Dear Landmark Community

The summer holiday season is almost here. We hope you are looking forward to some really happy and enjoyable times with family and friends. It has been another busy and successful term packed with trips, exams and events.

Trips and Excursions

The students have enjoyed some wonderful trips and excursions this term, here is a recap of a few of the highlights.

Toucan class visited the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge to learn about evolution and natural selection. They observed and sketched the different creatures. They were told about Charles Darwin and his research and were able to look at the interesting specimens he had collected. They saw the different skulls of many creatures and then everyone got to explore the museum on their own. Kingfishers enjoyed a brilliant day out looking at all the amazing plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens as part of their study “Plants support life on Earth”.

In May some of our secondary students visited the Racing Centre in Newmarket for the fourth regional heat in this year’s Global Underwater Hub STEM Challenge . The competition sees teams of school pupils aged 13 and 14 test their science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills to design, build and programme an ROV using Lego Mindstorms. The competition, run with the support of The Small Piece Trust provides an opportunity for the pupils to learn about the career opportunities in the underwater industry and understand how STEM skills can transfer into the workplace.

During the term our Robin Class students were given a series of tasks from none other than Professor Granite, Head of Geology at the University of Cambridge! They had to use all their inquiring and thinking skills to help them find out lots of facts about the structure of the Earth, the types of rocks in our world, and how fossils are formed. They visited experts at the Sedgwick Museum and loved learning through investigating actual rocks and fossils.

During the penultimate week of term Toucan and Eagle Classes enjoyed a wonderful residential trip to Eaton Vale. Our annual trip enables the students to experience the outdoors, building collaboration, communication and affective learning skills. It is the perfect way to demonstrate how they have developed as IB learners, by exhibiting the traits of the learner profile. They enjoyed a range of activities including archery, buggy building, and back woods cooking! They arrived home on Wednesday, very tired but happy!

In addition the Year 7 students spent their penultimate week taking on a range of challenges from building bird boxes, designing chocolate bars and cooking their own dinner at a day of bushcraft activities.

Students on their Outward Bound Expedition at the top of Glyder Fawr (1001m)

The majority of our year 8, 9 and 10 students spent Monday the 26th June to Friday the 30th June with Outward Bound at Ogwen Cottage in Snowdonia. They had the opportunity to explore a truly wild place and all it has to offer. The students demonstrated great perseverance and resilience as they faced a range of environmental conditions from 50mph winds to driving rain to bright blue skies! The students had a range of successes, hiking and camping in the Snowdonia mountain range, groups scaled a range of 3000 ft mountains including Tryfan and the Glyders, they canoed across lakes, climbed and abseiled rock faces and clambered through gorges. The centre staff were very impressed with the physicality, maturity and inquiring nature of our students. We are very proud of the whole group for a successful week.

Students enjoy the sunshine after a day in a gorge in Snowdonia!

Events and Community

Friday April 21st kicked off our reinstated annual International Day extravaganza at Landmark International School. The festivities began with a whole school procession around the playground, with students parading and waving their national flags to an internationally-chosen soundtrack - more than 30 different countries were represented! The action then continued for the students as they visited a variety of workshops set up around the school. Led by teachers and parent volunteers, children had the opportunity to learn about the cultures, food and crafts of countries such as Ukraine, Canada and Indonesia. A special regionally-inspired menu was provided for lunch, with offerings from each continent around the world for students to sample. They could try out specialties such as South American empanadas, Asian spring rolls and an Australiasian lamington dessert.

Student engaging with cultural activities at International Day

In the afternoon, the entire school community gathered in the playground to join together in celebration of our wonderful diverse community. Parent volunteers came and prepared informative, interesting and fun stalls sharing their language, culture, crafts, special features and landmarks and, not least their food! Amongst the stalls, Morris Dancers wowed the crowds with their energetic performance, and there was even a very special guest musician from Iran. The day was brought to a stunning close with the Cafferkey Irish Dancing School. We all thoroughly enjoyed bringing the community together through this event and look forward to making it an annual Landmark tradition.

