It has been a great pleasure welcoming the girls back from their Easter holiday during the past fortnight. We were really pleased to share the outcome of all their physical efforts and fundraising for the Plan International UK walk; over £3700 was raised which is really impressive for our first effort. I was so impressed with everyone’s determination and team spirit; some teams even sang their way around the park!

This term, we are pleased to welcome two new members of staff to Blackheath: Miss Rajeswaran joins the Maths department to cover Ms Szili’s maternity leave and Miss Rosenthal joins the PE department from JAGs. We hope they will both be extremely happy with us.

This fortnight has seen the Duke of Edinburgh's Award expeditions; Geography field trips; a plethora of Maths activities during Maths week at Juniors and the start of GCSE Art and MFL oral exams. As ever, there is plenty going on and the girls have a great number of opportunities to choose from.

In assembly this week, I spoke to girls about the importance of rest (having read Alex Pang’s great book ‘Rest’ over the Easter break). If you have not read the book yet, it is extremely persuasive on the importance of thinking carefully about planning our rest and giving our brains time to process and plug away at whatever problems we are working on. With that in mind, I encouraged the girls to plan their rest as thoughtfully as they do their work and revision. Rather than zoning out in front of a box set, a planned activity of low intellectual demand, but mindful, is immensely valuable. Walking the dog; listening to music or drawing were examples of the kind of rest activities that allow our brains to tap into the Default Mode Network (DMN) which enables us to tackle problems afresh and gain new perspective. Moving into the period of internal and public examinations, this is more important than ever for the girls, so please do feel free to reinforce this at home for girls in the Senior School.