The Juniors had an action-packed Christmas Party consisting of five stations to visit including cricket, football, basketball and table tennis with a food, craft and lucky dip stop. The boys were also treated to a visit from Dame Ammonia Goodbody who took time out of her busy schedule in Sleeping Beauty at Southport Little Theatre to wish us all a Merry Christmas.
The Gifted & Talented Art boys have been busily baking and decorating stained glass cookies to hang on the Merchant Taylors’ Christmas tree at St Faith’s Church Christmas Tree Festival this year.
The tree is decorated with our handmade cookies as well as baubles from The Walton Centre…I think you’ll agree it looks lovely! The tree will be on display at St Faith’s for the next week – so why not pop in and have a look?
Congratulations to our Geography Team
A huge congratulations to our Gifted and Talented Geographers, Jonathan Corner, George Johnston, Thomas Cunliffe and Hemanth Bheemireddy who were awarded 1st Place winning their first ever Geography Competition.
On Tuesday 1st December, the boys entered their first local Inter Schools World Geography Competition held at MTGS. Rounds included Which City? Geography in the News, Flags, Geography of Sport, OS Maps and a Countryfile section based in the UK. The team made a tremendous start scoring full marks in the first round Which City? The boys showed superb Geographical knowledge and worked extremely hard as a team. The boys were presented with an Atlas each and a “Geography Rocks” badge as well as a Maps book for our Junior School Library. Well done boys!
Grandparents and relatives who experienced the Second World War were invited to join us for afternoon tea in the Junior School Hall. The Year 6 boys interviewed our guests about their experiences as part of the Y6 History topic and learned a lot from what they were told. Sincere thanks go to Charles’ and Adam’s families for joining us.
Charles Atwell
Adam Curd
Jon Mayhew visit to MTS Library
Wednesday 25th November 2015
Although he confessed to not being a keen reader as a child, author Jon Mayhew began with the message to our pupils, delightful to librarians, that reading is good for the brain, and improves many personal qualities like empathy. As a boy, he took a dislike to reading after sampling The Five and a Half Club, one of the titles on the school syllabus, and left primary school without attaining the momentous status of a ‘free reader’. However, his appreciation of comics kept him reading, and selling some of this valuable collection paid his way through university. At the time he didn’t consider comics to count as reading but now insists (quite rightly) that graphic novels and comics are just as worthwhile as other fiction.
Although he has a special love for his first novel, Mortlock, which has sold all over the world, his favourite book is always the one he is working on. Ideas for plots come from many sources (including traditional ballads, like The Twa Corbies), but Jon always makes sure he writes them down. He starts a book by writing a few chapters to give him an idea of the characters and the plot. He then does a rough draft for his wife to read, then second version which he asks another author to check. The final manuscript is sent to his editor. Even after this, it is at least a year before the book is published, by which time he has started his next project.
Boys from Years 7 and 8, and a large group of Junior Boys, enjoyed his visit, and are now big fans of his books. Jon also gave advice to some creative writers in Year 10, so perhaps in a few years we’ll welcome them back as published authors!
There has been some fantastic news for Rhys Davies (Year 6) who has been selected to play Table Tennis for Lancashire on the 28th November. He will also play matches against Durham and Lincolnshire on the same day. Rhys will be part of a team of five (three boys and two girls) in this junior competition which consists of players under the age of 18. As Rhys has only just turned 11 and is still in primary school this is a major achievement particularly as players qualify through trials where all the best players in Lancashire (and for this purpose, Cumbria) play against one other to produce a county ranking. Two teams are then selected purely in accordance with this ranking – Rhys is in the second team and is the No.2 player.
Further to this Rhys won a big tournament – the Blackpool 2* Under 13s which attracts some of the best players from the Northern half of the country. In the final Rhys beat a fellow England International, Tom Rayner (Durham) in a titanic five set battle. They had a similar match earlier in the day in the Under 15 category where Rhys won by the same score line in the last 16. Rhys then beat the 4th seed, Kieran Wardell (Durham also) in another thrilling five set match before finally losing to the 2nd seed in the semi-final. Needless to say he exceeded expectations having never beaten Tom or Kieran previously.