There was a splendid array of food on offer at the stalls on International Day

At the end of April a number of our Landmark staff, students and their parents took part in the TCS Mini London Marathon. They covered a distance of 2.6 miles, starting and finishing at the school. This fun event takes place in many schools across the country as part of a drive to encourage a fit and healthy lifestyle for young people.

On May 16th, 31 year 12 students from Kaetsu Ariake Senior School came to Landmark for an afternoon of cultural exchange with Landmark International School’s year 9 and 10 students. The afternoon was a great opportunity to share cultures and make connections. Our global student body had the opportunity to learn about Japanese culture from the Kaetsu students who ran a range of different cultural activities including Origami, Koma, Japan quiz, Shodo, Fukuwarai and Paper sumo. During these activities the students shared the British cultural delight of scones, which initiated a little debate on clotted cream and Jam etiquette! Landmark students then led the Kaetsu students on a walk through the beautiful English spring countryside to the local recreational grounds where the students mixed groups to play games of cricket, rounders and ultimate frisbee led by the Landmark students. After fun in the park the students walked back through Fulbourn and back to Landmark school for goodbyes

Students thoroughly enjoyed a cultural exchange with a school from Tokyo.

On Friday the 16th June the school hosted a wonderful Musical Showcase. Group and solo performances were given by the Primary students and several wonderful solo pieces were enjoyed by the audience of parents, carers, friends and relatives and students.

We finished our term with our annual sports day, a celebration of sport at Landmark. Students from reception to year 9 participated in a range of track and field events, which were supported by our year 10 students. It was lovely to see so many parents supporting and we are thankful to the PTA for providing refreshments and the year 6 students for their bake sale.

Students enjoyed a range of field and track events at Sports Day.

Celebrating Learning

On Friday the 23rd June we held our annual Landmark Careers Day. During the morning our secondary students were able to attend a choice of careers talks delivered by our parents; these were extremely interesting and informative and gave the students some very helpful insights into the world of work. In the afternoon the students all took part in a First Aid Course, which allowed them the opportunity to work on digital dummies which responded to their CPR efforts, deal with fake wounds and to work through an online course; each student received a certificate in First Aid. We are very grateful to our parents for giving up their valuable time to support this event.

The summer term has been a very busy one in terms of exams; the public IGCSE and GCSE exams were held throughout May and June. We are very proud of our students, who have met the challenges of these exams with purpose and resilience. The secondary students in Years 7 to 10 also sat their end of year exams during this term - the timetable and organisation of the whole exam series went very smoothly and we are grateful for the efficiency of the team for making this happen.

We finished the term with the PYPX, a wonderful celebration of the culmination of our students' learning in the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme. Students presented their learning on a range of areas focusing on the central idea ‘Communities can balance their needs with sustainability’. The event was a wonderful celebration of learning that the whole community had the opportunity to access and enjoy. Well done to all the students for their hard work.

A year 6 student shares their learning at the PYPX.

Goodbyes

On Monday the 19th June we held an assembly to say goodbye to our Year 11 students. Their parents and our students enjoyed seeing photographs of their journey from when they joined Landmark - some joined as early as our Primary Department - through to the confident and articulate young people they are today. We will miss them but feel sure they will embrace the next stage of their educational journey with positivity and confidence.

We also say goodbye to Rosie, Charlie and Ted, who are moving to Australia, to Seishiro and Gentaro, who are returning to Japan, Whitney, Iris and Albertine, who are returning to America, Sophie, who is returning to Austria and to Myros and Daryna, who are returning to Ukraine. We are also saying goodbye to Adam in Year 8. We wish them all every success in their new schools.

As always, we are grateful to you for entrusting your children to us and for being such valued contributors to our school community. We wish you a wonderful and relaxing break and very much look forward to welcoming your children back to school for the new school year on September, 6th.

With warmest regards

Gareth and the team