Dear Parents and Girls
We are half way through the busy first term and much is happening at Kingsmead. I do hope that you enjoyed a restful Half-Term and that you are fired up for the remaining weeks of the term.
I have been talking to the girls in our weekly Chapel sessions about respect and, more importantly, self-respect. You can only have respect for other people if you first have respect for yourself. It certainly worries me that I have noticed a few girls behaving in a manner that does not show respect for themselves or for others.
Wearing the school uniform incorrectly; flouting the code of conduct; inappropriate dress code for civvies day; petty theft; writing on school property and posting inappropriate pictures or messages on social media are all signs of disrespect. This is not just being disrespectful to others, but it is also disrespectful to one’s self.
We encourage Kingsmead girls to make good choices; to speak up for what is right; to have good manners and to live out the values of the school. I am looking forward to working with our girls on these positive aspects in the next weeks in Chapel.
We are eagerly awaiting the start of the renovation to the kitchen and tuckshop, which should be happening within the next few weeks. This facility is going to greatly enhance our offering to the girls.
We were so privileged to attend the preview of “Beyond the River”, which is the film adaptation of Piers Cruickshanks’s book to be released in April 2017 about his participation in the Dusi Canoe Marathon. It is a heart-warming story about persistence and perseverance: one of a privileged older white man and a younger black man, from humble beginnings in Soweto, who come together, both needing each other to achieve a dream. The film will be released on circuit on the 28 April and I would urge you to go and watch it if you have not already seen it. I would like to thank the Jhavary family, for the use of Killarney Cine Centre.
Click here to view the YouTube trailer.
Kingsmead College hosted a very elegant Matric Dance. 
I wish all our parents and girls a successful and happy remainder of the first term.
Fond regards
Lisa Kaplan
Head: Kingsmead College
Sports News
INTER-HOUSE AQUATICS: Diving, Water Polo and Swimming
Overall Winners of Inter-House Aquatics 2017: Timlin
Spirit Cup: Kruger
Swimming: Timlin
Best Junior Swimmer: Kelsey Cloete
Best Senior Swimmer: Gemma Schleicher
Most Enthusiastic Swimmer: Robyn Blackwell
Diving: Baker
Winner Of the Novice Section: Megan Cleminson
Winner of the Advanced Diver Competition and the Phyllis Amm Trophy: Sarah Benning
Waterpolo: Timlin
MIDMAR MILE SWIMMERS
Well done to the Kingsmead College Senior School Girls who participated in the Midmar Mile 2017.
Back: Pascale Woolley, Anjali Naidoo, Gabriella du Preez, Frances Butcher, Aleksandra Marek, Lara Greeff, Anya Shah, Nicola Gace, Alexia Papageorgiou, Nina Veldtman, Raeesah Jadwat
Front: Gallia Fenster, Emma Clark, Meg Kingaby, Julia Granig, Maddie Carter, Emma Oosterlee and Gemma Schleicher
EQUESTRIAN
The Kingsmead Equestrian prep team had a busy weekend at Eaton Farm, Kyalami, for the first qualifier on 11/12th February.
