A wonderfully festive & busy week with new student leaders

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TA New Head Boy and Head Girl

Pictured above are our new Head Boy, Matt Roberts and Head Girl, Jess Mitchell.  It was a great privilege to interview so many inspiring Year 12 students who want to contribute further to the life of the school and support their fellow students.  We also appointed our Deputy Head Boys and Girls.

Deputy Head Boys: James McDowall, Reagan King

Deputy Head Girls: Charlotte Povey, Lily O’Sullivan

We will be announcing the new House Captains and prefects in the New Year.

Christmas Concert

Our Christmas Concert is undoubtedly one of the highlights of my year.  It is a genuine joy to hear so many varied outstanding performances.  I received the following email from one of our parents today which I feels sums up the evening perfectly:

“Wow! The concert last night was truly amazing. The talent on that stage was mesmerising. We got quite emotional several times listening to the music and the various performances. I think it’s a testament to how the school regards music that the choir was such a strong and full one. Please pass on our thanks to your Music Department and everybody who was involved in such a successful evening.”

You can view all of the pictures from the evening on our Facebook page.

Carols on tour

Our wonderful choir spent Thursday singing at local old people’s home and in the reception at the hospital.  I have received many lovely comments from the many people who had the pleasure of listening to them.  The video is them singing Somewhere Only We Know at Torbay Hospital.

Carols on Tour also visited an independent living group in Paignton who were overwhelmed with the visit.  They said that the young people from Torquay Academy were outstanding and had brought tears to their eye’s.

Colours

Well done to the students named below for being awarded their Colours Badges in Sport and Performing Arts.  They were presented to students during our final assembly.

Sports Junior: Jack Howlett, Liam Poole, Charlie Tout, Finley Wood, Isaac Astbury, Freya Davies, Ellie Chammings, William Harrison, Harrison Clarke, William Green, Steve Fitzpatrick, Tommy Aldous

Sports Half : Ellie Mitchell, Taylor Ford, Kelsey Cresser, Ryley Steele, Will Makinson, Ryan Wilson, Siana Goddard, Ocean Latto, Georgia Davies, Emma Harrison, Olivia Foster, Charlie Moore, Kaytlyn Mortimer, Leah Harman, Oliver Taylor, Timmy Oleksy, Bradley Satterley, Ollie Westwood, Ethan Tanner, Alfie Gouldthorpe, Adam Nock, Charlie Runciman, Joshua Shuttleworth, Jenna Parker, Sonny Prior, Cory Allen

Performing Arts Junior: Robin Pightling, Ben German, Poppy Rogers, Aimee Evans, Emilie Cartwright-Lomax, William Harrison, Lorenzo De Paoli, Lottie Hodgson, Ellie Holloway, Milly Treleaven, Dan Maw, Lila-May Harrington, Kelsey Hawkings, Grace Cayford

Performing Arts Half: Oliver Cartwright-Lomax, George Swift, Jordan Wicks, Noah Johnson, Ethan Tanner, Robert Green, Alexander Corbett, Joe Hedworth, Olivia Davies, Thomas White, Silbury Peakman, Evie Billing
Silke Von Der Lieth, Ollie Mellitt, Alfie Sams, Luke Howard, Mya Edralin

New House Trophies

We wanted to present trophies to the winning houses in a number of different competitions.  Mr Hadley and a combination of his GCSE and A Level Product Design students offered to make some trophies.  I was blown away by them when they brought them up to my office on Thursday.  The quality of the design and craftsmanship is quite remarkable.  I am very grateful to all of the students for giving us such a wonderful legacy for years to come.

The following students were involved with the design and manufacture of each of the trophies:

Attendance: Kelan Stanners, Shannon Hayward

House points: Millie Ashby-Rosie, Juliette Loud

Effort: Dom Locke, Olivia Vickers, Jack Sherlow

Sports: Gracie Bradbury

Overall House Champions: Jacob Almond-Abraham, Callum Paton, Cycle Paton, Elias Rawles

Champion Houses

During the final assembly, I was able to hand out those amazing trophies.  Winning houses were given their trophies in four different categories: effort, house points, attendance and sport.  The final trophy was given the overall champion house.  The winning houses in each of the categories were:

Effort – Pengelly

House points – Brunel

Attendance – Kitson

Sport – Christie

Overall champion house – Christie

Celebration Assembly

In Y7 & 8 Assemblies this week, we have rounded the term off by celebrating the success of our students! Always a hit at Christmas, Mr Jones provided chocolate for a number of our brilliant students to acknowledge their effort, behaviour, attendance. Mr Jones has been extremely impressed with Key Stage 3 so far this year, with nearly 40,000 house points achieved this term! As always, we look to get even better so the assembly finished with setting some targets for the Spring Term

Christmas Mufti Day

We held a mufti day on Wednesday where students and staff brought in food items that will be donated to the local food bank.  We are very proud that we are able to make such a substantial donation to support individuals and families in our town.

