It was a lunchtime and evening of royal entertainment in the Cripps yesterday with the second ever NSB Staff Panto - 'Jack and the Beantin' - bringing great festive cheer and audience participation!

Ethan White-Robinson, Y7, is excelling in his own pantomime role as 'John' in Peter Pan at the Castle Theatre In Wellingborough, whilst benefitting massively from working with the professionals, including learning to fly and enjoying every minute of the amazing opportunity afforded to him with two weeks still to run!

On Wednesday, the Student Leadership Group went across to The Old School House for the annual Christmas raffle where all get a ticket and all win a prize! Mrs Greenaway reports 'The students and residents were amazing and chatted away famously throughout a hugely enjoyable visit. Three other Sixth Formers students - Jess, Nate and Elena, came across to sing carols which was wonderful with everyone joining in.' 

We held an Inclusion Open Morning on Wednesday, where we welcomed a number of parents / carers into our new Inclusion Wing provision which supports students with SEND. It proved to be a hugely valuable and rewarding visit for all involved with rich opportunity for feedback and discussion.

Year 7 and 8 students continue to excel in their library lessons, with English classes currently battling it out to win the ’70 Days of Reading at NSB’ challenge. The Library Team report -

7-W1 (led by Miss Goodland) and 81W (led by Mrs Barlow) are currently in the lead. With only a few days left of the challenge, who will win a party in the library in the final week of term? It’s all up for grabs and every word counts!

Overall, our Year 7 students have read 182 books in December alone, with a staggering collective word count of 4,387,550 words. However, Year 8 are still in the lead with 214 books and 6,345,891 words. Well done, Year 8!

To celebrate the reading successes of our Key Stage 3 students, this week the Mitch Johnson Library team launched the ‘Reading Silver Pin’ and ‘Reading Gold Pin’ to reward the students with the highest word counts in both year groups. The current badge holders for the most words read are: Jay Gabbidon (Y7) with an impressive 2,002,375 words and Alex Kampta (Y8) with a phenomenal 9,497,571 words. Jay and Alex will wear their badges with pride until someone overtakes their word count, and the competition is already heating up! Marawan Elawadi and Nathan Kosior are already hot on Jay’s heals. Will he manage to keep the pin into 2025? Only time will tell!

Finally, the Library Team are excited to announce their fundraising event for Charity Week 2024. Students will be set the challenge of identifying The Masked Readers of NSB. A selection of our staff members have been caught hiding behind their books by the library elf, Ms Child, but will students be able to work out who they are? We look forward to putting them to the test next week.

 

Huge congratulations to Michael Graham Y10 and Max Roper Y9 who successfully defended their Indoor British Rowing Championships last weekend, bringing home a fantastic 7 gold medals between them, with Michael also breaking World and British Records! There were also some other brilliant NSB performances - Head Coach, Andy Graham reports on a wonderful weekend's work!:

NSB claimed 7 gold medals (Mikey Graham x 5, Max Roper x 2), and 2 silver medals (Jacob Adiamah - Year 8, Monty Leahy - Year 7).
Mikey also broke his own British record for the 500m and set a new World record for the 1 minute, although we are still awaiting confirmation from Concept2.
All of the boys rowed really hard and were a credit to the school. It is such a joy to be able to work with these incredible athletes!

On the sporting front - well done to Y7 Karting Champion Finn Davenport who retained his Top Novice Champion status at Whilton Mill last weekend, to James Civil Y12 who scored a fantastic try against Fiji on his debut at the Global 8s rugby tournament  in New Zealand this week and to the U14 basketball and rugby teams who progressed through their respective National Cup rounds with relative comfort this week. There were some tough reverses for our football sides, not least the U16 football team who fought magnificently against a strong Thomas Telford Team - full of Premier League Academy players, before finally succumbing to a deflected goal in the second half of extra time.

 

We are looking forward to our annual Academic Awards Evening on Tuesday next week, with former student and international best selling author, Mitch Johnson as the Guest of Honour.

 

 

 

Richard Bernard

Headteacher