World Music has always been an important part of the music curriculum. On Friday 9 October Year 9 pupils had the opportunity to explore the exciting percussion sounds of the Brazilian Samba. Two hour-long sessions were expertly presented by a tutor from Hampshire Music Service. Girls were shown the different instruments and after some warming-up exercises worked on producing a samba performance at the end of the session. Pupils worked with great enthusiasm and concentration on producing an exhilarating performance full of rhythmic vitality and drive. At the end of the sessions, one pupil commented ‘Can we do this every Friday?’

During May half-term, fifteen girls from Year 9 at Alton Convent School travelled to Hamelin in Germany to visit their pen pals. For the past two years, the girls had been writing letters and emails to each other and were now excited to meet their friends face to face. To break the ice, they enjoyed outsized ice-cream sundaes in a local icecream-parlour. Soon a mixture of German and English was used to find out more about each other.

The next few days were spent in the historic centre of Hamelin. The Musical "Rats" on the market square were enjoyed by all and reminded us of the story of the Pied Piper who once freed the town of a rat plague.
Hamelin has a lot to offer, but it was their German pen pals together with their English teacher and their parents who made our girls' stay so special. Together, they  explored the partner school Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium, went Bowling, visited the traditional glass blowing workshop, spent time on the banks of the river Weser and played table tennis. One trip organised by the German parents led us to Bodenwerder were we learned about the Baron von Münchhausen. Telling stories made him famous as the lying baron.

On the 25th February at 6am all of the third year girls accompanied by four teachers set off from the school in high spirits with liveliness due to the excitement and adrenalin that comes from going on a school trip. At Dover, we made a brief stop to collect our tour guide Mr Watson, who we found out to be a very knowledgeable man. He also has been our tour guide for many previous years. We mainly visited the most signifi cant places to do with WW1, including Flanders Fields, British, French and Germen cemeteries, museums, trenches, the Menin gate and the Last Post Cemetery, with many more but just too many to mention. It was three chock-a-block and tremendously interesting days. We are all now working on a project and presentation about our visit with the main objective being whether or not we think the battlefields should be preserved.

We were delighted to hear this month that two Yr 9 students, Francesca and Fiona , were awarded the accolade of having their artwork selected to appear in the ‘School Artists Portfolio 2009’. The work chosen has been selected from the School Artist’s ‘Express Yourself 2009’ Art Competition, for which all of our Yr 9 pupils completed work. The competition received over 6,000 entries from schools nationwide so Francesca and Fiona did extremely well to be selected. They now stand a chance of being chosen as overall winners and winning £1000 of art materials for the school. Congratulations.

U14A - This team have been unfortunate this season and had a few matches cancelled due to bad weather so they were very excited about this one,especially as it was against a strong team. Alton started really well and showed some fantastic play right from the word go. Some brilliant play,particularly from our shooters made sure that they maintained their one goal lead throughout to win 5 - 4, a great victory. Players of the match - Hannah, Fiona and Camellia.
 
U14B - This team continued on with the A teams great domination and played some fast,accurate netball throughout the game.

First we arrived at the convent after a short coach ride from school. When we got there we were greeted by the Sisters, who were very as they let us stay at their house for the day, and have lots of fun in there beautiful garden.

Our first activity was to silently get into order of shoe size- we completed it successfully. After that we were split into groups and given a 3rd world country to be a family in. My group's country was Kajikistan. In these groups we had to role-play the life of the people who lived in your chosen country. There were market traders who dealt with your earnings for the year out of four. Some year's one family member could receive government training, this came as a benefit as your family could then use the skills learnt to increase their production of crops.

U14s - What a game! Awesome play by both teams left it neck and neck throughout. Both teams were scoring off their centres and keeping good possession. Alton managed to get that one break to win 8 - 7 even though their centre,Rachel Hyndman is off with injury - a good result. Player of the match - Hannah.
U16s - again a nail biting game. Alton were down by 2 goals at half time with the centre passes not working in our favour. Luckily, in the last ten minutes Anya found some great shooting form and we overcame the disadvantage to win in the last 30 seconds 25 - 24. Player of the match -

U14s - A very depleted teamput out by Alton due to a number of injuries and illnesses within their usual team. This was tough for them against a fair St nics side. Even so, they worked hard to form new relationships and routines and a score line of 6 - 16  to St Nics does not do the game justice. Player of the match - Hannah.
U15s - another bad game for this team who after their first win are struggling to find form in the centre of the court. A dominant oppostition left a loss of 11 - 33. Player of the match - Jessica.

Alton 1 Ditcham 0

It is always an adventure travelling up to Ditcham Park School and this was no exception. The team were missing a couple of key players due to illness, injury and county commitments. The game turned out to be very one-sided with Alton on the attack for the majority of the game I lowever many near chances came and went and at half-time the score was still 0-0 . Second half started well and within no time Alton had scored, much to the relief of the whole team. An excellent performance and the man of the man was Harry.