Abingdon News No.56

8 January 2021 Abingdon News Workshops for Autism Family Support Oxfordshire, AFSO Over the summer holiday, the Abingdon Science Partnership, ASP, was asked to help provide activities for a programme of regular online workshops for young people supported by AFSO. Impressed by the remote activities developed by ASP staff and Science Ambassadors during school closures, the AFSO staff, and the young people they support, selected workshop topics and ASP delivered three of these during July and August. The most popular by far, with 19 participants, was the virtual tour of CERN and the ATLAS detector in the Minecraft ATLAScraft world. Many thanks to upper sixth former, Freddie Nicholson, for all his support with the workshops. This year Abingdon School’s celebration of National Poetry Day moved online, with a virtual open mic, featuring students and staff from across the school community recording themselves reading their favourite poems. The video can be found on the website: abingdon.org.uk/national-poetry-day-4 The annual writing competition winners were: Samuel Price (Lower School), Alex Heffernan (Middle School) and Cameron Eilbeck (Upper School) Ghouls and ghosts Over half term, and to mark Halloween, the Art department challenged Abingdon students to produce a ghostly photograph, by using long exposure techniques, or by overlaying images using apps. The entries received were of an outstanding quality, and the winner and runner up demonstrated an excellent grasp of spooky technique! Winner: Josh Bromley (2nd Year) Runner-up: Charlie Adams ( 3rd Year) French in primary schools As part of the links with primary schools through Abingdon School in Partnership, a group of fifth year students in Pygott’s house, who study French, are making a series of French language learning videos to help support language teaching at Caldecott Primary School. The videos have been shared with other partner schools in Abingdon and the resources are available to anyone through our Abingdon Partnership website. Exploring Russian Students looking to expand their languages have been practising their Russian writing and conversation skills as part of the Other Half programme. Second years from Abingdon and St Helen’s met over Zoom for a Joint Thinking Lunch. In small groups they were asked to think of a cause that they would like to support and then discuss how they would go about promoting it. All three groups gave informative presentations and came up with good ways of letting people know about the work of The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, Oxford Foodbank and Children in Need. Thinking lunch Josh Bromley Charlie Adam