Union Schools vs Gill Primary School (Home & Away) – 18 February 2020
| Time | Team | Opponent | Venue | Format |
| 14:00 | UHS U11A | Gill U11A | Gill Primary (away) | T20 |
| 14:00 | UHS U13A | Gill U13A | Puttick Field | T20 |
| 14:00 | UHS U13B | Gill U13B | Gill Primary (away) | T20 |
The first few weeks of Grade 8 can be overwhelming, exciting, daunting and ‘cool’ all at once!
In Arts and Culture, the Grade 8s studied graffiti and lettering and then had to choose a word which best described their first few weeks at Union.
They worked really hard and produced magnificent results!
The role of the School Governing Body is critical to developing and sustaining a fully functioning school, we, therefore, appeal to parents to support this meeting.
It was the Grade 10s turn on Wednesday morning, 12 February, to try and best the other grades in the ‘Love Sandwiches’ project recently initiated by the school’s Interact Club.
[This ongoing project sees the learners of the respective grades at Union compete to see who can make the most sandwiches in aid of this initiative.]
Armed with all their sandwich-making supplies, the three Grade 10 classes, led by their class teachers Miss Jacqui Jones, Mr Erwin Ittershagen-Strauss and Mrs Bronwen Langmead, managed to set a new record – a whopping 487 sandwiches!
The sandwiches were delivered later on that afternoon to the Midlands Hospital, the CMR and the soup kitchen at the East Street Congregational Church.
On Tuesday afternoon, 11 February, the Union High School pool witnessed a very exciting Interhouse Swimming Gala that contained an abundance of enthusiasm, physical effort and polished swimming strokes.
This was the first gala hosted by Union in the school’s swimming pool since it was revamped last year and the Houses rallied their swimmers for this long-standing friendly competition between Daly and Arnott.
While all the races were closely contested, a dedicated team of timekeepers stood poised with their stopwatches at one end of the pool, with house supporters and teams cheering enthusiastically from the sides.
As ever, the relays generated huge excitement – speed and lots of noise were evident as every position and point became vital towards the overall scores.
In the end there could only be one winner and it was Arnott House! They beat Daly House to the title with a strong 563 points in total compared to Daly House’s 389 points.
Congratulations Team Arnott!
A big well done goes to all those who swam!
On Thursday afternoon, 6 February, Union educators Mmes Helane Keyser, Kiki Nell, Hanli Rose-Innes and Jenny Street attended a training session hosted by the SAOU in Graaff-Reinet, themed ‘Barriers to Learning in the Inclusive Classroom’.
During this training session particular attention was given to the following most common barriers to learning that manifests itself in classrooms: ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, autism and auditory processing disorder (APD).
Particular focus was placed on strategies to support learners with these barriers in the inclusive classroom.
On Monday afternoon, 10 February, Union’s Top 6 junior boys and girls tennis players travelled to Cradock for what turned out to be a very enjoyable afternoon of tennis against Cradock Primary School.
Matthew Paxton and Peter-Daniel Clegg were certainly Union’s top performers, winning their singles as well as their doubles matches on the day.
Tara Ferreira, Grace Kemp and Mecoli Vorster are also to be congratulated on winning their singles.
Grade 8 learners at Union High School had the privilege today of becoming recipients of Gideons Bibles.
The learners were honoured with the Bibles early this morning, Tuesday, 11 February, when Mr Johan Botha and his wife, René, representatives of The Gideons International in South Africa visited the school.
The continuing importance of technology and pervasiveness in our lives require a lot of people with coding skills. Through a special coding club, Union’s learners are not only being taught how to use technology, but also to understand the science behind it.
The Coding Club is a special extra-mural activity initiated by Mr Kallie Venter, an Old Unionite himself, aimed at engaging learners in Computer Science, and allowing them to gain a practical understanding of basic coding.
The Coding Club was started towards the end of 2018, when Mr Venter had the idea of providing the school with a new digital clock for rugby matches.
But, Mr Venter not only wanted to construct the clock for the school, he also wanted to share the knowledge required to build and programme the clock with the learners of the school.
The construction and completion of this project (which can now be seen next to Union’s Puttick Field) has created an enthusiastic group of tech-savvy learners who are all eager to learn more about coding and building devices using the Raspberry Pi.
Meetings are held on Tuesday evenings where learners continue to work on various projects.
The Club’s current project is a robot that will have an array of functions ranging from driving, shooting a water pistol and perhaps even confetti. All this will be determined by the ability of the learners, their dedication, as well as their imagination.
In addition to the practical skills the learners are acquiring while building the various devices, the learners are also beginning to understand the basics of web designing and programming as each device is being programmed to work off a mobile phone or tablet, once it has connected to the web page designed by the learners.
The benefits of learning coding at a young age are enormous and include the development of problem-solving skills, computational thinking, persistence, collaboration, and a deeper understanding of a range of mathematical concepts and language.
Union is exceedingly grateful to Mr Venter, assisted by Mr JP Kruger, for steering this initiative and providing our learners with this very valuable opportunity!
This past weekend, nine dedicated members of the Union Schools’ staff attended a World Rugby Level 2 coaching course.
The course was presented by Mr Anthony Heugh (World Rugby Coaching Educator) and was facilitated at Union High School over the course of two days.
The course was aimed at enhancing the participants’ coaching capability and technical knowledge.
The weekend’s activities included board sessions, theory work, video analysis and practical sessions with the school’s 1st XV squad.
The coaches will complete the second part of the course in May, the successful completion of which will see them earn their World Rugby Level 2 qualification.