On Thursday 5^th July the musicians of KEVIHGS participated in the final concert of the year. There were a number of solos tonight from students across all years; Balkaran Kahlon (year 7), Mohammed Saifullah Khan (year 7), Cody Casals (year 8), Arjun Sabherwal (year 8), Hanzblyth Camanzo (year 10), Anu Adeleye (year 10), Gabriel Dino (year 10), Akhil Gandham and Balkaar Bhopal (year 12). The quality of the solos was fantastic with a particularly outstanding performance on solo clarinet by Anu.

The main groups were out in force tonight – we heard pieces from the school orchestra, junior guitar ensemble, senior guitar ensemble, woodwind ensemble, brass ensemble and senior keyboard ensemble. All in all, it was a wonderful evening.

Please click here to view the gallery.

On Monday the 2nd of June 2018, eight year 7 students went to Hamstead Junior School to deliver two assemblies to celebrate their reading. On the day that we were informed that we were performing, I, along with the rest of yea7, was ecstatic! We couldn’t wait to talk about the books we’ve been reading and to perform our drama piece in the assembly.

 We took the school mini-bus to Hamstead Junior School – a 20-minute drive in an air conditioned van – a luxury considering the present heatwave! We said farewell to Mr Kafai (the Deptuy Head who is also an undercover minibus driver!)  and then we entered the school gates.

The children lined up, in their cool summer clothes, with military precision before we delivered our first presentation, ‘The Jungle Book’. We acted out the first play for year 3 and 4’s, and the second for year 5 and 6’s; the second one was ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. The children took an active part in the assembly and applauded for us at the end,

Finally, we taught a lesson to year 6 looking at subverting traditional plotlines whereby the antagonist triumphs over the protagonist. The students were articulate, enthusiastic and erudite.

We would like to thank Hamstead Junior School for allowing is the opportunity to perform. We look forward to visiting them again in the future for more English and drama related projects.

By Ivan Cheung Zheng 7A (KEVI HGS for Boys)

Year 12 students had three days of higher education support and information as well as two different trips from 25-29 June.

On Monday 25^th, all of the year 12 students attended the UCAS Higher Education Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham. Supported by the year1 2 tutors the students had the opportunity to speak to university representatives from every HE provider in the country, as well as attend various UCAS workshops to help them to prepare for their university application.

On Thursday 28^th the students were guided through the UCAs process by Mr Duck, UCAS Co-ordinator and then had the opportunity to hear from former students about their UCAS journeys.

Our ex -student panel was made up of Aliyah Mohammed and Riju Shah who have both just completed their first year at Aston University, Mayur Parmar who has just graduated from the University of Leeds, Hung Nguyen who has just completed his first year at the UOB, Rahul Patel who has had a pre-university year working in Bath, before starting a Natural Sciences degree at the University of Cambridge in September, Bobby Bola, who started a degree at the UOB and has now changed to pursue a medical career, and finally Hasan Din who left HGS and decided to take an alternative route in his career and is now an apprentice with Cap Gemini a national IT company.

We would like to thank the ex -students for their kindness in coming back to HGS to share their UCAS journeys with our present students.

Finally, all of our year 12 students visited the University of Birmingham on Friday June 29^th where they had a campus tour and attended lectures on “Applying for university” and “Student Finance”.

Our thanks go to Mohammed Ansar of the UOB Outreach team, who facilitated our visit.

A panel of ex students returned to speak to Year 12 students about their UCAS experiences.

From left- right

Mr Bird, Mayur Parmar, Rahul Patel, Hung Nguyen, Bobby Bola, Hasan Din, Riju Shah, Aliyah Mohammed, Mrs Hartt.

As public exams reach their conclusion for another year it is worth remembering that the practice of remembering in a test doesn’t just lead to an exam result but also improves future recall of information. In this TES article Daisy Christodoulou describes a study from 2010 where some students attempted to learn by studying more while another group revised by testing. They found that those who revised by testing had much higher levels of recall than those who simply studied the material, and that they also performed better when asked to apply this knowledge flexibly.