Hannah Buttifant-Sewel riding her pony Kenya
Congratulations to the following girls: Hannah Buttifant-Sewel (3rd dressage prelim, 1 – level 1 6th dressage prelim 2 – level 1 1st performance riding – level 1) Emma Gouws (2nd dressage prelim. 1 – level 1 3rd dressage prelim. 2 – level 1 12th equitation – level 2 13th showjumping comp. – level 2 14th showjumping A2 – level 2) Leigh-Ann Herselman (7th & 9th dressage prelim. 1 – level 1 18th &19th dressage prelim. 2 – level 1 8th showjumping A2 – level 2 14th showjumping comp. – level 2) Mia Oliver (16th dressage prelim1 – level 1 15th dressage prelim2. – level 1 6th equitation – level 1 18th show jumping A2 – level 1 12th show jumping comp. – level 1) Julia Courtenay (23rd dressage prelim. 1 – level 1 22nd dressage prelim 2 – level 1 13th showjumping A2 – level 2 6th showjumping comp. – level 2) Giverny Lugard (11th dressage novice 1- level 2 7th dressage novice 2 – level 2 8th equitation – level4 22nd showjumping A2 – level 4 7th working hunter – level 5) Annabel Dennison (15th dressage novice 1 – level 2 12th dressage novice 2 – level 2 14th showjumping comp. – level 3) Lauren Courtenay (19th equitation – level 4 29th showjumping A2 – level 3 28th Showjumping comp. – level 3) Christina Wides (5th equitation – level 3 26th showjumping A2 – level 3 16th showjumping comp. – level 3) Paula Duggan (1st dressage elementary 1 – level 3 1st dressage elementary 2 – level 3 17th dressage novice 1 – level 2 20th dressage novice 2 – level 2 3rd equitation – level 4) Ashley Pretorius (24th dressage novice 1 – level 2 7th performance riding – level 5 25th equitation – level 4 21st showjumping comp. – level 3
The second qualifier will take place on 11th & 12th March.
SUMMER SPLASH DIVING
WATER POLO
Over the past few weeks Water Polo has been very active in the school. Our 1st team has competed in the Old Mutual Prestige Cup from September and culminated in the finals day on Saturday the 18th of February. The Kingsmead College 1st team finished in 8th place and we look forward to them achieving greater heights in the near future.
At the end of the first half of the league season both the Kingsmead U15 and 1st team are on top of the B league.
Another congratulations goes out to the 2nd team who have been training hard and begun to play in their own fixtures. The future is looking bright for Kingsmead Water Polo.
Good luck to our U15A’s and 1st teams over half-term for their respective tournaments in which we hope to see great results against the best water polo teams in the country.
TENNIS
The Kingsmead tennis teams have had a season flooded with rain but have been showing some great results. From our A to our D team they have been showing great improvement and are very competitive in their league.
Our top 4 players in the school competed at Inter-High A Tennis on the 11th of February and placed 12th out of 25 schools around Gauteng. We look forward to seeing some strong results at the Inter-High B tennis on the 5th of March.
Robert Pullen
Director of Sport
Arts News
MAJOR PRODUCTION
This year’s Senior School Major Production is Evan Placey’s Girls Like That. We have been rehearsing since the middle of January and the production promises to be most exciting. The play centres around the precaution teens need to take with social media, and the effects of relationships and girl-on-girl crime. This very topical subject matter allows for the girls to engage directly with the issue, and the play is serving as a platform of honest expression for our students. This is a particular goal of the Drama Department: to deal with issues and areas that are directly relatable to the girls to create healthy dialogue and debate. The production is using both filmed and live action for the performances, and the challenges of combining these two styles is equally stimulating and daunting. As we move towards the March performance dates, the cast is growing and connecting to bring a unique show to our Lange Hall stage.
With our student director, Christie du Plessis, the cast has also been creating a bit of their own social media hype around the play as a form of marketing. Check out the first two teaser videos on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BQKqUaJFvie/ and https://www.instagram.com/p/BQiUSfoFIxz/
The first rehearsal as the cast meet and reads through the script together.
Rehearsing scenes for the teaser videos.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Out of dozens of excellent and very eager Grade 8 hopefuls, the job of choosing just 8 speakers to participate in the 56th Speech and Drama College Public Speaking Festival was rather tough. However, those who were selected proved to be up to the task of putting together a 15 minute speech in a matter of days, and preparing it for delivery. They gave up breaks and early mornings, which proved to be worth it. They spoke on Thursday 16th February at St Teresa’s against two teams from St Teresa’s and two teams from King Edward School.
