Drama

Drama at Sponne is a vibrant, colourful and swiftly growing department with a recognition for excellence that extends beyond the school to both county and national level. Drama is offered at all key stages and in addition to the thriving GCSE Drama and A-Level Theatre Studies courses on offer at Sponne, students have the opportunity to engage in a number of extracurricular activities and programmes.

We run Drama Club weekly at the school which attracts a wide variety of students who simply enjoy the community drama creates and have fun developing and creating theatre.

We run the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art acting exam syllabus at Sponne for students who wish to take their acting to a higher level. This extremely popular programme caters to a wide range of talented students and we are proud to have one of the most successful private centres in the County.

But Drama at Sponne is probably best known for our shows, and in particular our Musicals in close collaboration with the Music and Art departments. We are extremely proud of the professionalism and level these productions achieve.

Regardless of your experience or confidence, Drama at Sponne provides an environment in which you can explore, have fun and thrive.

Art

The Art department is a very busy, popular and successful department. We have many students who take the subject at GCSE and A Level achieving excellent grades.

We are also a popular subject for students who attend our very busy after school Art Clubs on a weekly basis. We hold one showcase art exhibition a year that includes all Y11 and Y13 Art students work.This work can be viewed on the school website ‘Showcase page’. We also do yearly visits to galleries in London and Milton Keynes, plus go and do workshops at Compton Verney Gallery Warkwickshire.

Our students not only work on large canvasses, but also have the opportunity to work with clay. We run a popular A Level Photography course. Each student learns how to develop and produce black and white photographs in one of our three darkrooms as well as digital photography.

A lot of our students go on to study an Art course at university and have successful careers.

Music

Music has a very high profile in school, the wider community, locally in Northamptonshire, nationally through our involvement in prestigious events such as the National Festival of Music for Youth and even internationally through our bi-annual tours overseas. The Music department has an extensive enhancement programme including a brass band,2 concert bands, 2 string ensembles, 2 choirs, 4 jazz groups, a jazz orchestra and an award winning Renaissance ensemble called Sponnaissance.

In addition, the faculty has put on several productions in recent years including ‘West Side Story’, ‘Brassed Off’, ‘Return to The Forbidden Planet’, ‘Les Miserables’ and most recently 'Beauty and The Beast'. The Sponne School Brass Band and Sponnaissance have both performed in the Royal Albert Hall in the National Festival of Music for Youth School Proms. The groups have also participated in the Finals of the National Festival of Music for Youth on numerous occasions, performing in the Birmingham Symphony Hall and Town Hall.
Results at both GCSE and A level music are outstanding with many students having gone on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music, Oxford University, Royal Welsh College of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire and Trinity College of Music.

MFL

In the MFL department, all students will learn both French and German in both Yr 7 and Yr 8. On an annual rotating basis, students in Yr 7 will either have 2 lessons per fortnight of one language and 3 lessons per fortnight of the other language. The students in Yr 7 in the school year 2019 to 2020 will be doing 3 lessons of FRENCH per fortnight and 2 of German. All students do 3 lessons per fortnight of both languages in Yr 8.

As Key Stage 4 runs across 3 years, options take place at the end of Year 8, and pupils can choose to continue to GCSE with either of the languages they have done since Year 7, both or neither.

We follow the Edexcel GCSE course and this looks at the topics of school, holidays, freetime, home life, the family, the local area, the world of work, the Environment and the International world. The course exams the 4 skills required - reading, listening, writing and speaking - all of which are weighted at 25%.

The department organises regular educational visits to both Germany and France. In the coming year, for example, there will be a Yr 10 visit to Cologne just before Christmas and a Yr 8 visit to the Rhineland in the summer term.

We offer both languages at A level, where the study is much more focussed on the society and culture of the respective country and many students go on to study a language as a whole or part of their degree studies.

French Curriculum Overview

German Curriculum Overview