This was a day after representing Southport in the Lancashire and Cheshire (Under 18) League where the team ended with wins against Manchester (4-2) & Preston (5-1) before progressing to a hard-fought draw against Warrington (3-3) with Rhys personally winning 4 of his 6 matches. The final day of this event will take place in January with Southport still in close contention as one of only 2 unbeaten teams.
Most recently, Rhys teamed up with his older brother Max and Year 7 brothers twins Nick and Chris Moustaka to win the Merseyside schools’ team competition on Saturday. They beat teams from Formby High 6-2, Caldy Grange Grammar School 8-0 before beating Range High in the final 6-2. They will now go on to represent Merseyside at the Zone finals in Blackburn at the end of January.
Years 5 & 6 enjoyed taking part in an interactive workshop about Macbeth. The workshop was run by actors from the Young Shakespeare Company, and the boys were keen to demonstrate their knowledge by answering various questions about the play, as well as dressing up and contributing to the performance itself. A valuable and enjoyable morning for all involved.
Mr O’Shaughnessy
On Thursday 5th November the brains of the Junior School assembled in the Williams Hall to compete against 14 other schools from the North West in the International Literary Quiz ‘Kids Lit’. As this was an Under 13 years event most of the other teams contained pupils from Years 7 and 8 but our lads were completely undaunted. They displayed an impressively wide range of knowledge about all things bookish from Dr Seuss to Shakespeare. On their ‘joker’ round (The Classics) the boys achieved a remarkable 8/10 score, doubled up to 16 points. Later on in the competition Jonathan Corner – the youngest member (Y5) – earned the team a book each as they won that round in a tie break question against Kings’ School Macclesfield.
Unfortunately we did not do quite well enough to go on to the next round which will be held in Oxford or the finals in New Zealand, but the team can be proud of itself and actually scored more points the the Boys’ Year 8 team! (68.5/110)
Well done to: Thomas Cunliffe, Alex D’Arcy, George Johnston and Jonathan Corner. They all enjoyed themselves thoroughly and represented the Junior School with distinction.
The schools competing were:
West Kirby Grammar
Wirral Grammar School for Girls
Liverpool College
Kings School,Chester
Kings School,Macclesfield
Merchant Taylors’ Boys’ School
Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School
Merchant Taylors’ Primary School
Merchant Taylors’ Junior Boys’ School
The Belvedere Academy
St Patrick’s RC High
Ellesmere Park High
plus a team of four Childrens’ Authors
If you’re having trouble viewing the slideshow below, please click here to view it on our Facebook page
“To Answer Duty’s Call”
731 young men from Merchant Taylors’ Crosby fought in World War 1, and 155 never returned – a death rate of some 21.2 percent and one of the highest mortality rates of any school in the war. The youngest Old Crosbeian to die was 18 years old, the oldest 45. The average age of those who did not return was 26.
In this important centenary year of our Joint Schools’ Combined Cadet Force our school archivist, Mr Trevor Hildrey, has painstakingly gathered information to honour the contribution and sacrifice of the 155, and of their loved ones. These accounts give us a moving and powerful insight into their lives, and help us to personalise the loss of each individual, when casualty figures are usually expressed in their thousands.
The title of this volume is familiar to many present and past pupils, staff and parents. It is a line from the second verse of the school song; all the boys whose biographies are included in the book will have sung this song on speech days, at concerts and other gatherings.
We have been delighted to present each current pupil, member of staff and those in the wider school community across all four schools their own copy of this interesting and important book which has been written to honour the contribution and sacrifice of our fallen Old Boys. Our grateful thanks go to Trevor Hildrey for enabling us to allow us to see the people behind the list of names on the war memorial in the School library. We would also like to thank the Old Boys’ Association for co-funding the cost of the book.
David Cook
Remembrance Memorial at MTBS Library
Author Trevor Hildrey