Team 1 took us “Into the Woods”, with Ffion Evans guiding the three little piggies, Nina Stockenstrom, Arya Naidoo and Alexandra Liston through crises in Education, Deforestation and American Politics. The team worked well together and delivered their intelligent, and sometimes hilarious, speeches confidently. They achieved an A.
Team 2 asked, “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s a-happening!” Raeesa Jadwat guided her team of Gallia Fenster, Anjali Naidoo and Sabeeha Banwa through the minefield of social media – its pros and its cons. They, too, captivated their audience with well prepared and intelligent speeches. They also achieved an A.
We are so proud of all our Grade 8 public speakers and look forward to monitoring their progress through high school.
Hannah Lapin participated in the Speech and Drama College Individual Speaker event at the Deutsche Schule on Monday evening. The format requires a five minute speech followed by a three minute impromptu speech.
Hannah’s speech entitled, ‘The Sound of Silence ‘ and her impromptu speech on ‘Freedom’ garnered her a well deserved A+. Hannah has displayed humility and determination in her approach to her preparation of this event and did Kingsmead proud, speaking with sincerity and conviction.
ART
Our Grade 12 Art pupils have started working on the range of portfolio pieces that form part of their final examination work. The first topic they tackled, is ‘Surplus and Scarcity’. Visit the Main reception area to view the interesting work on display.
MUSIC
Last weekend, the Senior School Orchestra participated in the annual Inter-Schools’ Orchestra Festival with St Stithians, Trinity House School and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. Hours of rehearsals and learning challenging music, paid off with an absolutely brilliant performance on Sunday afternoon at the beautiful OWLA Auditorium at Henley-on-Klip. Our orchestra girls are commended for their commitment and dedication, spending Friday and Saturday in long rehearsals. They did Kingsmead proud, performing their own repertoire with aplomb and participating in the mass orchestra, with well over 100 young musicians from the four schools.
Elsabé Fourie
Director of Arts and Music
Academic News
CREATIVE ARTS
Grade 9 Creative Arts
Earlier this term our Grade 9s spent a wonderful morning with puppet professionals Pôkô Events and Productions learning to create puppets from found and recyclable materials. This workshop serves as the ultimate platform to create puppet productions in groups, combining the elements of Visual Arts, Music and Dramatic Arts found in each as the basis for academic assessment.
DRAMATIC ARTS THEATRE OUTING
On Sunday 12 February, our Grade 10-12 Drama girls were privileged to attend a performance of the world famous Blue Man Group, at Monte Casino. This epic experiential show of unconventional performance styles was a wonderful theatre outing to extend the girls’ theoretical knowledge learnt in the classroom.
Grade 10s: Palesa Malebana, Kyra Burnett, Olivia Fowler, Rachel McKay, Sarah Storey and Juliana Demetriades outside the Teatro with one of the Blue Men after the performance.
Frances Wilmot
Dramatic Arts Teacher
MATHEMATICS
The Mathematics Department is pleased and proud to celebrate some phenomenal successes of our learners. Two Grade 10 learners achieved a second place in the first leg of the Tour De Math’s competition. This is a highly commendable achievement as the competition is based on Mathematics that involves extraordinary lateral thinking, We are hoping that they will have further success throughout the year.
Tuana Guler and Sophie Munro
Humnaaz Jhavary (Grade 12), was placed in the top 1 percent of all learners in the IEBT external Mathematics Examination. This is a prestigious achievement as it involved all the country’s Grade 11 learners in the IEB system.
This term The Mathematics Department has tried to be divergent and lateral in its approach. This was most notably evident in the quiz held on the Open day that involved Parents and learners identifying patterns. It showcased the many different teaching techniques in use to make Mathematics a vibrant and exciting subject.
Valentine’s Day was also an opportunity to see Mathematics in action. The Grade 8 girls were involved in a relay race that incorporated the theme of the day in a mathematical sense.
It is our mission to celebrate our achievements, but even more so to be a leading department in terms of employing different strategies in our teaching techniques. We are sure that this contributes to the success of our learners throughout the Grades.
