Twycross House School has been awarded a top national award from the Good Schools Guide for the best results at A-level by girls taking biology last year at an independent school.  Many congratulations to the biology department and to the eleven girls who completed their GCE course in 2006.

The group comprising Natasha Banks, Kate Barber Caroline Bayley, Victoria Dubberley, Samantha Johnson, Helen Martin, Laura Shelton-Smith, Rosannagh Timmis, Abigail Wain, Georgina Weatherdon and Jennifer White gained seven A and four B grades between them in their biology A-level. Head of biology, Mrs Hayden, commented, ‘This is a real achievement for girls at a mixed school who were taught in mixed classes. Science subjects are generally popular choices at Twycross and this award proves that they are not just the domain for the boys. It is particularly good to see that eight of the girls are now studying a biological subject at university.’                 

What smelt of rotten eggs on a Tudor battlefield?  How did it feel inside a suit of armour?  Even, where did a Knight go to the toilet?

These and many more questions were answered at the Bosworth Battlefield Centre, as Form 4 historians found that learning really did come alive on the site of one of Britain’s most famous battles.  Surveying the land from the top of Ambion Hill, pinpointing the positions of the three armies by their standards, made it much easier to explain why a King of England died there.

On this atypical Thursday the excitement was rising – Christmas presents exchanged, Christmas lunch, Christmas cards opened by the fire, much consuming of roasted chestnuts, an impromptu candle-lit carol singing in the New Hall and then the French Nativity Play also candle-lit.  Form 4X performed the play which was specially written for them by Mrs Trickett and entitled ‘Il avait deux mille ans – Twycross ou Béthléem?  The whole class took part, each child playing more than one role.  The children are greatly to be congratulated for the way in which they threw themselves heart and soul into the performance of this difficult and complicated dialogue.  Their enthusiasm was both evident and contagious, and both parents and pupils joined in with the singing of the carols in French.  5Y played an accomplished arrangement of ‘Sainte Nuit’ on their recorders.
 
Transported back with our reporters to occupied Bethlehem 2000 years ago we listened to the interviews and opinions of the Romans, of date-sellers, residents, travellers, the inn-keeper, his clients and his staff, of Mary and Joseph, shepherds, angels and the Magi and of course the great Archangel Gabriel, the messenger of God, who delivered the final words, ‘Et Dieu dit: voici mon Fils bien aimé qui me plaît bien.’