Orchard rowers part of a successful crew at the Thames Valley Park Regatta 2014!

Orchard Year 10 boys Cosmo Hearnden, Seb Newman and Adam Fletcher are pictured here as part of the successful crew who won the TVP Regatta this past weekend.  Congratulations to all who took part!

How to order house photographs

House Photos

Dear Parents

This week your son or daughter should have delivered to you proofs of formal school photographs taken by our school photographers Gillman and Soame.  These include the whole College photograph, House photos, Prefect and Chapel Wardens.  You can, with these, order the photographs either by mail or online.

I do realise that the system of sending these photographs home may not always be 100% reliable, so I would like to supply you with instructions of how to view and order these photographs online. 

To access the sit please use the following simple instructions:

·         Enter www.gillmanandsoame.co.uk  into your search engine.

·         The site should then ask you for your email address, proof card login and proof card password. These are listed below for each house.

·         Then navigate the site to purchase the House Photo of choice.

Access codes

House	Proof Card Login	Proof Card Password
Welsh	295323	253036
Skipwith	295313	770552
Gilson	295320	268128
Orchard	295321	820467
Burr	295322	254206
College	295318	740562
Lower School	295309	676851
Everett	295315	362072
Prefects	295316	748120
Chapel Wardens	295317	172115

With kind regards

Rob Jones

Deputy Headmaster

Orchard win House Drama

More Orchard success as the Year 9 House Drama team pick up this year's prize.

Henry Hancock, Laurenz Claas, Alfie Sheppard, Sam Lowe and Fergus Elrington.

Orchard are Senior House Cricket Champions......Again!

For the third year in a row, Orchard's senior cricket team have won the house cricket competition.  The photo below shows the winning team.

Congratulations to Reiss Simspon, Alex Bradley, Ed Farrar, Tom Banks, Jonny Graham, Ruaridh Scott, Ben Arnold, Harry Emmanuel, Harry Wallace, Charles Marsden and Milo Taylor.

Orchard House is on Twitter

You can now follow Orchard House tweet-by-tweet!  Simply click on the following link or search for @ShipOrch

https://twitter.com/ShipOrch

Oarsome Orchard!

Members of Orchard House continue to demonstrate their prowess on the water, both in and outside of the College.



Orchard Year 9 boys Alfie Sheppard and Brett Fullard can be seen here as part of the Year 9 boat that was in racing action recently.

Orchard Year 10 Oliver Walker (pictured here at the start line) continues to have some success in his canoeing taking first place in his K4 race yesterday with fellow club mates. Canoe Clubs throughout the southern region competed on the Thames at Caversham in the annual Reading K4 Circuits hosted by Reading Canoe Club.

Rowing Success

Orchard Oarsmen Win Wallingford

Continuing Orchard success!

We’ve only been back a few days and already there has been cause for celebration amidst the Orchard boys and girls. Sophie Arnold picked up the Sportswoman of the Year award at Tuesday’s Girls’ Sports Dinner; recognition for two great years of sporting endeavour in a number of sporting activities. And there were further awards for Meg Barron-Cutts, Maddie Newman, Beth Jones and Chloe Reeder at that ceremony too. Well done, girls!

Our congratulations also extend to Charlie Sichel  who has picked up a Sixth Form Rugby Scholarship and, likewise, to Oliver May who is representing Bedfordshire this weekend at the Mounted Games Competition where he will be hoping to impress the England selectors with his horse-riding skills.

The Commonwealth Games are being held in Glasgow over the summer and I am pleased to inform you that Orchard House will be represented at those Games in the form of Ruaridh Sheppard. Ruaridh volunteered to assist in the running of those Games and was successfully selected from a huge number of applicants. I am sure you will have a great experience, Ruaridh!

Mr R.Curtis

Sports Dinner 15th March 2014

Sports Dinner Blurb Profiles

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR PARENTS. Exeat date change - November 2014.

Please be aware that we are moving the November exeat from 21^st – 23^rd November to 28^th - 30^th November.

Thank you.

A Night In The West End

Just before half term, Shiplake College (including a number of boys from Orchard House) teamed up with Queen Anne's School to put on 'A Night In The West End'.  The video below contains highlights of the concert and congratulations must go to Orchard Year 12 boys Ruaridh Sheppard, Reiss Simpson and Charles Marsden.

Seb Newman's rowing success

Thames Valley Trial Head by shiplakecollegemedia

Orchard students take leading roles in Young Enterprise group.

Shiplake College's Young Enterprise group began in September 2013 as a way of allowing students the opportunity to work as a business where they can brainstorm ideas, create a product and sell it to the public.  A number of Orchard Year 12 students are part of the group and each one has a specific responsibility to fulfill:

Harry Wiggins - Finance Director

Will Janes – Product development

Adib Wain – Human Resources

George Lawley - Secretary

Harry Chapples - Marketing

The group's first product was the Lumijar, which went on sale just before Christmas and the group had some success with sales figures.

