Blog week ending 26th April

We continue to broaden horizons beyond the classroom with a wide-ranging and ambitious enrichment programme during the summer term. We are delighted that over one hundred students will be embarking on their Duke of Edinburgh expedition this term and they are excited to experience the beauty of the Kent countryside, working as part of a team in unfamiliar surroundings. Similarly, as the summer term progresses our students will be visiting Dover Castle and Wildwood and conducting various Work Experience placements. As we reach the summer term, the school looks forward to STEAM and Sports Week, both of which will provide many opportunities for students to challenge themselves and work creatively with their peers. As always, the entire community is grateful to the staff who go above and beyond, often after the school day finishes, to ensure that these opportunities are available to our students.

Our students were gifted sweets by a grateful member of our local community who was keen to recognise the efforts of our student litter pickers.  The students were extremely delighted with the unexpected treat!  Today, as with every Friday, our students will litter pick green spaces and roads around our school and continue to play an active role in the support and enhancement of our local area.  Another community initiative, our Community Afternoon Teas for retired and semi-retired locals are proving extremely popular, the next is scheduled for 15^th July – Please email in (office@wgsb.co.uk) or phone (01322 223090) to secure a place.

Miss Holledge, Head of Performing Arts, accompanied Year 8 on a trip into London to see Back to the Future.  This thrilling production captured the essence of the 80’s blockbuster film serving up a show of great musical numbers, comedy and action-packed sets!  A brilliant trip that highlights their work in the classroom, inspiring and entertaining in equal measure. The students absolutely loved it! 

The WG6 12 Mandarin elective students attended a university fair a couple of weeks ago. There were many universities there who have Chinese or Chinese related programmes, including Cambridge University, Durham University, Cardiff University, Leeds University etc. Students found the information very inspiring and useful. 

Introducing teacher of Maths, Miss O’Dwyer.  Miss O’Dwyer completed a Mathematics Degree at Exeter University before finalising her teacher training qualifications and first year training with us at WGSB.  “Having done my final training here I am already familiar with our school, it’s community and opportunities for personal development, for both students and staff! I am passionate about helping develop students’ problem-solving skills through mathematics and look forward to helping students to be creative within the subject.”

In the below photos Miss O’Dwyer’s Year 10 students are completing their “Do Now” task.  These activities are short warm-up tasks at the beginning of all lessons designed to create immediate engagement and transition to a subject and specific objective of the lesson.

 

Year 11 Masterclass.  Each core subject is running tailored exam preparation sessions which work in conjunction with lunchtime and after school revision groups.  In the below photo, Miss Horsley, supported by teachers across the department, gave clear, concise tuition demonstrating how to gain maximum marks across different exam question styles and topics.  The interactive session challenged students with questions on key revision areas and encouraged students to take advantage of the numerous specialist staff in attendance to support or clarify where needed.  To view the accompanying resource and questions provided please click here.  Additionally, Miss Tame has uploaded the full presentation to the students’ Year 11 Life Skills Teams Group (includes answers to booklet)

Forthcoming Masterclasses – RS 26^th April & Maths 30^th April

Year 7 Design and Technology students have started work on a new design project to make a passive amplifier, which is a ‘speaker’ for a mobile device that amplifies the sound but contains no electrical components.  This project incorporates computer programming as students will design the face and dock of their speaker using the software programme Techsoft.

Year 8 Food and Nutrition students baked divine fresh raspberry and white chocolate muffins this week, and I can personally vouch for just how delicious they tasted!  Students considered the science of baking such as caramelisation (browning of sugar) and dextrinisation (browning of starch) when heat is applied during the cooking stage as well as enhance the overall appearance and aroma.  If you or your son/daughter would like to make a batch of muffins please click here for Mrs Cross’ recipe.

The Year 10 GCSE Food Preparation group had a visit from fish monger (from www.rockpoolfish.com in Blackheath) who demonstrated how to fillet a flat and round fish to develop their practical and theory knowledge. Students were then shown how to prepare prawns by de heading, shelling and de veining. Each student then followed the instructions and fried the prawns in garlic and sweet chilli sauce... the students got stuck in and thoroughly enjoyed eating their creations!  Students were then shown how to fillet sardines and under the watch full eye of the expert successfully carried out the tricky task themselves and presented their filleted fish on a bed of salad and toast. I was incredibly proud of how the students approached the task to develop their skills and confidence during this lesson, just look at the creations they made!  At the end of the lesson they watched Kevin prepare and cook mussels which they also sampled!

Year 7 & 8 students took part in the UK Maths Trust Junior Challenge this week, pitting their knowledge against schools nationwide.  The competition questions encourage mathematical reasoning, precision of thought and fluency to make students think.  Our participation in the Challenge forms part of our ongoing commitment to engage and advance our students in the study of maths.

To give you a feel for the test .. try your hand at the below sample questions (answers at the bottom of this Blog!);

WG6 Year 13 A level Physics students were investigating factors affecting simple harmonic motion using the oscillation of a swinging pendulum. Others were determining frequency and amplitude of a wave using an oscilloscope. Both experiments go towards the Practical Endorsement for the GCE A-Level. Students are required to demonstrate competence in a variety of skills, apparatus, and techniques which they cover as part of their two year course.

