Awards

Before the awards Mr Doggart talked to the boys about our Inspection next week. He explained what it was for, and that every school has a full inspection every six years. The boys should behave as normal, which is, of course, pretty well!

Congratulations to T Curzon, who was awarded his 1st XV Rugby colours.

The First Form had their first taste of public speaking, describing their visit to the National  Portrait Gallery.

Here is what they said:

Good morning! The First Forms would like to tell you about their trip to the National Portrait Gallery in London last week.

You see at the moment we are studying Tudor portraits in our art lessons with Ma’am Williams so she organised the outing. We travelled to London on a BIG coach and we all had a good chat on the journey and gave Ma’am Boyd and Ma’am Snyman a headache.

The coach driver dropped us right outside the gallery so we didn’t get lost or have to cross any main roads. I think the Ma’ams were quite pleased about that. When we got inside we had a snack and then met our guide. She talked to us about what we were going to see and told us that all the paintings we were going to look at were over 400 years old.

We had to go up lots of floors to the rooms with Tudor pictures so we all got on an enormous escalator that went straight up to the fourth floor. We passed through a room with pictures of Henry the 8th before we found the portraits of Elizabeth the First. All the lights were dim so they didn’t hurt the paintings.

The first picture we looked at was of Elizabeth on her coronation day. She looked quite young and had a golden dress on with some spotty fur on it called ermine. She had a crown on and so did the big frame around the picture. Her hair was long and orange and she had a ball and a gold stick in her hands. She didn’t look very happy.

In all the pictures we looked at she had very white skin and the lady told us this was because all rich ladies wanted to look as if they didn’t work outside. So they put loads of powder on and what is really weird is that they painted blue veins on their face and hands because they thought it made them look younger.

We looked at other portraits of Queen Elizabeth but the last one we looked at was of her when she was old but she didn’t look that old. The lady told us that the artist had to make her look younger or he would get in trouble.

She wore wigs when she got old to hide her grey hair and in one painting her mouth was all small because all her teeth had fallen out.  She loved sweets and she never brushed her teeth.

After looking at the paintings we did a picture of our own. The lady told us that the Elizabeth always wanted lots of pictures done of her but didn’t like sitting still so the artists  cheated. They traced a painting of her on a bit of paper and then made little holes in the paper all round the outline of her face. Then they put the tracing on a canvas and pushed chalk though the holes leaving behind a new picture of her face. They used the same tracing over and over again.

The lady had made tracing paper with holes for us so we all made a picture of the Queen and copied clothes from the pictures around us. We used chalks and got very messy.

We came back to school in time for a late lunch and finished off our pictures in the Art Room. We all had a lovely time and would like to thank the teachers who took us.