11 July 2025
Dear Parents, Guardians and Students/Annwyl Rhieni, Gwarchodwyr a Myfyrwyr
Chicken surprise!
I’ve been waiting for a long time to have a chicken on the opening page of my blog! Last week, that waiting paid off.
Our students were in for a Chicken Surprise when Ginger visited week. She made the special appearance to inspire us in our creative writing.
No eggs were laid but we know more about adjectives, verbs and adverbs and we wrote some eggstraordinary (sorry!) descriptive pieces. After such a warm welcome she hopes to come back soon. We are very grateful to Mrs Ollerton for bringing Ginger in to see us.
LHS Eco Committee awarded The Green Flag!
Mrs Griffiths and her team are absolutely delighted to share the news that Llanishen High has been awarded The Green Flag Award – an internationally recognised mark of excellence in environmental action and learning.
Our LHS Eco Committee has worked incredibly hard throughout the year, focusing on improving biodiversity, reducing litter, and enhancing the school grounds.
We are so proud of their dedication and achievements. Here they are with the plaque that we will be displaying in the school.
From a derelict space to a sensory garden
The ASC Base have also been undertaking an important project this year. With the help from a grant from ‘Sainsburys Food for Community’ project they have transformed a derelict space at the back of their building in to a sensory fruit garden for our ASC community to enjoy.
Under the watchful eye of Mrs Shinton, the majority of students have been involved in some aspects of the garden, whether it be clearing the land, weeding, planting the trees and sensory shrubs, or laying the path. Students are now able to enjoy this beautiful space, and already there are apples growing. There is such a variety of fruit trees, from apples and pears, to kiwis and nectarines, to rhubarb and raspberries!
Over the next few years we hope the garden will continue to grow and blossom. The Eco School were so impressed when they came to award the Green Flag to the school that they have issued the autism base with their own too! An amazing achievement everyone – congratulations!
BEFORE:
AFTER!!!!!!
GCSE Music Workshop with The Alternative Orchestra
On Tuesday afternoon we welcomed Nathan Jones and Tabitha Selley from The Alternative Orchestra to Llanishen. They performed a variety of pieces for our Year 9 and Year 10 Music students, including ‘Pink Pony Club’ in the style of Mozart, ‘I Want It That Way’ meets Debussy, and ‘Bring Me To Life’ as if it were performed by Ludovico Einaudi. They also discussed key compositional techniques, how to arrange music and develop interesting fusions of contrasting styles.
This workshop was a showcase for their upcoming concert, Orchestra: Remixed, where pop meets classical for a spectacular evening at the magnificent Llandaff Cathedral on Friday July 25th 2025. The orchestra will be performing pieces by artists such as Lady Gaga, Coldplay and Jess Glynne, but reimagined in completely different styles.
Visit https://www.thealternativeorcehstra.co.uk/remixed for more details and tickets. There is a 10% discount code for Llanishen High Staff, Pupils and Parents – LLANISHEN10 – valid on ticket bands A, B & C until Fri 18th July.
Bletchley Park Road Trip!
It is also that time of year when Mr Denison-Kurg hits the road with Year 12 to Bletchley Park, honouring the LGBTQ+ pioneer Alan Turing. In Mr D-K’s own words….
It was a beautiful day out with our A-Level students who are studying Maths, Computer Science, Digi-Tech and History! Bletchley Park was the venue where Alan Turing (along with many other geniuses) cracked the Enigma code pioneering the technology to decrypt Nazi Germany’s secret communications during World War II.
Here is the Bombe, the machine that brought efficiency to codebreaking and can be seen in action in the film “The Imitation Game”
The weather was perfect – sunny but not too hot, with a gentle breeze that made walking around the historic site really enjoyable. It felt like we were stepping back in time, surrounded by lush green lawns and beautiful old buildings filled with old equipment. Seeing the actual machines they used, like the Bombe and the Colossus, was incredible. It really brought to life how maths was used to solve real-world problems and how these breakthroughs laid the foundations for modern computer science.
Back from Bletchley and off to London!
There was barely time for a cup of tea before the team were back out again. This time they took our more able and talented mathematicians by coach to London to experience maths in real-life.
They started at the Twist Museum. By flooding an area with sodium-vapor light all colour was lost, everything appeared to be in sepia-tones. Can you tell who is wearing blue? Or yellow? Or grey?
Then surrounded by magenta, cyan and yellow lights everything looked normal, but shadows were very bright!
Next, they headed INSIDE a kaleidoscope….
Continuing with the optical illusions the big and small room made people change size depending where you stood.
Then it was time for the Science Museum. All in all, a fantastic day out with Mrs Whitehall, Mrs Bruma, Mr Stewart and Mr Denison-Kurg and the Year 7 mathematicians! There were some hilarious moments, including Will praying for the London Eye to start moving again!
(and the moment we got a service station the massage chairs were not left to waste!)
Learning Support take on London too!
The mathematicians were not the only intrepid explorers to hit London town this week.
