On Thursday 12th February, 40 students travelled to the Apollo Theatre, Victoria to watch acclaimed poets (including Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage and John Agard, among others) read their poetry and to break down the reasoning behind their words.
Every January BGS enjoys two wonderful showcases of impressive Public Speaking: the Year 8 and Year 10 Jack Petchey SpeakOut Public Speaking Finals.
On Thursday 10th July, six intrepid debating teams, representing all years of the school, made their way to South Hampstead School in North London to take part in the UK’s largest state school debating competition, Debate Hub.
Last week, we had the opportunity to see The Great Gatsby musical at the London Coliseum.
Abi Falase, writer and director, shared her journey from Bexley Grammar student to published author and playwright.
Winner of the Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge, Regional Final.
On Monday, 3rd February, around 30 students attended Ms Stoddard’s True Crime Lecture.
The winners were:
1st - Divine: (M) Microaggressions. 2nd - Kartikeya: (R) Bravery and Determination. 3rd - Tadana: (L) Immigration.
On the 16th December, Bexley Grammar School were given the amazing opportunity to meet a real-life graphic novelist, Stephen Salah. He talked us through his most famous book, The Dark Lines of London. We were taught many new techniques and literary devices, such as putting in little extra details to add more flavour to the plot of our own stories.
We all came up with ideas for our own graphic novels. Evelyn in Year 8 won a free book for the most interesting idea. Thank you to Mrs Quinton for arranging this event. I can’t wait for another author to visit!
Kendra Kukunda, Year 8
Walking into K10 - the theatre room also for assemblies - a slight sense of uncertainty hung over us. We were all wondering the same thing: what did our English teacher mean by: "Shakespeare and Numbers"? Most of us thought it was a bit odd, revisiting Shakespeare, a topic we had long since left behind in Year 8 Drama. After all, Shakespeare was a playwright and poet, not a figure you would associate with mathematics. But Rob Eastaway was about to change that perception.
His presentation, spanning from Academic Monitoring to the end of Period 3, had to be captivating - and did not disappoint our expectations. He began, asking if we identified more as "Maths" or "Shakespeare" people, illustrating this with a Venn diagram on the board. Unsurprisingly, most of us leaned towards Maths, and few admitted to having any fondness for Shakespeare. Even fewer claimed to fall into both categories. Eastaway then boldly predicted that by the end of his talk, more of us would find ourselves in one, if not both, camps.
He explained that his grasp of mathematics would have been equivalent to what a modern Year 6 student learns, suggesting that we, as Year 8 students, were already more mathematically advanced than him. To illustrate this point, he showed how little maths was in his plays, hence the clever title of his book, Much Ado About Numbers.
Eastaway had an impressive ability to hold our attention for a full hour and 15 minutes. Throughout the presentation, he gave us fascinating insights into how Shakespeare had learnt back then and how challenging even basic mathematical operations, like multiplication and division, were in his time. At one point, even inviting students to the front to demonstrate it.
In between, he engaged us with quiz questions that explored how people approached problems back then. All in all, the assembly was not only informative but unexpectedly enjoyable and engaging.
Samuel Okedeyi and Avyan Poojari, Year 9
