The latest edition of the Blue & Grey is now available.  If you do not normally receive a copy and would still like to read the school magazine, please go to the Blue & Grey Magazine page on this website for an interactive version.

Congratulations to Honor McFarlane, who has been awarded a place in the National Youth Choir.

Congratulations to Mimi Watts on her Sports Scholarship to Dean Close and to Imogen Syme-Taylor, who has been awarded a Choristership place in the Cathedral Choir at Wells Cathedral School (one of only four specialist music schools in the country and the only one attached to a cathedral) for January.

All your donations of old trainers and football boots to the Swindon Town Football Club Zambia Appeal have now been shipped out to Zambia and the community coaches have gone out there to distribute them to local children.

A Big Thank You to all of you who passed on your old trainers and football boots – they are going to bring smiles to the faces of others and have a second life!

A huge thank you to everyone who supported us at the Christmas Fair, we are thrilled to announce that we have raised over £8,500 towards our chosen charities this year and for Friends of Pinewood projects.

We are enormously grateful to all the stallholders, visitors and to all those parents, staff and pupils who volunteered to help us on the day.

If you are interested in booking a stall at next year's Christmas Fair, please contact Henrietta Hoyland on henriettahoyland@pinewoodschool.co.uk.

A large group of Year 5-8 pupils arrived at Stowe ready for a great day of jazz. This was my 2nd time so I knew we were going to have lots of fun.

There were three other schools there, but Pinewood had many more people than anyone else. First we waited for the other schools to arrive, once everyone was there we made our way over to the music school where we had our first rehearsal. The conductor told us not to get our instruments out yet and he taught us the difference between jazz phrases, funk phrases and so on. Then he taught us to sing back something he sang but using numbers; so the first note of the scale would be number one etc. etc. He would give us the first note and tell us the order of the numbers then let us figure it out.

Next the instrumental group had a separate rehearsal to the percussion group. The conductor used the same method with numbers and notes but this time with our instruments, we then got two melodies memorised. We broke for lunch and then back for a full rehearsal.  Then it was tuck shop time - always a highlight of the day! After enjoying our snacks, we then went back for the final rehearsal before the concert.

The final concert was very exciting and all the parents were very impressed that we hadn’t used any sheet music the whole day!

By James Eyles