Thoughtful Thursday: Assessment information snapshots

By Martin Said3rd November 2022

In crew this morning students have been looking at their new assessment information snapshots.

For G29 this snapshot includes their attendance and HoWLS (habits of work and learning) for each subject area.

Students do review their HoWLs weekly in Crew, and discuss HoWLs in every session but this is the first time students have been given a formal summative assessments of HoWLs from their teachers.

These snapshots will be shared with families too once students have reviewed the information and made pledges which focus on how they intend to improve their learning.

For G28 the new snapshots include updated information on their attendance, HoWLs and academic progress. Likewise these will be shared with families as soon as students have updated their pledges.

In January all students will be given further updated information on their attendance, HoWLs and academic progress. These will be shared through Student-Led Conferences – where your children will present to you about their progress with their portfolio of work as evidence.

 

Parents’ Update – W/C Monday 31st October 2022

By Julie Mosley30th October 2022

Dear Parents/Carers

Welcome back after what I hope has been a restful and safe half term holiday.

We are looking forward to seeing all of our students again, raring to go and ready to continue their hard work on current expeditions.

G28 students are continuing with their Being Human, exploring the guiding question ‘What does it mean to be Human?’. Last term in Case Study 1 they looked at what it means to be human from an anatomical perspective in science and art through drawings and dissections and also from a theological perspective looking at beliefs about the importance of humans and the sanctity of life. In their second case study they will be looking in more depth at our shared humanity, and mistakes of the past such as slavery held up against the genetic evidence of just how similar we all are, regardless of ethnicity – and yet how such a small difference in our DNA gives rise to such wonderful diversity.

Our students continue to work with some amazing experts and none more so than Sister Josepha Matthews who spent the final morning of last term with G28 discussing how her beliefs and the teachings of her catholic faith have informed the way that she has lived her life and her opinion on what it means to be human. Our students were full of admiration for Sister Josepha and the great work that she has done in service to her community and to those in need around the world.

Tyler from Crew Stanton said to Sister Josepha: “You must be very proud of the life you’ve led and the lovely things you do for people. You are inspiring.” which sums up just what an incredible and compassionate life that Sister Josepha has led as a practising nun and headteacher in Walker.

It was fantastic to hear our students share their thoughts and appreciations in our final community meeting. She commented on how thoughtful and mature our students were and the eloquence of their questions and discussion. 

Our G29 students are also continuing in their expedition,  ‘From the Ground Up’ with the guiding question ‘What do the communities of North East England owe to the miners?’. 

Last term in Case Study 1 students learned about the industrial revolution and how we began to harness the properties of matter on a massive scale. We kicked off Case Study 2 in our final week of last half-term with some fieldwork to Marsden and Whitburn – this gave students important insights and background knowledge to help them to study the growth and decline of Whitburn Colliery as a practice historical enquiry in readiness for writing about Northumberland pits for their final product. Students are also going on to study the rock cycle and how Britain came to be a place of mineral wealth, and the associated challenges with taking coal from the strata beneath our feet.

In the coming weeks G29 will also start to interview experts from the Northumberland mining community, with a particular focus on the 1984 miners’ strike.

This week: 

Getting organised

Daily kit list – As always, students need to bring a school bag with:

  • A filled water bottle
  • Pencil case including: pens, pencils, ruler, eraser and pencil sharpener
  • A fully charged iPad 
  • Headphones – ideally not expensive ones
  • A healthy snack for break (no confectionery (sweets), fizzy drinks or energy drinks, nut products)
  • A notebook
  • A reading book (e-reader book, school library book or book from home)

PE sessions

As usual G28 students (Y8) will need a PE kit for Tuesday, G29 students (Y7) will need a PE kit on Wednesday.

Extended Study and Clubs

Our clubs will all run this week (see schedule below) along with extended study sessions every day except Friday. If a student attends an after school club or extended study session they must attend the full sessions until 4:30pm.

Thank you as always for your ongoing support. 

As usual if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your children’s crew leader in the first instance.

Julie Mosley

Co-Principal

Hermoso trabajo en Español – Beautiful work in Spanish

By Emily Quested27th October 2022

G28 students have written letters which summarise many of the topics that they have learned in Spanish since the start of Year 7.

To help them to memorise their extensive vocabulary they created mind maps, and then wrote to their pen pals to tell them about themselves.

You can hear some of their beautiful final recordings by clicking here too.

Muy impresionante trabajo G28!

Year 6 Open Evening and Admissions for Sep 2023

By Martin Said20th October 2022

We have put together an Open Evening Website with additional information and videos to accompany our in-person events held last week. This site has been set up to support families with children in Year 6 in making a decision on their choice of secondary school for September 2023.

The Open Evening Website can now be accessed by clicking here.

We have also updated the frequently asked questions section of our website to address the great questions we received on those evenings. We hope that you find the information here useful in helping you to make your decision.

Year 6 Open Evening – UPDATE FOR FAMILIES

By Julie Mosley14th October 2022

We would like to pass on our appreciation to all of the families that came to our events these last two evenings. Over the two evenings we were visited by over 300 people. Our students led the events with presentations on important aspects of our model, as ambassadors taking visitors on tour and answering questions about their school.

We are so proud of the way that our students demonstrated how they can lead their learning with over half of our students involved in the event.

Again thanks to all of the families that attended as this gave our existing students another opportunity to learn that there is ‘more in them than they know’.

We are sorry that given our temporary accommodation we were not able to host more families across the two nights. A reminder that we will be posting a series of associated videos and answering questions from the evening on our website next week.