Issue Eight - 24th April 2016

Welcome to the eighth issue of our new e-newsletter Talking Trees. 

As ever, we’d appreciate you taking the time to give us some feedback about the newsletter. Please feel free to pass it on and share it with friends and contacts.

Sequoia class pupils (age 8-10) have been studying local geography this term. As an introduction to this subject, they imagined the Vikings' arrival in East Anglia in 841, and their navigation along the River Yare. Donã Olivia then led a clay lesson whereby the children fashioned their own Viking ships, as seen in the photograph at the top of the page.

In Willow class (age 10-12) handwork lessons, pupils had great fun working with beautiful merino fleece and plenty of hot soapy water!  The bags were made in one piece using an acetate template inside- with lots of rubbing and rolling. The children based their designs on landscapes and used a combination of wet felting and dry needle felting techniques.

Birch class (upper school) pupils have been studying geology during their main lesson each morning during the past 2 weeks, looking at how over millions of years, order has come from the chaos associated with the formation of the solar system. Afternoon cartography lessons have complemented the geology. This has involved small working groups in the class each being provided with a set of coordinates, from which they locate an island somewhere on the globe. They have had to research the appearance, formation and local conditions of their island and then work on replicating the island in model form, showing its topography and appearance. The photos below show some of the works-in-progress.

UPPER SCHOOL FACT - You may not know……that although our oldest class (pupils age 16-18) is now in it’s second of a three-year school leaving qualification (the Steiner School Certificate), we can still take new pupils of this age and they can chose to enroll for the qualification. Contact us for more details.

Oak Class (pupils age 12-14) has begun the term with a creative writing block.  In the first week pupils explored the relationship between prose and poetry, 'translating' one into the other.  Simple words and ideas were combined, associated with the four elements, to help conjure fresh and sometimes startling images, as in the poem by one pupil below:
 

Invisible Suffocation
 

Invisible suffocation -

Heavy breathing surrounds me.

I can hardly move in the clay air.

I see my pain in many colours,

Fiery liquid flowing through my veins,

Blazing as I fade into the unknown.

I feel the throbbing life leave me,

A worming tornado is tearing me apart.

I am drowning in fire.

In search of inspiration for a short story, the class walked to the Rosary Cemetery near the railway station and searched for fragments of human stories amid the weathered tombs and gravestones. In focusing their creativity, pupils encountered the fertile and difficult tension that arises between form and freedom, between structure and unbridled expression.  The fruits of their labours to be shared in future publications - watch this space!

VACANCIES - there are currently a number of vacancies in Upper and Lower School, which are on our school website. For more information visit:

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