Grade 8 Valentine’s Mathematics
Sharonne Isack
Mathematics Teacher
CONSUMER STUDIES
The Grade 12 Consumer girls enjoyed the lesson on High blood pressure with Sister Monica. They were all engaged in the lesson and found it interesting knowing the status of their blood pressure and BMI.
Phumzile Masetlwa
Consumer Studies Teacher
ENGLISH
Grade 11 Impromptu Public Speaking
On the 21st of February 2017, Cayley Lovatt, Amukelani Mnisi, Isabella Ferreira and Jade Borman participated in the Grade 11 Impromptu Speech evening at Bishop Bavin. The girls spoke with such intellect and passion and were awarded an overall “A” grade.
Kathryn Body
English Teacher
Service News
Community Service Expectations
At Kingsmead College we encourage all girls to participate in Community Service:
Grade 8s are expected to complete 15 hours of volunteering per year;
Grade 9s are expected to complete 24 hours of volunteering per year (correlating with the requirements for the Bronze level of The President’s Award);
Grade 10s are expected to complete 30 hours of volunteering per year;
Grade 11-12 complete service hours according to the level of The President’s Award that they are enrolled for.
Grade 8-10 girls are all registered on Community Hours SA’s website. This is a platform that informs them of various service opportunities, that enables them to log hours online and all the service hours are verified by Community Hours SA.
Classification of Service hours:
Internal Service hours
No more than 25% of the total required hours
Internal hours are limited because we want to encourage girls to be involved in the community and not only at school. Internal hours are hours done at the school, for example Library, First Aid and the Kingsmead Book Fair on Saturday 13 May.
Passive Service hours
No more than 25% of the total required hours
Passive volunteering hours are hours spent on activities done at home on either cooking, baking, knitting, packing goods to donate, collecting items. Examples are baking cakes for children’s birthdays; making meals for children’s homes/inner-city children; making sandwiches for feeding schemes; packing clothing items and household items / books / kitchenware / toys – any previously loved items in good condition for charity stores. Bought items that are donated do not count. Although organisations will gratefully receive the bought items, they will not sign off on hours.
Passive volunteering should not be seen as an easy way to log community service hours, but as an essential service to organisations. These hours are not to be outsourced, this is not for parents or grandparents to do, this is an essential skill for teens to master. The mindfulness around preparing the meal or baking the cake is all part of the process. It is essential that a part of the community hours required be spent actively engaging with the community.
External Service hours
A minimum of three organisations should be supported.
External Hours include Kingsmead College Service excursions and initiatives and community service hours undertaken by the girls. Girls are able to use the Community Hours SA portal to find volunteering opportunities, Kingsmead Service arrange regular outings to various organisations. To encourage comprehensive community involvement, we suggest that the girls be involved in a minimum of three organisations.
Service Excursions:
Our Service Excursions create an opportunity for girls to visit different organisations without the hassle of arranging the visit or organising transport. The Senior School has visited Sunshine Centre Association and Fight with Insight.
Sorting the toys for the Reading Room at Fight with Insight
Organising the Toy Library at Sunshine Centre Association.
Spread the love on Valentine’s Day
The Senior School civvies day on Valentine’s Day was in aid of Boys’ and Girls’ Town. The Grade 12 Service team sold Valentine’s roses, teddy bears and cards and the profit was also donated to Boys’ and Girls’ Town.
Footloose Friday
This wonderful PTA initiative has become an annual event and the Junior School and Senior School girls donated a total of 1372 pairs of shoes. These shoes were donated to some of the organisations we support:
Rays of Hope received 96 pairs
Kids Haven 540 pairs
Fight with Insight 96 pairs
Sparrow School 212 pairs
Sunshine Centre 224 pairs
Thank you to all the parent volunteers for packing and sorting the shoes so efficiently.
Sandwiches for Service
This initiative is now scheduled during Form time on Tuesdays and Thursdays and forms part of the Fight with Insight feeding scheme.