Finance Director Harry Wiggins has this to say on the future of the group:

"We are looking to create a new product later in the year; hopefully around March.  We are not sure what it will be yet but we are looking for something that will generate some profit for all of us as we are all investors.

The ideal profit would be in the £150 – £200 range. We still have some Lumijars to sell and there are plans to visit trade fairs in March in Stratford and North Oxford."

YE members including Harry Chapples, Will Janes and George Lawley get to grips with another tricky business decision.

George, Harry and Harry Wiggins show off the Lumijars with Harry Marsden.

Bugsy Malone

Last week saw Shiplake's production of 'Bugsy Malone' take the stage.  The show featured a number of Orchard pupils taking part in roles as well as ensuring everything went smoothly behind the scenes:

Ruaridh Sheppard, Meaghan Barron-Cutts, Angus Meldrum, Seb Rivett, Oliver Riley, George Cowley and Aaron Khalfa.

If you missed the performance, below is a video of the chase scene featuring Ruaridh Sheppard among others, and the video was produced by Mr Milburn of Orchard House.

GB Nantes 2013

Shiplake have always been known to punch above their weight and this year was no exception on a national scale.

Henry Cawthorne (Skipwith) and Max Hearnden (Orchard) were lucky enough to be invited to the GB junior rowing team’s winter training camp in Nantes, France from the 15-22 December. This would be Max’s second time in France and a first for Henry. 

The invite was in no part due to the hard work throughout the autumn term and high placing, 35 and 29 respectively, at the early ID trial in Boston (Lincolnshire). That particular trial is in single sculls rather than sweep boats so Max (and Henry) were being compared to those who scull all year round. Therefore they had to develop both disciplines at school to a high degree. Despite all the time they spent in singles however they would be given the chance to prove himself in coxless fours and pairs all the time in France.

Having left early for Nantes on the morning of December 15 along with around 40 coaches and Athletes from around the UK and after a 12 hour coach journey they arrived and settled in to their new home for the week.

During their time there they boated from the University of Nantes’ boat club on the river L'Erdre and used a collection of GB boats and blades provided by the funding from the Lottery through UK Sport.

Each day was split up into two training sessions each lasting about 2-3 hours on the water achieving between 15-40 kilometres per session. Midway through the week they ran to and from the boat club for both sessions and did a 30min ergometer test on the Wednesday morning.

This is unfortunately where Max’s rowing camp turned into a physiotherapy and rehabilitation camp when he injured a disk in his back, meaning that he would be out of training for the next 4 weeks.

The week ended with the infamous Nantes quiz and final weekly reviews from the coaches.

Both boys met some really experienced coaches and rowers who train equally as hard as we do and we are looking forward to meeting up at regattas and the rest of the trailing process.

Max and Henry learnt a lot over the week about making boats go fast in new combinations and they were also given different targets to work on concerning our technique from all the coaches there.

The camp has given the boys an advantage which will help them when it comes to the final trailing process and seat racing with other rowers from around the country later this year. Here both Henry and Max will be aiming to represent GB at either the Coupe de la Jeunesse or the Junior World Championships later this summer.

We hope that the training and motivation that was gleaned from this camp will also further their success as a boat club this year into the regatta season. Good luck!

Shiplake Weather Report

A Reflection on the Recent Weather

Recent House Achievements

My congratulations this week are heading to Orchard students in sport, drama and music, with awards and responsibilities for the following:

·         Harry Emmanuel has once again been selected for the Berkshire U15 Hockey Squad and I am sure he will be making some telling contributions to that team and, staying with hockey, also to Ben Peers for being honoured with the 1^st XI Hockey Captaincy. We wish you both well in the term ahead.

·         Ben Tait’s talents on the stage are clearly gaining recognition as he has just been given the role Thuy in the Wilde Theatre’s production of Miss Saigon from 4-8 March. I would say ‘break a leg’ but that is literally the case with Ruaridh Sheppard playing a lead role in this week’s College production of Bugsy (Ruaridh broke his leg playing rugby just before Christmas but is still fulfilling his part this week). Good luck to both of you!

·         Charles Marsden has committed himself wholeheartedly to the extra-curricular programme here at Shiplake and it is really pleasing to see him gain his Grade 7 award in Singing over the Christmas holidays; a fantastic achievement in itself but it also has a degree of academic value too (being recognised in the UCAS tariff table for university entrance).

Well done to all of the above and I am sure we will have a number of students coming forward with more outstanding performances over the course of this term.

Mr Curtis