Christmas Lunch

We also had our Christmas lunch on Wednesday.  Staff and students alike enjoyed the lunch cooked by our great team.  I enjoyed my annual shift behind the counter – I was allowed to be in charge of potatoes and parsnips this year!

Charity Swim in memory of Charlotte

I have pleasure in announcing Ben Tolman’s final total for his charity swim in memory of Charlotte. Ben swam 2.1 miles, from Torquay – Paignton to help raise awareness for The Brain Tumour Charity. He has raised £656.25. We are all so very proud of him.

Enterprise Learning Area

Highlights from the Enterprise Learning Area this week include fabulous trophy designs in GCSE Product Design for the End of Term Awards, Year 9 Child Development students looking at the Joys of Christmas through the eyes of young child, festively fashioned gingerbread in Food & Cookery, peer working in Automotive Engineering, striking CAD models in A Level Product Design, competition preparation in Lego Robotics Club, finishing touches to our laser cut greetings cards, Year 8 testing structures to destruction and quality Year 7 Bug Boxes – wow, what a busy week!

Creative Writing

TA’s first 500 word creative writing competition was held this year and was open for all students. The writing brief was that it needed to be 500 words or less and could be about any subject they wanted. The competition was judged by a local author and prizes for the top 3 included Amazon vouchers as well as the stories being printed into a hardback book. Congratulations to Holly Smith, Rebecca Lovegrove and Katie Paker for their winning entries. Well done to all students and good luck with next years entries!

I would like to thank Mr Welsh who organises our House competitions.

Olivia in the pantomime

Olivia Painter has been chosen to be a part of this year’s pantomime at the Princess Theatre in Torquay.  She told me she is enjoying her experience of being a dancer greatly.  Who else could I have asked to come along for a picture with Olivia other than our very our pantomime villain, Mr Bindon!!

Team TA Sports Update

Christmas is a strange time in the world of PE. Over the years we have seen that the more successful we become,  the busier we are at this time of year trying to reach deadline dates for all of the National Cup competitions that we have entered.  As a result,  the games not only come thick and fast but also they get more difficult.  We have had a very good term and consequently, we are still in National Cup football competitions at sixth form and Year 10 girls.  Sadly this week we bowed out of the Year 7 Cup with a very hard fought 5-4 loss against a Devonport High School team but had an excellent 6-2 win for the 1st XI against a team from Newport, Wales. Our first team is now in the last 32 of both the schools and the colleges cups. We still have basketball teams at Under 12 and Under 14 level competing nationally and have a number of sports teams still in Devon Cup action.  That coupled with having a number of runners representing South Devon in the County Cross Country Championships and our Under 13 boys representing Devon in the South West table tennis both in the new year.  This means that we are going to need to hit the ground running again in January, which makes having a good break at Christmas all the more important. It would be pertinent at this stage to say a massive well done to all the boys and girls that attend after school sporting activities and represent the school at sports and a big thank you to the PE team who make it all possible.

Football

Year 7 Boys National Cup

 

Our Year 7 boys played Devonport High School from Plymouth on Tuesday in the ESFA national cup.   It was a day that had so many twists and turns and bits to learn from moving on. The game was always going to be a good one with so many good players on both teams.  With 4 pro academy players on show between the teams,  it was a game we all expected, fast, clever, strong individual and group play. We struggled in the first 10 minutes to get to grips with the pace of the game and unlike us in previous rounds,  we looked a bit shaky at the back and two little errors made were capitalised on by them to put them 2-0 up. This was a shock to our lads and could quite easily have ruined their confidence and seen a few give up.  However,  it was great to see every player showing heart and determination to dig deep and get back in the game which is what they did by scoring to 2-1 from a great cross and finish. It then went to 3-1, then we pulled another goal back before half time to make it 3-2.

After a quick chat and the player understanding the areas to expose and where to be stronger, we went out the second looking a lot better. Then in a 5 minute spell Devonport scored 2 more to make it 5-2. Our lads, to their credit, kept pushing and with two wonder goals from Will Green and Jack Alcock we got it back to 5-4 with 5 minutes to go. We threw everything we had at them and were desperately unlucky in the final few minutes with a shot hitting the bar and a header in the last few seconds glancing the post.  It was not to be our day and we ended up leaving ourselves with too much to do but we will learn from this and with the group we have we will only improve from our defeats. Good luck to Devonport in the next round.

