Alpha Preparatory School

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News & Events

NATIONAL CODING SUCCESS

 

We received some exciting news recently from Discovery Education that one of our pupils had won their National Coding Competition!  

 

Pupils throughout the school were invited to take part in a ‘National Coding Week’ competition. From the many many entrants we received from our talented children, we had

to choose just one piece of animation from Key Stage 1 (Year 1 and Year 2) and one piece from Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6) for submission. 

 

At the close of the competition, Discovery Education contacted us to inform us that our chosen Key Stage 1 entry had won…and that entry was from Daaris in Year 1! 

 

Daaris created an animation of the solar system and he really impressed the judges who thought the idea was novel and that it had been executed well. They commented,

'We loved how this pupil represented planets orbiting each other - they showed a lot of coding potential!'

 

In addition to Daaris winning the National Coding Week Competition, Daaris has also won a whole year’s free coding for the all the children at Alpha which can be

accessed either at home or at school.  He also received a Botley Coding Robot and he is thrilled with it. Daaris has told us that he is very excited to continue his coding

journey by programming Botley.


Daaris has also appeared on Discovery Education's website and news feed - he also appeared in the local Harrow news...Student from Harrow wins national coding competition - Harrow Online

 

This is an amazing achievement, Daaris – congratulations and well done!

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Our New School Council

Congratulations to our Student Council 2022 - 2023, who have been voted in to their positions by the classmates. Well done!

 

Jaini - Year 1

Jayden - Year 1

Jasmin - Year 2

Nikolaos - Year 2

Zaha - Year 2

Liyam - Year 3

Tyara - Year 3

Ibraheem - Year 4

Merry - Year 4

Darsh - Year 5

Ishaan - Year 5

Leya - Year 5

Rania - Year 6

Soren - Year 6

WELL DONE, ADVAY!

Advay, in Year 6, enrolled in a chess tournament to support the charities IntoUniversity and ELBA, which was hosted by Nomura Chess Club at his mother’s workplace. The chess matches were played over a period of five months from October to February, with players paired in Swiss style - Advay was the only child participant.

Advay's final game generated a lot of interest as a win would confirm him topping the leaderboard, and any other result would have opened up the field. This led to a flurry of donations, as many of his mother's colleagues wanted to encourage and cheer him on, bringing in a further £150 to the charity, surpassing the £140 collected up to that point!

Advay won the final game, and with a record of six wins out of seven played, he was declared the winner of the tournament. Advay is really excited with this incredible win and has credited the school chess club for giving him the confidence, moves and practice that helped him succeed in the tournament. 

CONGRATULATIONS!

 

Congratulations go to Arjun in Year 5 for making Alpha history!

 Arjun is the first ever student to be awarded an NIBAS Certificate of Achievement at the school. NIBAS stands for the National Indoor Bouldering Award Scheme and Arjun has achieved a distinction in his Level 1 Award for Bouldering – we even mentioned in assembly how Arjun could train his way to become a speed sport climber now that it has been introduced into the Olympics this year! Well done, Arjun!

Alpha Achieves 2nd Place in the BIEA International STEM Competition

 

The International STEM Youth Innovation Competition is an event for students under the age of 18, which is organised by the British International Education Association (BIEA). It aims to raise the level of technological enthusiasm among students from all over the world, as well as to stimulate students’ passion for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This year’s competition theme reflected two major concepts: 'Technological Innovation' and the 'Replacement of Plastic Packaging'.

 

Pupils were judged on four tasks, including a report, an experiment, a team video and an interview by four judges. Children from all around the world entered the competition and team ‘Stormbreakers’ from last year's Year 6, became finalists, which included 43 different teams from 13 countries across the world.

 

The results were streamed live on Wednesday 22nd September with our current Year 6 students watching the event on Zoom, and we were over the moon when Team Stormbreakers were announced as second place winners. It was fantastic to see so many children from around the world interested in STEM and we would like to congratulate the team of Devansh, Tariq, Ray, Ansh and George for their hard work and dedication to completing the tasks during lockdown last year.

SECOND PLACE IN THE WORLD - WELL DONE TEAM STORMBREAKERS

Our New School Council

Congratulations to our Student Council who have been voted in to their positions by the classmates. Well done!