Hot on their heels were this bunch. Year 10 Learning Support’s Asdan group smashed their persuasive presentations about a place to visit for free in central London. They were so amazing that they decided to visit – The Natural History Museum , Harrods, Big Ben, Westminster, Buckingham Palace, London Eye, The Sky Garden, Green Park, Leicester Square and the Lego Store.
They walked 10.99 miles, battled the heat, navigated the underground, managed to get the escalator halted for them and drove Aston Martins! What a blast.
Well done Year 10. So proud of you.
Year 12 Fun Day!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Year 12 were treated to a ‘fun day’ for their final school day of the academic year. The day’s activities included a scavenger hunt, a game of rounders in the sunshine, and a common room ‘party’ with cookies, karaoke, and a doubles pool tournament. It was a lot of fun, even if the karaoke efforts left a lot to be desired! Students are now on work experience for the next fortnight. We wish them all the best and we look forward to seeing them on results day!
On Thursday 14th August we will fling our doors open wide at 8:00am GMT to welcome students and their family members. Everyone is welcome!
Health and Wellbeing
Taking good care of their physical health are our Year 7 Baseball team. Please join us in congratulating them on their great win against Bro Edern. They are a fantastic group. I’m loving the sea of blue!
It has been a busy week for reading at LHS!
On Friday the 4th of July, Mrs Hazeltine-Rees took 5 students from Year 7 and 8 who completed all of the Spring Term ‘Planets Reading challenge’ (students had to read 9 books each of a different genre from the library and complete a task for each such as a review/article/story) to Penarth.
Many of our fantastic KS3 students did brilliantly, reading books in different genres and completing tasks. It was a pleasure to see new faces in the library too. However, only 5 students read ALL 9 books and 9 different genres and completed ALL 9 difficult challenges. These amazing students were: Abigail Goodall Year 8, and Faye Rushbrook, Phoebe Moore, Liliana Wozniak and Lexie Spicer Year 7.
Thanks to generous PTA funding, the readers had a train trip to Penarth to visit Griffin Books, where they had a tour and a chat with the fabulous Elin (children’s book shop manager) and Megan (Schools Manager), who told them all about how a books shop runs and new and popular reads.
As a reward, the students chose a book each (thank you PTA) to take home and enjoy over the summer. There was even time for an ice cream and a spot of impromptu rock painting on the beach! Here are the students with their new books: we hope you enjoy reading them over the summer. Next year there will be a different challenge which runs for longer. Who will complete it next year? We can’t wait to find out.
The second reading trip this week was Tuesday the 8th July, when Mrs Hazeltine-Rees took her librarians on their annual work-experience trip to help them become even better librarians.
Will the help of Mrs Gregory from Learning Support, the group of 18 librarians from Year 7 to 10, took the train into Cardiff to visit Waterstones Bookshop where they had a tour and talk from the children’s section manager. They learned all about customer service, book buying, stocking and organising and how to run special promotional events. They all loved it!
In the afternoon, they continued the trip with a visit to the Cardiff Central library. Here they had another tour and helped the staff redesign their YA section and to organise lots of their new YA stock into genres. Thank you to the brilliant librarians in the children’s section of Cardiff Central Library. Don’t forget libraries are free to join and borrow books. Find your nearest library here https://www.cardiff.gov.uk/ENG/resident/hubs-and-libraries/Pages/default.aspx (and of course don’t forget LHS’s very own Reading for Pleasure Library in 41A : near the 6th form common room). Where will next year’s trip take us?
Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award Expedition success!
Congratulations to Tom Standley, Tom Hindmarsh, Ollie Graham, Joshua Payne and Ben Richmond from Year 13 on qualifying for their Expedition Section. They completed a 4-day day hike in the Black Mountains carrying all their gear including tents, sleeping bags, stoves, gas, food and clothing. They coped well in 30-degree heat scaling the Offas Dyke path along with several peaks.
In Year 12, congratulations toAmalie, Lucy, Bryn, Cian, Rhys, Ben, Ella, Molly, Danae, Sophia, Morgan, Zach, Ryan, Jack, Morven, Jasmine, Naina, Lilly and Lian on completing your qualifying expedition with flying colours.
Mrs Birch-Hurst commends you all! And so do we.
ASD Sports Day
We are also so proud to share some photographs from our amazing base sports day. All students were delighted to cheer each other on and tried their best in all their races! We had some very dramatic finishes and it so great to see everyone so happy and supportive of each other. We even had some students taking on the roles of sports commentator and cheerleader! Please enjoy these amazing photographs. The first one has to be one of my all-time favourites!
Leave it to the professionals….
Finally, it was fantastic to receive some professional photographs of the school production of Made in Dagenham from a very talented Year 11 parent, Mr Palmer. As they are soooo much better than my poor attempt with my phone and an emotionally shaky hand, it is only fitting to share a selection with you. Please enjoy!
What a week! LHS – you have exceeded all expectation! With one week left to go, we still have our legendary Sports Day to enjoy on Wednesday 16th July. Carb up and limber up everyone…
Thank you for reading/Diolch am ddarllen,
Mrs Sarah Parry, Headteacher