Sampled project

5th February 2020Mr T Gava

Sampled project

Students from year 7 to 10 were invited to participate in Sadler’s Wells’ Sampled. This was a hip-hop workshop and a trip to see the performance of some of the associate Dance Companies at Sadler‘s Wells on Friday afternoon. The hip-hop workshop was taught by Sunanda Biswas who has been teaching and dancing hip-hop the Lindy hop styles for many years.  Sunanda performed on the Greatest Dancer two weeks ago.

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On the trip, the students were exceptionally well behaved.’It was great’ said Tanisa, and Saffie added ‘that there was a variety of styles performed’

The Sampled performance was enjoyed by all.

‘I loved all the performances’ said Sameera Ali

‘The songs we danced to during the workshop such as ‘Rappers Delight’ and ‘Poison’ from ‘back in the day’ were fun and lively’ said Zara Shaikh

‘It was nice to see the contrast between the different dance styles in the performance’ added Kenyah Sandy

‘The dances inspired me to create my own dance’ said Junior Ducure  ‘And I got my photo taken with Geometrie Agents’

Winter Concert

29th January 2020Mr T Gava

Winter Concert

Well done to every one of the students who performed at the Winter Concert on the 22nd January. There was a great variety of music styles showcased – from rock to classical to jazz – and it was clear how much dedication and effort that had gone into preparing. Highlights included The Rainbow Boys performing a rousing rendition of ‘Stay with Me’, the senior choir performing a beautiful song written by our own Rosie McElroy, the Senior Orchestra wowing us with their professionalism and an epic massed performance of Bjork’s ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’

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Coming up….

  • MiSST Concert – Queen Elizabeth Hall, 23rd March 2020
  • Choir Battle – Brampton Academy, 26th March
  • Beethoven Project – Southbank Centre, 16th and 18th April 2020
  • Lister Arts Festival – Lister Community School, May 4th – May 7th 2020
  • Community Concert – Lister Community School, Wednesday 6th May 2020, 6pm
  • Newham Harmony Concert – Stratford Theatre, 1st July 2020
  • Radley Residential – Radley School, July 2020


Come and join in with us!
Community Choir – Lister Music department has set up a Community Choir which will be rehearsing weekly on Fridays from 3:30-4:30pm with Rosie Brown in the music department. It’s a lovely way to finish off the week so please pop by to join in. All welcome! Please email music@lister.newham.sch.uk to register your interest.

Follow Us:Follow our story on Twitter @listermusicdept

Students Shine at Public Speaking

24th January 2020Mr T Gava

Students Shine at Public Speaking 

Students from Lister Community School shone at the ESU Public Speaking Competition on Wednesday 22nd January. The team displayed fantastic confidence, eloquence and presented insightful and critical questions.

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Though Lister was not the team selected for the second round, they received incredibly high praise in what was a very competitive and high quality competition. Judges commented on the variety of case studies and examples used in our speech, the high levels of questions we posed both during the speeches and as an audience. Lister’s speech on ‘We are drowning in nostalgia’ also received commendation from the other schools and judges for being the most insightful in terms of thesis and explanation.
Well done to Foujia, Ledia and Het for all their hard work!
by Natasha Sivadasan

Year 7 and Year 8 Dance Workshop

22nd January 2020Mr T Gava

Year 7 and Year 8 Dance Workshop

Our young dancers had a fantastic time in a dance workshop with Josephine Tarquinio-Singh aka ‘Lil J’ from Pineapple Dance Studios.

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They were taught a whole group street dance to ‘Own It’ by Ed Sheehan, Stormzy and Burna Boy as chosen by Year 8 dancer, Karlia Rose. Some of the dancers will be performing this during Dance Episodes or the Dance Show.

We also hope to go and take class at Pineapple Studios soon too.

New Year, new art

16th January 2020Mr T Gava

New Year, new art

Our students continue to celebrate their creativity with some really special artwork.

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Awards and Fundraising

13th January 2020Mr T Gava

Awards and Fundraising

We ended the autumn term with a fantastic fundraising effort from our students and two assemblies celebrating a range of student achievements.

Students were asked to bring donations of money, toys and household items to help local charity Community Links to support families over the festive period. The students showed impressive levels of generosity and we were overwhelmed with donations for which Community Links were extremely grateful.

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The assemblies featured dance, drama and music performances and recognised a range of achievements – special congratulations go to all the winners of the House awards for Aiming for Excellence, Being Kind, Polite and Considerate and Taking Responsibility. It was an incredibly positive end to a great term.

The Witches

13th January 2020Mr T Gava

The Witches

The Drama department put on a brilliant production of Roald Dahl’s The Witches at the end of the Autumn term. It was terrifying, hilarious and moving – a great success. The audience was absolutely buzzing at the end of it. It was incredibly impressive to see how fully committed to their performances the students were – they really gave it their all and performed to an exceptionally high standard. Roald Dahl would have been proud to see his work presented with such dark humour and creativity. Well done to all those involved – the performers, backstage crew and staff.

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Dance Episodes 

18th December 2019Mr T Gava

Dance Episodes 

The invited audience were delighted by the lunchtime sharing of work produced in dance clubs this term. Dances included the Thursday after school Street Dance Crew choreographed by guest tutor Malachi and Bollywood choreographed by Veena the tutor and a guest appearance by Josh and Rhys our two Dance students from UEL who are starting a hip hop and break dance club next year. Even Ms Coke made a short appearance with some tap improvisation with Ella in Year 10.

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Come to Dance clubs to see if there’s a dance style for you, then we may see you in the next Dance Episodes

English National Ballet partnership

12th December 2019Mr T Gava

English National Ballet partnership

Year 9 GCSE Dance and some year 7 and 8s had a great workshop with members from the English National Ballet on Akram Khan’s Giselle.  The workshop leader was called Georgia and the dance technique was ballet and contemporary.  Some features of this dance are turn-out, tendu (pointed toes), straight backs and hand covering your face.  The new thing I learned was how to use ‘contact’ in dance.  We had to touch our partners and changed levels to show authority like the rich people in Giselle.  The movement I found difficult was the bourees because I hadn’t done these before.  I overcame this by stepping shorter distances.  The workshop made me understand Giselle better and appreciate the technique more.

The music for the workshop was awesome and was played live by a musician.  The instruments he used were a guitar, trumpet, panpipes, drums and vocals.

I enjoyed working with Georgia from ENB and the students from St Angela’s.

I loved the whole experience and look forward to watching Giselle at the Cinema in January.

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By Felicia Owusu (Year 9)

Mandarin Speaking Competition

9th December 2019Mr T Gava

Mandarin Speaking Competition

Rayan Kara from Year 9 took part in the British Council’s annual Mandarin Speaking
Competition on December 3rd. Now in its sixteenth year, the national competition aims to build interest in Chinese language and culture. This year, pupils from 88 secondary schools across the UK have competed in regional heats held in Belfast, Glasgow and London.

Rayan was really confident and fluent when he was doing his speech. He did his best and didn’t get nervous at all even though the other participants are older and have learnt Mandarin for longer. His pronunciation was great and clear, all the audiences were engaged, they all laughed when he was telling his interesting story in Chinese.  After the speech, the judge asked him some random questions and he got the right answer for every single question.

He has been learning Mandarin since November last year under Mandarin Excellence
Program and has made such big progress from last years. His parents are very supportive
and value his Mandarin achievement. They tried their best to help him to practice his speech
at home even though they don’t know any Mandarin.

This competition was a good chance for the students to increase confidence when using Mandarin and also it’s a good opportunity to put their language skills to use outside of a classroom setting.