APS News 30

abingdon.org.uk/prep 3 The School Council met with Craig to discuss proposals they had put together including ideas for sport, free time, new clubs and suggestions for next term’s calendar. Craig was particularly impressed the wide range of thoughtful and interesting ideas. The big ‘wins’ were the introduction of Dodgeball club, which will start in the summer, and an International Day, which is part of the planned events for next term. CELEBRATING LANGUAGE AND CULTURE AT APS NEWS Pupils from Years 3 to 8 made presentations on nominated charities close to their hearts to the whole school, in our House Charity election via Zoom. Each pupil in the house was allowed one vote and the results confirmed that Dragon will be supporting the IPF Charity, Griffin selected The Dolly Parton Imagination Library, Phoenix chose the H-ABC Foundation, and Unicorn the Asylum Welcome Charity. The houses will meet again soon so they can decide on the charity fundraising event they each will run. Well done to all the pupils who spoke with such confidence and conviction, a really impressive effort and some wonderful personal stories. HOUSE CHARITIES SCHOOL COUNCIL We celebrated the similarities and differences of a number of different cultures and nationalities from around the world in our first ever non-English speaking assembly. Led by a group of pupils, the assembly was taken in no fewer than five languages including Bengali, Mandarin, Danish, French and Russian (with subtitles in English). The children introduced and explained a little about themselves and went on to describe some of the festivities which are celebrated around the world. We discovered that whilst these can be different from each other, they all share two common themes – the importance of being with family and having good food. We also got to hear from a wide range of our pupils introducing themselves and their interests in an array of languages. Many thanks to the families of our presenters for their support in creating our assembly. Pupils have enjoyed helping our office staff add to the welcoming feel of the reception area by writing ‘hello’ in the languages they speak, many adding the colours of the flags to their speech bubbles. It certainly provides a cheerful welcome in many languages to our visitors.