 

Aanya M in Year 1

Kai P in Year 1

Orson G in 2S

Siena in 2S

Ananth in 2T

Millie in 2T

Aman in Year 3

Saranya in Year 3

Emily in Year 4

Kian in Year 4

Sanaya in Year 5

Dev in Year 5

Kai in Year 6

Anjali in Year 6

 

Apples and Snakes!

Congratulations go to Anaiya, in Year 4, for successfully completing the ‘Telling Tales’ programme, a six week online course, organised in conjunction with Apples and Snakes theatre company, at Harrow Libraries online. Over the six Saturdays, Anaiya worked on a range of activities and even wrote her own wonderful poem.

Well done, Anaiya!

 

The Little Princess Trust

During the half term break, Tyara, in Year 1, did something very special, selfless and fantastic! To support the Little Princess Trust, Tyara donated 13 inches of her hair, which she has grown for over two years.

Tyara watched an online video with her parents on how the donated hair can be processed to make wigs to help young people who have lost their own hair due to receiving cancer treatments.

What a wonderful thing for Tyara to have done – thank you, Tyara!

Year 6 Chess Tournament

After a thrilling, friendly and competitive  tournament, with every student in Year 6 playing seven matches, we have a result!

Winner (with a perfect score): Siddharth

Gold medals awarded to: Ansh, Devansh, Nero, Ray and Tariq

Silver medals awarded to: Aaron, Arjun P, George, Ilyan,
Karissa, Malaika and Shay.

Bronze medals awarded to: Arjun B, Ava, Dharyan, Jiya, Vedika and Yana.

 

Well done, Siddharth!
Well done, Siddharth!

Congratulations Millie!

Chiltern Bookshops organised a writing competition for which children from a range of 94 schools entered. The theme of the competition was 'FRIENDSHIP' and we are delighted to announce that Millie, in Year 1, achieved the Runner Up prize in the Group 1 category (for children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2). 

The competition, which received almost 500 entries, was judged by the author Cressida Cowell who said that Millie's writing... "is a very kind piece of writing, showing that you’re interested not only in cheering Crayon up, but how to do it – I love the idea of a raft ride. Your drawing of you and Crayon together is lovely.”

To see Millie's winning piece, and to read more about the competition, please visit: Children's Writing Competition 2021 | Chiltern Bookshops

We are very proud of you, Millie! Congratulations and well done! 

 

A Happy Moment Arrives

Since March 2020, we have not been able to take the children off site for obvious health and safety reasons. On Thursday 22nd April, Mr Holland, Mr Silvester and Miss Trott were extremely happy to be taking our equally happy Year 5 and 6 Boys to Stanmore Cricket Club. Here is Mr Holland marking the moment just before leaving the school...

The Oscars Arrive at Alpha?

 

Not this year, unfortunately, but never say never!

We are extremely proud of all our ex-Alpha students’ achievements and we send our huge ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ to Riz Ahmed who, on Monday 15th March 2021, became the first Muslim to receive an Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category. This year marks the first time two actors of Asian descent have been nominated for a lead actor category in the same year.

The nomination also makes Mr Ahmed the first performer of Pakistani descent to land a nomination in any acting category. He previously was the first Muslim, and the first Asian, to win a lead acting Emmy in 2017.

Well done, Riz!

LOCKDOWN WORLD BOOK DAY 2021

Can you name the Toilet Roll Characters?

 

 

Alpha Snow Globe Competition

CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of our school Snow Globe Competition:

Nursery - Priyen

Reception - Zaha

1L - Liyam

1T - Janani

Year 2 - Saranya

Year 3 - Ishaan

Year 4 - Arjun

Year 5 - Kai

Year 6 - Ava

 

The Sunday Times Top 100
Independent Preparatory Schools List

22nd November 2020

 

ALPHA PREPARATORY SCHOOL has been ranked SECOND in the national preparatory school league tables by Parent Power, The Sunday Times Schools Guide, published in The Sunday Times and online on Sunday, November 22. 

