Heston Girls Basketball Team have done it again, out-skilling their rivals! 

After a victorious basketball game, in which Heston won the finals against Lampton, we interviewed two of our year 10 players to get some more insight on the successful game. 

With a total of six matches within a span of five hours, the Heston Basketball team tirelessly competed against Cranford, Lampton, Kingsley Academy and St Mary's, winning every single match! 

As the finals came around, most of the Basketball girls reported feeling quite nervous and sensing an intense atmosphere in the air. In the end, although this was to prove the fiercest round, it also turned out to be the match the team was proudest of. 

We asked two of our star players from Year 10 about practice, Anerly stated “We work on their basketball skills at least 3 times a week” and Rihanna told us, she is “Aspiring to go on and play officially for England when I’m older.” 

The girls stated that they thought the game was “decent” and that they could have improved on their defence and energy as a team. Either way, they agreed that, if given the chance to, they would do it again. 

Rihanna added, "Never give up, continue trying when times get hard" and Anerly agreed, ‘Keep your head up, even if you’re scared or worried about something’. 

The girls also mentioned there being some key players. They told us that Year 10 student Angelina took on the role as Captain and carried the team. Amari [Year 9] never gave up and scored most of the goals. Impressively, the Year 7s played against Year 10s.  

Congratulations to the girls' basketball team for winning the tournament. You are truly amazing, and also thanks to your dedicated coach. 

Hajiira Awais and Hanan Adan, [8R]

Remembrance Day, otherwise known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday, was on November 11^th, the 11^th hour on the 11^th day of the 11^th month. It’s a national celebration in which people celebrate and remember the sacrifices of World War I and II soldiers during their time fighting for the UK and the Allies. 

What we did at school: 

To spread awareness about this and pay respect, on Remembrance Day, Sixth Form students sold paper poppies in return for a small donation, to remember those who faced danger, endured hardship and fought for our country. On our big screen in Hogarth atrium, a video clip was played, showing the sacrifices made by these brave, young soldiers from all around the world.  

A 2-minute silence was held at around 11:30 for students and staff to take some time to appreciate how horrific and traumatic the experience of war was and still can be for those who are trapped in it. A beautiful and thought-provoking Art display was also created to communicate the terrible loss of life in World War 1 and other Wars. 

Thank you to everyone who brought a poppy and remembered the people who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. 

Alexandra Jones [8R]

This term we have introduced British Sign Language [BSL] classes for both adults and students. A select few students, hearing and deaf, have been able to attend BSL classes once a week.

Here are some of their accounts of their classes:

“My lessons in BSL have been most enjoyable; I love learning about the language and communicating with everyone using sign is fun. My sign language teacher teaches us very well and repeats words, so we can understand things properly, and she’s very good at what she does. So far, we have learnt about the alphabet and a few words like the names of fruits and veg, the names of family members and more! I’m so glad that I have had the opportunity to do this course and I am so glad I have, at least, a little bit of knowledge about British Sign Language.” – Simrit Bhamra 7B

“The BSL is fun! I am learning so many new things there, it is good! Very interesting and nothing went wrong because my friends were there and it is fun!” – Julia Mwangi 7B

“In BSL I’ve learnt the alphabet and how to fingerspell certain words like fruits, for example: strawberry and melon. To test our knowledge we do games to answer the questions. In BSL, I feel like I can learn more about BSL. I’ve learnt how to fingerspell my name as well. BSL stands for British Sign Language and for other countries the sign language is different. I hope to continue learning more.” Tamana Kukrija 7B

Having successfully passed the gruelling interview and selection process for the 2022 Senior Student Team, we were able to meet with Mrs Hall and our Learning Coordinator, Mr Naqvi, to discuss our plans for the 2022 Senior Team. We collaborated and shared ideas of possible events we could run, ways of giving back to the local community and possible topics we thought were important to promote at our school such as: mental health, celebrating cultural diversity and charitable pursuits. The Senior Team has already worked together on several successful events such as Open Evening and Careers Week with lots of positive parent feedback. We believe the Senior Team have had a great start to the new school year with the support of the teachers, and we are very excited to make our mark on our school community. 

As part of our GCSE Geography course we went on a field trip to Hengistbury Head to carry out some physical fieldwork.  The aim of our fieldwork was ‘To investigate to what extent beach width varies at Hengistbury Head’. 

We started the day by meeting at school at 7:15am (which some of us struggled with as usually were still in bed at that time!) and got on the coach which took us to Hengistbury Head which is in the county of Bournemouth.

After a two hour journey we had finally arrived and thankfully the weather was great, if a little windy, and we soon got to work collecting out data.  We had to measure the beach width several times at three different locations along the coastline, and we also measured the rate of longshore drift which we did by throwing oranges into the sea and measuring how far they travelled in a minute.  These were both quite straight forward methods, but a challenge was that the seagulls kept swooping in and picking our oranges out of the sea!

As well as collecting data for our fieldwork which we would analyse when back in the classroom we were able to see real life examples of processes and landforms that we had been learning about in the classroom.  Seeing first hand evidence of coastal erosion really made us appreciate why hard engineering strategies like groynes were put in place to protect some areas.  The highlight had to be seeing ‘Old Harry’ the stack, having learnt about its formation and see pictures it was great to be able to see it in real life – albeit from a distance!

It was a really enjoyable day and fun to get out of the classroom and see first-hand a lot of things we had previously been taught about in class. We’re looking to our human field trip in the summer, which is slightly closer to home as it will take place in Heston

Zamzama Ayoubi [10P]

Over the last few weeks we have been taking part in a social enterprise project, run by Hounslow Action for Youth Association (HAY).  I have gained a great deal of insight into the practical side of business management, which has really helped develop my understanding of what I have been learning in my A Level Business course.  The aim of the project is to help us develop a business idea and then bring our concept to life.  I was struggling to start with but with the help of the facilitators, Bijal and Pareece, I gained confidence and came up with a few ideas that I could run with.  The main thing I have taken away from the project so far is the importance of innovation.

HAY taught an important mantra: “Passion + problem-solving = business idea”. Most of us have now formed a business idea, and soon we will be moving on to the production stage. Hopefully, with the support of Bijal and Pareece we will be able to launch our products at a Business Fair in Wembley in the near future.   

Zunaira Samadi [12C]