COLLEGE NEWS No 1 www.bridgehouse.org.za 15 January 2016 #Headspace: 21 – Key to the Future Firstly, Happy New Year to all Bridge House families! Welcome back to all returning families and a special welcome to those joining us for the first time. May 2016 be a wonderful year for all of you, and for our nation. Here at bridge House, it’s going to be a really special twelve months indeed! Wikipedia is an amazing resource, always interesting, if not always 100% accurate! If you look up “21”, the following information (and a whole lot more) pours onto the screen: “Twenty-one is the fifth discrete semiprime and the second in the (3 × q) family. With 22 it forms the second discrete Semiprime pair. As it is a semiprime with both its prime factors being Gaussian primes, 21 is then a Blum integer. Twenty-one is a Fibonacci number, a Harshad number, a Motzkin number, a triangular number and an octagonal number, as well as a composite number, its proper divisors being 1, 3 and 7. 21 is the sum of the first six natural numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21), making it a triangular number. 21 appears in the Padovan sequence, preceded by the terms 9, 12, 16 (it is the sum of the first two of these). The sum of divisors for the integers 1 through 6 is 21. 21 is the smallest non-trivial example of a Fibonacci number whose digits are Fibonacci numbers and whose digit sum is also a Fibonacci number. 21 is a repdigit in base 4 (1114). 21 is the smallest natural number that is not close to a power of 2, 2n, where the range of closeness is ±n. 21 is the smallest number of differently sized squares needed to square the square.[1] Age 21 In several countries 21 is the age of majority. See also: Coming of age. In some countries it is the voting age. 21 is: The number of spots on a standard cubical (six-sided) die (1+2+3+4+5+6) The number of firings in a 21-gun salute honouring Royalty or leaders of countries There are 21 trump cards of the tarot deck if one does not consider The Fool to be a proper trump card. The standard TCP/IP port number for FTP connection 21 grams is the weight of the soul, according to research by Duncan MacDougall, generally regarded as meaningless. The key value and highest-winning point total of the popular casino game Blackjack The number of shillings in a guinea.” I’m not sure I need to know all that, even if I could understand any of the Mathematical stuff or that bit about the “TCP/IP port”, but possibly there’s some useful stuff here for when your dinner-party conversations go quiet… What I do know, though, is that the number 21 has special significance for us at Bridge House this year. We celebrate our 21st birthday, and therefore come of age. Also, in this 21st year, we have committed to 21st Century Learning, irreversibly stepping into a very different space. Our 1:1 iPad programme has generated much excitement and much personal and professional growth already, and it is going to be incredibly exciting to watch this process develop and just keep on improving the delivery of more than just the curriculum. I cannot adequately capture the progress made by our teachers during 2015, in terms of exploring and exploiting what e-learning has to offer. In addition to this teaching and learning paradigm-shift, 2016 is a year of extremely rapid physical growth and development on the campus. By January 2017, we’ll have completed a hockey season on our own astro-turf. By January 2017, we’ll have completed a fourth boarding-house – and it will have a new name. By January 2017, there will be a new dining-room to cater for boarders at the southern (Huguenot House) side of the campus, and we’ll have added six new teaching spaces for the College. In the space of 10 or so months, we will have leapt from being a growing school to becoming just about fully grown: a young adult with a strong identity and real confidence, on the threshold of fully-fledged adulthood, just like a 21-year-old. It is indeed exciting, and that these developments should happen in our 21st year has an almost serendipitous feel to it! By January 2017, we will all have celebrated our Founders’ Dream in some style at a series of events dotted through the terms. Watch this space for details. In the first-ever Bridge House school magazine in 2001, the then Head, Allan Graham wrote: “So, to the dreamers – the Friedmans, Rands and Huxter families – to our Founding Headmaster Lloyd Smuts, and to our Founding Parents, Staff and Pupils, thank you for your courage and foresight. Thank you for making Bridge House happen!” I can only echo Allan’s words. Thank you for making Bridge House happen. Thank you for the support and guidance and trust and belief that has seen and