde, J’attendrai le suivant, la Place des fêtes, and Quais de la Seine. Maman regarde focused on peoples’ judgements on peoples’ skin tone in France and the innocence of youths. While J’attendrai le suivant focused on loneliness and the deception of the art culture in France, La Place des fêtes touched on issues of poverty, crime, and unfair treatment of immigrants in certain districts of Paris. For La Place des fêtes we also studied camera angles in French as it was directed by the famous Oliver Schmitz. We then looked at the last short film Quais de la Seine, which looked at prejudice and female inequality.

Nous sommes contentes avec les films parce que nous avons appris beaucoup !

Finally we watched the Oscar/César winning ‘Les intouchables’. It was very funny and starred Omar Sy. The moral of the story is to always be positive and cherish true friendship. The film touched on sensitive topics and was difficult to view at times, but was an enjoyable experience as we learnt the importance of caring for one another.

This was an enjoyable trip as we learnt about French film culture and lifestyles.

C’etait génial!

Year 8 French Pen Pals

We have recently set up a partnership with a secondary school in La Rochette, France, called “Collège du Val Gelon”. It has been an undeniable pleasure to organise a correspondence exchange between students in Year 8 from both schools. Pupils have had an exciting first introduction by sending a short video, introducing themselves and sharing any passion of theirs using pictures and objects.

The next step will be for them to exchange Christmas cards using the vocabulary, as well as the structures, learnt in class. As a final activity before the holidays, we are setting up a Skype session where the pupils will have the opportunity to have an authentic experience, conversing with a foreign person. This has been a great way for our students to practice their written and spoken French, along with finding out more about the daily life of a French child.

Year 7 Trip to Boulogne-Sur-Mer

On Friday 7th July 2017, Year 7 went to Boulogne-Sur-Mer in France. When we reached Boulogne, one group went to a cookie factory while the other half of the students visited a sweet factory. After lunch we went to Nausicaá Aquarium, where we watched a seal show. About an hour later, we were enjoying an ice cream on the beach. Our final destination for the day was Cité Europe, a shopping centre, where we had dinner and spent all our euros. Students had an amazing day and are keen to visit again. 

Music department

St Ursula’s Music Department has been awarded the PTI mark for 4 years now and is currently working towards becoming an Associate Department.

The GCSE results have continued to rise and last year we were awarded a Bronze certificate by the Incorporated Society of Musicians; more than 10% of the GCSE cohort took and achieved an A*- C grade in Music GCSE, putting us in the top 424 schools across England.

St Ursula’s Choir continues to thrive and performed once again at the Royal Festival Hall last year. We are also putting in a lot of work to support our instrumental musicians and are delighted to have pupils achieve places in CYM, Centre for Young Musicians. We also had a pupil performing with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) last year.

We now run four large Concerts across the year, including a small internal concert for our fledgling musicians to perform in front of a friendly audience of peers and staff. The aim is to build students’ confidence in performing, as they prepare to join the school Orchestra, and perform in the bigger events with parents, governors, staff and guests present.

This year we are also embarking on our first collaboration with the Drama Department and hope to stage our first musical production next Summer. Watch this space!

History department

One of St Ursula's Convent School’s objectives as part of the PTI Schools Programme was to offer educational trips for all year groups in the school (Years 7-11) and this has proved to be very successful.

Year 7 visited Dover Castle whilst Year 8 learnt more about Greenwich on a historical walk of the area. Both Year 9 and Year 10 visited the Imperial War Museum in London where Year 9 students learnt about the Holocaust and Year 10 about Nazi Germany. As part of a cross-curricular trip with Drama and English, Year 11 went to see a film being shown as part of Black History Month.

The History department has also set up a History Club, giving students the opportunity to study different periods of history which might not be covered in their lessons. Students have been encouraged to enter competitions such as the Historical Fiction Story competition and the Young Historian Project run by the Historical Association, in which two St Ursula’s students won prizes. A Year 11 student won first place in her category with her essay on why the Nazis were successful, whilst one Year 9 student won second place in her category with her essay on how Lewisham was affected during World War Two.

English department

At the beginning of this academic year, a small cohort of our upper ability Year 11 students began studying A Level texts as part of GCSE exam preparation and beyond, spending lunchtimes exploring detailed language and contextual analysis. Pupils spent a lesson independently discussing their extract selected by an English teacher, then the teacher conducted an A level style tutorial, giving students the opportunity to critically analyse the extract and be imaginative in their responses to the writer’s presentation of setting and character.

One very keen student said the sessions “enhanced my learning and reinforced my desire to study English at A Level and possibly even university”. Another commented that “I especially enjoyed the cooperation and unity of all students to combine ideas and to think independently, tapping into our GCSE contextual knowledge of texts.”

Furthermore, in conjunction with our school librarian, the English department ran a very popular and successful story competition within school on writing the opening two sentences of a horror story to link thematically with departmental schemes of work. Pupils enjoyed the tight constraints of the competition and this pushed them to be imaginative and inventive.

St Ursula's Convent School is a voluntary aided Roman Catholic secondary school for girls aged 11-16 in Greenwich, London.