 

The 28th edition of Parent Power identifies the 2,000 highest-achieving schools in the UK, ranked by their most recently published examination results. A fully searchable national database by school name, local authority, town and postcode, together with regional rankings will be available to Times and Sunday Times subscribers at: thesundaytimes.co.uk/parentpower

 

As well as assessment of all academic results on a school-by-school basis, Parent Power enables parents to compare the performance of a given school with other schools in the same town, local authority or nationally. There are also live links to school websites and schools’ most recent inspection reports. 

 

Parent Power is widely acknowledged as the most authoritative survey of the country’s best schools.

 

 

 

Odd Socks Day - Monday 16th November

 

The week beginning Monday 16th November is Anti-bullying week and Alpha are proud to highlight the importance of speaking up.

 

To mark the start of the week, the staff, the children and even some parents wore pairs of odd socks in recognition that we are all different...and it is ok to be different!

 

 

 

REMEMBRANCE DAY 2020

Quiz Club National SCIENCE Finals

2019 – 2020

Alpha Preparatory School:

THIRD PLACE IN THE UK!

 

In the summer term, one of our Science teams reached the finals of the National Science Quiz. To achieve a place in the finals was a tremendous achievement in itself, as we had not managed to get into the finals for a number of years. Due to Lockdown, unfortunately the event was postponed until this term, meaning some students from our previous Year 6 team have left the school. However, one participant, who is now a student in Year 7 at QE Boys School, managed to come back to Alpha for the afternoon to compete in the event. 

During the quiz, the team got off to a rocky start! However, they managed to work together, persevere and they managed to get some very difficult scientific questions correct. At the end of the quiz, we did not know in which position we stood, as the judges had to total the scores and would announce the top 10 teams at a later time. Our team were not expecting to score highly, as we knew we did get some questions wrong at the start. 

It came as quite a shock when the results were announced with 'Alpha Preparatory School' coming in 3rd place overall with 1560 points. We were over Moon upon hearing this result – there were 442 teams (1768 children) from 308 schools who entered the competition and 44 school finalists.

We would like to congratulate the team members for all their hard work and perseverance in the finals. We are incredibly proud of them!

 

Quiz Club National GENERAL KNOWLEDGE Finals

2019 – 2020

Alpha Preparatory School:

FIRST PLACE IN THE UK!

 

On Thursday 8th October, one of our General Knowledge Teams took part in the Quiz Club National General Knowledge Finals and what a result!

It has been ten years since Alpha came first in this prestigious competition. The Final was to take place in London at the Cambridge Theatre in July 2020, but alas we had to compete online last week.   However, this did not deter us!

There were 812 teams (3248 children) from 502 schools taking part in the General Knowledge championship during the last academic year and there were 47 teams from 44 schools in the Finals.

After some complicated technical hurdles to cross, we were off. The team conferred with each other, double checking before they pressed the all important keypads! A running total was kept, so we knew we were doing fairly well.

The results were broadcast on Zoom but we missed the online announcements. We received a text informing us that we had come first with 1720 points. Cheers could be heard around the school as news of the win spread.

Hearty congratulations go to to team - we are incredibly proud of you!

 

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

October marked the celebration of Black History Month in the UK and Alpha have been exploring the importance of marking such an important month. In Mr Fahy’s assembly, which was zoomed to the whole school, he spoke about Eric Underwood, a prominent American-British black male ballet dancer who became one of the first ‘First Black Artists’ of the London Royal Ballet Company despite not having any formal dance training until the age of 15 and growing up in a neighbourhood of gangs, guns and violence in Maryland.

Throughout the school, from Nursery to Year 6, the children took part in a range of activities and tasks to mark Black History Month and these included watching documentaries and having discussions about the importance of diversity in PSHE and wellbeing lessons from Nursery to Year 6, Year 4 analysed extracts from Michelle Obama’s biography, Year 1 were learning about African music and playing the djembe drums, Nursery children discussed their own skin colour and then created Queens from their hand prints. Nursery also watched a story about Dame Floella Benjamin arriving in the UK as a child and made collages and Year 6 researched, and wrote reports about, people of BAME origin who they admire, they also studied a Black Lives Matter poem in Drama.