As you know we regularly feature excellent work from students on my weekly Head’s Blog.
This provides an opportunity to promote excellence, give students’ learning a wider audience and allow all our families to see what learning takes place in the school.
Throughout the lockdown period we continued to provide a broad and balanced curriculum offer and a good example of this would be the PSHEE offer.
Ms Moreton has agreed to continue sharing the PSHEE activities in the Head’s Blog each week so that families can talk about the issues raised with their child or children.
We will also regularly share our theme of the week and our whole school assembly slides with you.
Excellent Work
Year 7 Science
Dr Colvile says that students in 7P have not only continued photographing the moon at various phases since learning about it before Christmas, but are also exchanging technical details on Classroom to learn how to improve the quality of their images.
He has captured this screenshot for us to see. Well done Luke and Agsheyan.
Sports Update
This week saw the finals of the house football competition. Results in so far include the Year 9 and Year 10 finals.
Congratulations to Campbell who beat the Edison team 5 - 3 in the Year 9 final.
Well done also to Edison who won the Year 10 competition by beating Winstanley 1 - 0 in the final.
Mr Strang confirmed that the only goal of the game was scored by Daniel Percy.
PSHEE Activities
It has been a very busy week for tutorials as Year 7 - 10 students all had two full lessons as there was no assembly on Wednesday.
Following lockdown Year 7 students have finally had a chance to begin their Emotional Logic sequence of learning, with sessions one and two led by their tutors this week. Session one helped them to identify feelings and emotions, understand what these mean, and learn breathing technique, while session two shows them how to understand the concept of a safe place, and having somewhere to plan.
Emotional Logic helps students to learn an effective sequence to allow them to move on from challenges, identify and name emotions arising from a situation, move to a safe place and then plan and carry out effective actions. Sessions will continue during the summer term.
Year 8 students on Wednesday carried out a mathematical lesson based around the census which hopefully you all completed on Sunday evening! They had to use statistics from a fictional census to calculate and plan for progress, for example looking at birth registration data and then working out how many new primary schools need to be built.
This morning, in advance of National Autism Week next week, Year 8 learned about autism, and also how they could help people with autism cope either in school or out.
Year 9 students had an opportunity on Wednesday to catch up with their Employer Challenge groups, as they had only been able to work individually during lockdown. Groups will have two sessions after Easter to complete their design ideas and film a presentation for either Babcock, Princess Yachts or Bailey Partnership, and the companies will then give them feedback on their work.
Their lesson today was completely different, looking at Parliament and Democracy. There was a choice of activities learning about the Houses of Commons and Lords, the role of an MP, and how laws are made. Quite apt with all the protests that are currently in the news!
Year 10 students had two more sessions working on their EtonX course on Making an Impact. Those that began it last week are finding it interesting and worthwhile - this course, like the Year 11 one below, normally costs £40, and if completed gives a certificate of achievement.
Year 11 students mainly concentrated on revision this week, as they had exam style assessments in most of their lessons. These, along with further assessment in the next few weeks (continuing after Easter) will allow teachers to submit an accurate and appropriate grade for the GCSE qualifications. They have all been told by their subject teachers exactly what will be assessed in each test to aid their revision plans.
Next week will be the House celebration assemblies on Wednesday, but tutors will also be sharing some important drug-related information we have received from SHARP regarding the prevalence of cannabis sweets in the SW region, and of course Friday is Good Friday so we will be commencing our Easter break.
It has been a short but very busy time back in school, and hopefully after the break we can begin to take the next steps towards returning to normality (and of course, showing off our haircuts!)
Have a pleasant break all.
Ms Moreton
Plymotion Newsletter
I’m happy to share with you the latest newsletter from Plymouth City Council’s Plymotion schools team who work with schools across Plymouth to help reduce car traffic on the school run, make the roads around schools safer, and get more people walking, cycling and scooting to school.
This newsletter gives some highlights of what the team has been up to over the winter, news on future events and updates from the wider sustainable transport and road safety teams.