Green Fingers Growing Apace!

Having completed the RHS School gardening level 1 award in the autumn, this spring has seen the gardening club get involved in the Big Seed Sow - a national project helping communities sow seeds and learn about water use. Students have sown pollinator friendly Cosmos, Rudbeckia and Fennel seeds as well as Sunflowers, peas, beans and tomatoes for the allotment. We even got to sample success with our first harvest of Asparagus! Everyone is welcome - as long as you’re willing to wash mud off your hands - continuing Wednesdays after school into the summer term.

Chemistry A-level in University Labs

In the weeks either side of the Easter holiday our Year 12 and Year 13 Chemists were able to visit the undergraduate teaching labs at Oxford and Reading Universities to synthesise fragrant esters and useful aspirin. Making these organic chemicals is part of the A-level course but the trips also gave students the chance to see the university facilities, talk to researchers about their cutting edge work and use spectroscopic techniques like NMR and IR first hand. Huge thanks go to Dr Adam Bromley at Reading and the Oxford University Outreach Team for hosting us and enabling us to see chemistry in action.