Friday 14th December 2018


What a fantastic concert we had last night!  We are so thankful for the wealth of talent at Castell Alun and all of the effort that went into making the event such a success.   A massive well done to the Wind Band, who performed ‘Joseph Medley’ and ‘Let it Snow’, our Year 10 GCSE Group for ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, our Flute Group who performed ‘Sleigh Ride’, the Saxophone Ensemble with ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’, ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘At the Hop’, the Guitar Ensemble with ‘Feliz Navidad’, and Carys and Abi who performed a piano duet of ‘Spanish Dance’. Our Lower School Drama Group treated us to a performance of ‘Revolting Children’, and our Castell Alun Vocal Group sang ‘Stand by Me’.  There were also amazing vocals from Hannah, Lucy, Amira, Laura, Katie, Keira, Megan, Celyn, Grace, Carys and Abi.  A wonderful violin duet from Hannah and Elin was followed by a wonderful piano solo by Joshua.  Our Jazz Band treated us to ‘Twist and Shout’ and our Year 11 GCSE Group performed ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’.   The evening finished with our Year 8 Rock group, ‘LIES’ performing ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’.

The Festive Fair last week was brilliant.  Our friends in CAFA worked tirelessly and everybody really enjoyed the evening.  £595 was raised on the evening, which will be match funded by Barclays for the school, and it is events such as these which enable us to provide services like our new minibus, which are, of course, directly beneficial to all of our students.  Thank-you so much to everybody who turned out to support the event.

Today our Year 11 Business Students have gone on a trip to Zip World in Snowdonia, in order to study organisational aspects of the enterprise….   and, obviously enjoy a bit of bounce-time also!

Our congratulations go to Lily, Alesha, Poppy, Abi and Ruby who have all been selected to represent North East Wales U14/U16 Netball Squads this season.  In further sports news, our Year 8 Rugby Team won once again, this time at Rhyl High School, and the lads are now in the last 32 of the Welsh Cup.

Next week will see the publication of our first ever student newsletter.  “The Hive” will be available to read from midweek onwards on the school website.  Hard copies may be requested from the school office, and all students will have access to this fantastic new initiative in their tutor bases.   Contributions to the newsletter are of a really high quality and a number of the themes covered are both most interesting and highly relevant to current times.  Many thanks and well done to the production team – Lowis, Grace, Alex, Sophie, Elin and Hannah.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Christmas lunch will be served for students in the dining room and we have a very busy week planned!  On Monday a large number of Year 10 Art students will go on a field trip to Liverpool and on Tuesday students in Year 10 again will be involved in Dragons’ Den activities, as part of their Welsh Baccalaureate Enterprise Challenge.  On Wednesday students in Year 8 will attend our annual Christmas church service at Hope Parish Church, with the event being repeated for students in Year 7 on Thursday.  Thank-you to all of our friends at the church who make these things possible for us.

On Thursday and Friday mornings a number of Year 11 students will be completing their Welsh Baccalaureate Individual Research Project, and also on Friday Year 10 students will hold their annual Christmas Fair during the morning.  All students will have access to the fair at specific times during the morning, and some children may wish to bring a little bit of extra money in, in order to support this charitable venture and buy some goodies.  We will hold our Christmas whole school assembly on Friday as usual, and our Year 7 students will be treated to a Christmas disco during the afternoon.

It’s getting cold out there!  There is no sign of a white Christmas yet…..  but you never really know!