Three Norwich School pupils, Luke Watts (U5), Milo Clabburn (L6) and Rory Evans (M5) have appeared on Radio Norfolk to talk about their love of dance. We caught up with Rory to find out more… Why were you invited to speak on Radio Norfolk? I am part of a dance company called Legacy and along with Luke, Milo and some of our fellow dancers, we were invited to speak on Radio Norfolk to promote an incredible upcoming show, called Brothers in Motion, which celebrates 10 years of Legacy Dance Company UK. Can you tell us a little more about Legacy? Legacy is an all-boys dance company which trains every Saturday and meets every week at the Workshop Studios in Norwich. In total there are about 100 male dancers split across four main groups – minis, little, 11+ and Main Company. I am part of the Main company, which consists of 13 boys aged from 11 to 18 – four of us are from Norwich School; me, Milo, Luke and also Jasper Valpied (U5). The company is audition only and we do performances, competitions and outreach programmes. How did you hear about Legacy? I was introduced to Legacy when they performed in the Junior Dance show a few years ago. They have also guest choreographed at various dance events at school such as the Dance Festival and Gala Night and they do workshops and events with the school. What do you enjoy about dance? I have loved dance since I joined Norwich School and I have been really grateful for the opportunity to do all the dance that I have. I enjoy being able to express myself through dance, which is fun and therapeutic and also builds lots of transferable skills such as dedication, hard work and coordination. Tell us more about the show you were promoting on the Radio… It is called Brothers in Motion and involves multiple boys dance groups from across the country coming together to perform, along with some of the top vocational colleges from around the country and also many Legacy Alumni will be performing. It is a really exciting showcase of male dance, which will be taking place at the Norfolk Showground on Friday 30 th May. It was great to be able to talk about it on the radio, as we are also trying to get funding for the show, as Legacy has been unable to access the Arts Council funding that has made the show possible in the past, so we are crowdfunding and asking for Business Sponsorship to help. What would you say to anyone out there who might be interested in dance but hasn’t yet started? I would strongly encourage you to start – the first step is the hardest but once you start I am sure you will love it. It is so much fun and the atmosphere and community both Legacy and Norwich School have been inspirational for me. Click here for more information - BROTHERS IN MOTION - 10 Years, 1 Legacy - a Creative & Arts crowdfunding project in Norwich by LEGACY Dance Company UK

Here at Norwich School we are delighted to celebrate the talented diversity of our Upper Sixth cohort as offers for onward routes continue to come in. Following on from blog posts on law and girls’ STEM university offers, we have chosen to focus on offers pupils have for non UCAS (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in the UK) routes. With expert guidance from Mr Croston, pupils have received offers from leading universities in several countries outside of the UK. Congratulations in particular to Uma Patel (offer for Dentistry at the Universidad Catolica de Valencia, Spain), Edward Chan (Architecture at Hong Kong University), Bosco Tang (Dentistry at Hong Kong University) and Helen Ng (Computer Science at UST, University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong). A huge variety of exciting opportunities with employers are now available to school leavers, almost all combining paid employment with training and further qualifications. The number of degree apprenticeships available in the UK is now four times what it was five years ago; our pupils who gain offers for these will work for a leading employer who trains them, pays them and pays for them to complete a full university degree alongside their employment. We are very fortunate to have Mrs James supporting pupils as they apply for these highly competitive programmes. This blog post asks three pupils about their offers for non UCAS routes: Ava deCooper Wride has a full rugby scholarship for Quinnipiac University (USA), Archie Taylor has an accountancy degree apprenticeship offer from Price Bailey and Hugo Pattinson has an engineering degree apprenticeship offer from Airbus.

Mrs Grant, Assistant Head (Pupil Progress), offers some top tips for revision based on her own experiences! Two years ago I sat an English A-level – my first exams in sixteen years! It was time to put into practice all the advice I confidently give out to pupils every year. So how did I approach the revision? I certainly embarked on ‘proper revision’ too late. I’d been enjoying my lessons happily and writing interesting essays (even this essay technique I began too late really), but had not attempted to commit anything to memory as I went along. English is very different to Physics, which I teach, but the bottom line is that some stuff needs memorising in any subject. So far so not good in heeding my own advice. Once I engaged in the process properly, though, I’d say I did manage to make up for lost time a little! I started by deciding which quotations were worth learning from the texts and from critics etc. I tried to choose a sensible number I thought it would be achievable to learn, and which spoke to the key themes of the texts. If I had started earlier, I would have been able to be more ambitious in the breadth of what I learnt. I then grouped them by text and by theme on index cards and set about reciting them out loud repetitively every day. I would read it out loud, cover it up and try to read it without looking etc. This didn’t take too long so it meant I could try to do this every day in the couple of months leading up to the exam. Slowly I knew just from the heading of an index card that I could recite the whole thing without looking. At that point I put these cards in a different pile – not to be neglected, but ones I knew I had cracked and just needed to keep rehearsing. I was left, in the week before the first exam, with three or four stubborn cards which I was struggling to memorise, but this now felt more do-able. I would walk around countryside paths near where I live reciting them and this helped – walking at the same time seemed to stop me feeling fidgety at my desk and I felt less stressed too. Interspersed with the memorising, Mr Murray (my very patient teacher) also encouraged me to keep planning essays and writing bits of them too. The difference now was that I could try to do it timed, without looking anything up. I think a big danger in English was that, having learnt key quotations, I was sub-consciously very keen to use them and show off these interesting things I had learnt by shoe-horning them into potentially totally irrelevant contexts. This continued exam practice and Mr Murray’s patient feedback helped me to have an internal voice reminding me how counter-productive that would be. I needed to plan a good essay that was relevant to the question and only then reach for things I had memorised to support my plan All of this helped me to feel like the real exam was just this same process again that I was well rehearsed in doing. I had a good sense of how much time to spend planning an essay and knew this would make the writing time more efficient and effective. When using quotations in the real exams I could often picture the bit of my walk I was on when learning it which helped me remember it and helped me to feel calm. In summary then: - Consolidate as you go along. - Be in a room with no tech – a phone that is off but in the same room is still taking up ‘cognitive load’ research has shown. - Have a timetable that spaces different subjects and topics out instead of having whole days or just one subject or topic. - Don’t completely neglect past questions/essay planning when memorising material – interleave these activities. - Schedule breaks and get fresh air and exercise - If you listen to music it should be lyric-free.