Dance Marathon
The annual Dance Marathon, themed Decades 70s-90s, on Friday 10 February, was in aid of Dignity Dreams and A21 and raised approximately R90,000.
Thank you to the entire Kingsmead community for donating so generously.
You can read more about Dignity Dreams at http://dignitydreams.com and about the A21 campaign at http://www.a21.org
Jenny Venter
Head of Service
Medical News
PEER PROMOTERS
Capillaries, Contests and Calm
Peer Promoters contribute towards saving lives. It is our mission to provide patients in need of transfusions with healthy blood; an act that can determine the chances of recovery. This is why Kingsmead has a team of students encouraging and educating pupils, parents and staff about becoming donors.
In 2017 the Blood Drive Peer Promoters group has grown to six representatives in various grades. It is a group of committed and purpose-driven young women. We are holding three blood drives this year at school (one per term), and have the responsibility of recruiting donors, assisting the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) representatives and caring for the donors before, during and after donation.
We like to provide our donors with a token of our appreciation once they have donated blood and the funds required for this are raised by a raffle on Kingsmead’s annual Goodwill Day. Last year our 1st Place prize was an original artwork by our very own Shani Leaf. The painting is Shani’s interpretation of the process of donating.
The Peer Promoters work closely with Sister Monica Loubser in the Medical centre and Mr Oscar Ramutsheli from SANBS. The SANBS hosts a function for Peer Promoters around the Johannesburg area once a year. Last year it was a fun visit to Bounce to engage with other students and this year we have been invited to the SANBS blood bank to learn about what actually happens to the blood donated.
To raise awareness for donating blood the Peer Promoters wear red socks twice a week for they stand out against all the other students’ white socks. Students and teachers are welcome to ask questions about our personal motivations for being a Peer Promoter as well as the requirements of becoming a donor.
Please come and support us at our first drive. We would love to see you on the 16th of March. Donate blood, Save a life. For more information contact: medicalcentre@kingsmead.co.za.
Red sock handover: Oscar Ramutsheli, SANBS peer promoter trainer, received a pair of red socks too, which he says he will proudly wear!
The painting, raffled on Goodwill day, was handed over to Bronwyn Bocher by artist and Peer promoter, Shani Leaf.
Chantel Maina (Grade 11)
PTA News
Dear Parents
We hope that you and your daughters have settled well into the 2017 routine and that you had a relaxing mid term break.
We are happy to announce that the PTA Exco has, in conjunction with the School, approved the purchase of the New Iveco 18.28m Front Engine Bus Chassis Fitted With Afriway Bus Bodywork for an amount of R 1 600 000.00 including 14% VAT. Thank you for partnering with us to raise the funds to make this purchase possible.
Thank you for your generosity in supporting the sale of the rose bushes. A total of 190 bushes were sold. Footloose Friday was very successful with 1 372 pairs of shoes being collected in total. These have been allocated to: Rays of Hope, Fight with Insight, Kids Haven, Sparrow School and Sunshine Centre. We are grateful for your support.
The termly KCC Draw and Car Parking Bay Raffle Draw will take place in the Junior School Assembly on 3 April. Please purchase your parking bay raffle ticket and enjoy the benefit of your own personalised bay in the Junior School car park.
Tickets for our Family Outdoor Movie Night, to be held on Friday 31 March, will go on sale from the 6th March in the Junior School car park. Please purchase your tickets and support this PTA fundraiser.
Other events planned for 2017 include:
Second Term:
Kingsmead Book Fair: Saturday 13 May from 8h30 to 18h00
Parent Social Evening: Friday 9 June
Third Term:
Goodwill Day/Fun Walk and Major Raffle Draw: Saturday 7 October
947 Ride for Bara: Sunday 19 November
Kind regards
2017 PTA Executive Committee
The post Kingsmead Newsletter February 2017 appeared first on Kingsmead College.