continues to see the dream unfold. It is almost beyond one’s capacity to imagine what those first exploratory, tentative discussions of 1994 must have been like, and to look now at our school and be able to see your dream reach this coming-of-age milestone. To think that you had the faith and courage to pursue this dream at a time of great uncertainty about the future of South Africa, as our country took its first exploratory, tentative steps towards democracy, is even more testament to the inspirational power of vision. Thank you for making Bridge House happen! Mr Mike Russell Matric Results Congratulations to the Class of 2015 on outstanding results in the Independent Examinations Board (IEB) Matric exams. You will find detailed information about the Bridge House results on our webpage http://www.bridgehouse.org.za/college/academics/matric-results We are proud that two Bridge House students (out of six in the Western Cape) appeared on the IEB Outstanding Achievers List. They are Aimee Fuller and Kaila Fourie with the following outstanding results: AIMEE FULLER – 9 Distinctions KAILA FOURIE – 9 Distinctions Aimee did 9 subjects including Advanced Kaila did 9 subjects including Advanced Programme English and Advanced Programme English and Advanced Programme Programme Mathematics. She achieved 9 Mathematics. She achieved 9 Distinctions Distinctions with 6 subjects over 90% with 5 subjects over 90% (Accounting 94%, (Accounting 91%, Afrikaans 92%, English Afrikaans 92%, Economics 95%, Maths 96%, 95%, Maths 96%, Physical Science 91% Physical Science 93%). She came in the top and Visual Art 96%). She came in the top 1% in SA in Afrikaans and Economics. 1% in SA in Afrikaans, English and Visual Arts. Further outstanding results from the top students JOSH FERREIRA CHRISTINA LOUW JANIE DE LANGE NINA CONDÉ 7 Distinctions including 7 Distinctions including 92% 6 Distinctions including 95% 6 Distinctions including 91% 94% for Economics. for Mathematics for Accounting, 98% for for Economics and 91% for Top 1% in the country in Economics, 92% for French, English & 90% for French. Economics. 92% for Life Orientation & Top 1% in the country in 91% for Mathematics. Top English. 1% in the country in Accounting, Economics & Life Orientation. COSIMA BABL GEMMA MAUGER SEAN OOSTHUIZEN 5 Distinctions 5 Distinctions 5 Distinctions including 96% for Economics Top 1% in the country in Economics. CHARLOTTE BARLOW ALEXANDRA BOREL-SALADIN CIMÓN SAAYMAN 4 Distinctions 4 Distinctions 4 Distinctions Class of 2015 Reunion On Tuesday, the Matrics of 2015 returned to school for a reunion with their classmates and teachers. They were presented with past pupils scarves and ties and Aimee Fuller, the Dux student for 2015, was presented with a trophy and certificate. Congratulations on this excellent achievement, Aimee. It was a very happy occasion and we enjoyed having the Class of 2015 back so soon! Philippolis Community Partnership Every December, volunteers from Bridge House visit the tiny Southern Free State town of Philippolis where they give of their time, love and labour to interact and assist the community with renovations to the facilities there. In the first week of the holidays, while everyone else was relaxing, a group of seventeen Bridge House pupils with Mr Jones and Ms Hutton-Squire headed off to Philippolis where hard work awaited them. They began work at 4:45am every morning working on the crèche at a local community centre which has had no maintenance done for a decade. They fixed the playground, replaced the ceilings, painted window frames with enamel, fixed the doors and scraped and then painted the walls with educational drawings. As if this was not hard enough work, there was a crowd of curious children to entertain throughout the day. The group managed to do all of this with a happy, positive attitude every day. Well done, Mr James Jones, Ms Megan Hutton-Squire, Aimee Otto, Camille de Villiers, Chelsea Rowland, Ella van Niekerk, Faith Hathorn, Hestia Brink, Isabella Dower, Jordan Michel, Konrad Blümers, Lara Wessels, Marceleen Marx, Matthew Browne, Meeka Cohen, Meghan Gomes, Natasha Glazer, Nicole Meyer and Victoria Macfie for your commitment, jokes, squad spirit and hard work. Swimming Star On Tuesday, star swimmer, Migael Adams (Grade 8), who won a total of 9 medals for South Africa at the CANA Zone 3 Swimming Championships in Uganda during the holidays was filmed going about his daily routine at school and he was interviewed by the SABC for a programme on TV. His fantastic results at the Championships were as follows: - 4 individual medals (1 gold in 50m breaststroke, 3 bronze in 100m & 200m breaststroke & 50m backstroke) - 5 relay medals (2 gold and 3 silver).