Mr Pope hosted board games and rowing races as this week’s Inter-House activities.  Next week students from across the school will be taking part in team relays and the 250m rowing challenge .  Our latest House Point total have Brunel leading by 126pts (576), 2^nd is Stevenson with 450pts, 3^rd is Hawking with 442pts, 4^th is Darwin with 410pts, 5^th is Newton with 380pts and 6^th is Telford with 350pts.  .. plenty of time over this and next term to earn more points for your House!

Sporting achievement update from Mr Lynch, Head of PE.  Huge congratulations to Trejan of Year 9 on his latest sporting achieving – report from Trejan “This race took place on the 20th of April and it was the race walk nationals 3km.  With me, supporting from the sides, was my father, little brother and race walk coach Shawn. We arrived only a few minutes before the race was about to begin but luckily for us they let me race, unfortunately I had no time to warm up beforehand.  I managed to place second with a time of 19:10, which for me was a personal record and , as I would soon find out after the race, was a club record for my athletics  club, Blackheath and Bromley.

Well done to Year 7 Jack O who represented Kent in the inter-counties squash final in Sheffield. Jack and his team played Lancashire first and Jack won his match and the rest of the team won theirs too. The second set of matches were against South Hampshire. The boys won the match 3-2. They qualified for the final against Warwickshire, it was right at the end of the day and the boys were tired and had some injuries. The boys put in a sterling performance to finish second overall in the plate final.

Please join me in congratulating Jordan A of Year 11 who has just been selected by British Gymnastics to represent Great Britain at the European Junior TeamGym Championships being held in Baku (Azerbaijan).  We are all aware of Jordan’s hard work and dedication to earn his GB place. I have been Jordan’s form tutor as well as his PE teacher for the last 5 years and couldn’t be prouder of him.  Reaching this standard has taken a huge sacrifice and he has had to balance his schoolwork with a very heavy training schedule.  All the hard work and dedication has been worth it with this amazing achievement. As a department and school, we wish him well in the Championships as well as his GCSE exams. (Jordan is pictured left).

Congratulations to Mrs Deicher who ran the London Marathon in support of Dementia UK, if you are able, and would like to support Mrs Deicher, and the work of Dementia UK please click here

Additionally, Miss Sweeney ran the London Landmarks Half Marathon in support of the NSPCC (click here for Miss Sweeney's Just Giving page) – both Miss Sweeney and Mrs Deicher doing so much for charities meaningful to them and their families.

PTA Update: We have had such a fantastic year so far with fundraising events and all money raised is given back to the school for various projects. 

A new project which we have been asked to support is to look to replace the gym equipment and to completely re vamp the room with a modern and updated look.  The school would not be able to do such projects without your support and we would like to thank everyone who does assist with our fundraising activities. 

Match funding Plea.  Matched giving is when an organisation (normally a company) matches the amount of fundraising an employee does for a charity and, as a registered charity, the PTA would love your help!

A huge amount of companies offer matched giving, such as Boots, Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays, Tesco, Sainsbury's and WHSmith. If you are not sure if your employer offers this don't hesitate to ask them.

For example, as we £1000 at an event, if this event was matched by a company, depending on their maximum amount we could potentially get another £1000 with little to no effort.  We have already had generous offers from a few of our parents and carers who can help in this way and there are a few ideas in the pipeline.. All that is needed is a little of your time (even an hour) at an event we hold or some help to organise it. 

Usually, a form from the employer is needed to be filled out with your details, the school’s details and a description of what happened and what was raised. We can write a letter from the PTA to confirm this and that’s it.

Please don’t hesitate to ask us if you have any questions at all.  Below, a list of some of the employers that support matched giving, please check with your employer if not on the list as they may do it also.

Events: We held our best ever Krispy Kreme and samosa sale at the end of last term, we raised over £608.80 (pictures attached of the event) Miss Price also held another fantastic afternoon tea for local residents which is just getting bigger and better, this raised a fantastic amount of £303.80.

We held our pizza making event on Tuesday of this week at Enzo’s in Sidcup which allowed some of the parents to get to know each other and the kids had a fun time making pizzas.  This was a great event which made money for the PTA but also a great social event which we would love to repeat again.

Summer Fair: 13^th July 11am – 2pm. We will be holding our annual summer fair with barbecue, stalls, entertainment, and games. We also hope to have the assault course that was such a success last year.  If you know anyone that would like to have a stall at the event please ask them to get in touch with us.  We are also asking for extra help on the day especially for the assault course, if you or anyone would be able to assist the PE department for this fantastic event for the children please do drop us an email on pta@wgsb.co.uk.

Winners of the PTA lottery: We are pleased to announce that the winners of the PTA lottery who have all been notified:

December- Shreyas N Y7 Darwin

January - Anton N Y7 Stevenson 

February – Mrs Wisdom – staff

 

Forthcoming Dates;

Year 10 Parents’ Evening – 1^st May

DofE Bronze Exhibition – 4^th - 5^th May

Year 13s Last Day – 3^rd May

Year 11 Last Day – 7^th May

GCSE & A Level Public Exams start – 9^th May (finish 26th June)

Year 12 Geography Field Trip – 20^th – 23^rd May

Year 12 Mock Grades home – 24^th May

First Day of Term 6 – 3^rd June

 

Best wishes,

Stuart Harrington

Head Teacher

*Maths answers – first question, D – (13).  Second question, B (1)