Under 14 Football

A very new look and somewhat inexperienced side took to the field this week to represent the school in the Devon Cup. This team is made up of a group of boys that train every week and have a great attitude towards their sport. They were not expecting much from the game as they were up against a strong St Luke’s School from Exeter who had a number of Exeter City Academy players on show.  We did have two of our own in the shape of Harrison Lee and Ryan Johns Kuadio, but we were easily outnumbered. We played two boys from Year 8 in the team, Lewis Vinson was his usual excellent self in goal and Will Hall was outstanding at the back.  Unfortunately, the result did not go our way as we lost 4-1 but this is a team that will improve year on year and be successful based on their attitude alone. Well done to Ellis Knowles, Tom Brown, Miles Hindom, Ben Aldous, Finn Beer, Xavier Rodwell, Sonny Ronson, Finley Paul, Benjamin Pieterse.

Seconds march on

On Wednesday the second team inflicted a serious defeat on local rivals South Devon College with a comprehensive 6-0 win. TA dominated the game from start to finish and probably should have run out with a bigger winning margin. The goals came from Harry Smith, Josh Parry x2, Zac Chalmers-Wood, Harrison Beer and Ben Clarke.

Post 16 national College Cup

Monday saw us advance in the National college cup beating Welsh side Lliswerry 6-2 in a game of two halves, pardon the cliche. We started the first half slow and while we had so much of the ball we just didn’t find the final product to take the lead.   Lliswerry took the lead through their busy striker who took the one opportunity they had well.  Just before half time,  Lliswerry had a goal disallowed for offside and while their lads were arguing we took and quick free kick and went down the other end to score to make it 1-1 at half time. Second half was a different story, we now had added the final product to our play and dominated the half and also kept our heads when the opposition started to lose theirs which is credit to our boys.  The final result was a comfortable 6-2 win so we will see who we get next after Christmas.

House Table Tennis

The Year 10s competed in a house table tennis competition last week. 49 boys and girls entered, making it an extremely popular event. It was fiercely contested with many hours of practice taking place in the weeks leading up to the event. A big thank you to the PE staff for giving up numerous lunchtimes to enable our students to practice for this competition.  The clear winner was Nick Turner who is a rising star in the sport. Alex Westward also deserves a mention for an excellent performance in getting to the final. Well done to all involved.

Sixth Formers Visit Wembley

On Tuesday 16 of our sixth form students headed off on a very long trip to Wembley Stadium to look at what the UCFB (University), situated within the Wembley stadium, had to offer in terms of courses. After a very long journey there the students were treated to a tour of the stadium, the student accommodation, a lecture style session on Sports Coaches, a talk about student life and the benefits of attending the University for any budding sports journalists, lawyers, teacher, coaches and lawyers. A good day was had by all and the students got much from the visit.

Walking to School

This November through until the end of term the year 7s and 8s have been undertaking in a challenge set from the Youth Sport Trust. The Walking to School Challenge entails walking to school for 15 days in the ‘coldest weeks of the year’. The challenge was for as many as possible to complete it, both year groups stepped up to the mark with an amazing 136 completing it. Extremely amazing outcome and the Youth Sports Trust complimented Torquay Academy on their efforts.

Students of the Week

Students of the Week this week with Dr Hocking, Mr Gale and me are: Molly Farley Y10, Nelly Fieldhouse Y9, George Swift Y11, Evan Kinghorn Y7 (Dan Maw Y8 absent)

Principal Certificates

(not in order)

Bronze : Harvey Wright,  Yun Xin Liu,  Felix Houghton, Mille Hope, Maya Wolsey, Millie Partridge, Seb Capron , Juliette Loud, Dylan Gale, Owen Morgan 

House Stars of the Week

Year 7

Brunel – Lucas Washbrook

Christie – Cameron Sengupta

Darwin – Danny Frankum

Fawcett – Bradlee Tarrant

Harrison – Evan Kinghorn

Kitson – Kai Alexander

Nearne – Monica Mitula

Pengelly – Bogdan Pamfile

Year 8

Brunel –

Christie – Ewan Zaple – Contreras

Darwin – Katie Bowyer

Fawcett – Emilie Cartwright-Lomax

Harrison – Finley Last

Kitson – Owen Rose

Nearne – Matthew Oakden

Pengelly – Angel McKenna

Year 9

Brunel – Millie Boyd

Christie – Beth Chalkley

Darwin – Cameron Smith

Fawcett – Sonny Harby

Harrison – Weronika Pogorzelska

Kitson – Kyle Hickman

Nearne – Sean Brown

Pengelly –

Building Update

It has been quite a busy week this week as the steel structure has started to emerge from the ground.  You can start to see how the building will fill the space.

The new dining room extension had its roof completed this week.

Words of the week

The words of the week for next week are:

Year 7: Insincerity
Year 8: Dictatorial
Year 9: Rhetoric
Year 10: Ephemeral
year 11: Despondent