Bouldering, art winners and a busy week of sport

Boldy Bouldering

On Saturday ten intrepid TA students braved the harsh Dartmoor conditions to go bouldering. Bouldering is a form of climbing without ropes instead using bouldering mats to catch any falls. They went to Combestone Tor near Venford reservoir, which they had pretty much to themselves. After an initial briefing, they got climbing. The climbing was a good mixture of problems from the usual slopey granite holds using scoops and crystals to hand/fist jam cracks as well as overhanging juggy routes. After a spot of lunch with some hot chocolate students continued to ‘send’ their ‘projects’ but after four hours the Dartmoor granite began to take it’s toll on their skin so they retired back to the minibus for the journey back to TA.

Changing room tour

Our Director of Football, Mr Hogg, has gone viral this week with his tour of our amazing new changing rooms. You can have a look around below.

House News – Year 8 Oracy Project

This week saw the introduction of our new oracy project to Year 8 students. This project has been developed by Mr Engineer, HOLA English, and Mr Littler, Vice Principal, with an aim to improve students’ skills of memorising and reciting poetry, skills which will prove invaluable during KS4. Each of our eight tutor groups has been given a poem that represents the key values of their house. Over forthcoming weeks, the students in each group will collectively learn each poem, several lines at a time and practise reciting their pieces aloud. Tutors have been encouraged to bring the poems to life and to seek innovative ways to present the poem with every student assuming an active role. The project will culminate with the performance of each poem and the videoed pieces will be viewed in assembly.

As always, we like to introduce a competitive element and instil a sense of identity when embarking upon house events. Consequently, I have been asked to decide upon the best performance and the winning house will receive a prize. There will also be a special prize for the student that tutors believe has made the best effort throughout the whole process.

Art Winners

Mrs Lynch’s online KS3 Art club tells me that congratulations are in order for both Lewis Watt and Thomasz Kowalski. The boys have both just won additional prizes for their artwork inspired by their recent art and design competition ‘The Colours of Nature’.

The Rotary Club of Great Britain chose them both as winners in the Torbay heat of this national competition. Both year 8 art students were awarded certificates and Amazon vouchers valuing £25 and £15.
Regular art challenges and competitions are set for the art clubbers, who really enjoy working independently on a variety of art topics, uploading their work to the site and giving each other support and feedback. The Art club currently has 92 members enrolled and welcomes more.

Frosty morning

There were some clear and frosty mornings this week leaving the astro covered in frost.

RareBoots4U

If you see a copy of the Torbay times this week, on the front of it you’ll see this photograph of ex-student Jake Self with Chelsea’s Antonio Rüdiger and his business partner. Jake started RAREBOOTS4U when he was 16 and here at TA with his friend. It has now grown into the world’s largest online independent classic football boot store with the most high profile clients, such as Xavi, Rakitic, Rooney, Aubameyang, Benzema, Morata and Lacazette.

You can read the article here – https://www.torbayweekly.co.uk/sport/rare-success-for-rareboots4u-8618468 and see a bit more about how they got the business started in the video below.

Delicious Italian Food

The Hospitality and Catering students have been busy this week making and creating Italian vegetarian meals with tasty flavours and innovative presentation. The arancini were absolutely delicious and full of flavour.

Mr Gratton’s Maths Lesson

In Mr Gratton’s year 10 class this week the students have been learning how to solve linear simultaneous equations by elimination. The whiteboards were used initially during the lesson for the recall of the previous lesson and then build and extend the concept further, as can be seen by Joel Copping’s and Ellie Louise Bruxton’s work.

After the students had secured high a degree of success in the whiteboards, they then proceed to develop these skills further through purposeful practice in their workbooks.

Later on in the week, the class moved on to using simultaneous equations to solve problems.

Miss Elson’s English Lesson

Miss Elson’s Year 11 class have been working extremely hard this cycle preparing for their English Language Paper 2. As well as battling the cold, they have been getting to grips with how to compare 19th century and modern non-fiction texts, focusing on how the writers present their viewpoints and how different writers use language to express opinion.

This week, after a few excellent class practices, they have independently worked through Question 4 and really showcased their impressive vocabulary and exam skills. Their hard work, resilience and amazing effort have really paid off – we look forward to seeing what they do in the future!

Geography Lessons

Miss Fannon’s A Level Geography class

In Miss Fannon’s Year 12 Geography class, students are almost at the end of the Globalisation unit and are deep in preparation for their upcoming PPE exams. Previously, students had been looking at the economic benefits and social costs of globalisation and have been focusing on the country of China as a case study. Students have also been completing some Tectonics revision for Mrs Broome’s section of the course, with a focus on the plate tectonic theory to explain plate movements.

Mr Pugh’s Year 8 Geography class

Mr Pugh’s Geography class have been learning a lot about development in Africa, as well as diversity and how people live. In this particular lesson, the Year 8s were mapping the distribution of the countries in Africa with the largest amount of squatter settlements. Here, Charlie Petit is working incredibly hard to complete the challenge quicker than Mr Pugh!

Miss Nash’s Year 10 Geography Class

Miss Nash’s Geography class were busy on task looking at examples of river management and hard engineering techniques that can be used to reduce the risk of flooding. Here is a fantastic example of the classwork produced courtesy of Nadia Wisnik.

This Week’s University Offers

Sports Roundup

Team TA leading the way!

There has been so much success for Team TA this week. This started last Saturday in Exeter for a cross country event, extended to Sunday in Plymouth for the Table Tennis Championships and then into the week with fantastic performances on both the netball court and football field. Read through the many fixture reports below! We have also included a selection of the goals from this week, captured using our Veo Cameras and we will be bringing you highlights of our home fixtures each week. Well done to everyone who has represented our teams in our competitive programme this week, you have done us all proud! Our recreational programme has also been buzzing this week, with an incredible dodgeball tournament to kick it off followed by great participation in Table Tennis, Badminton, Cheerleading, Floorball, Basketball and Fitness. Please remember that none of these clubs will be running next week due to exams, but we look forward to welcoming you all back in two weeks time!

Year 8 Netball Academy success

The Year 8 Netball Academy have had more amazing success after Team 1 beat Torquay Girls Grammar School 17-4! Miss Lewis put out two squads to play against the opposition, with both teams displaying some excellent performances. Unfortunately, Team 2 lost 19-4, however, three of our Year 7 Netball Academy players (Ellie Farthing, Francesca Skelly and Ellen Scott) made their debuts, playing exceptionally well and they are continuing to develop into brilliant netball players. Overall, this is a huge achievement for the girls whose hard work and commitment to the netball academy are definitely paying off. Miss Lewis and Mrs Tully are extremely proud of you! Congratulations to the two academy players who were selected by the opposition as players of the match: Brooke Tully and Amber Dicken.

Team 1: Brooke Tully, Lydia Bevan, Eve Cameron, Ema Kestell, Katie Rowe, Jemimah Jones, Millie Sneap and Amara Phillips

Team 2: Amber Dicken, Olivia Riches, Amelie Berriman, Summer Thompson, Amy Harrison, Francesca Skelly, Ellie Farthing and Ellen Scott

Devon Cross Country Trials

On Saturday, Exeter arena hosted the annual Devon cross country trials. Unfortunately, the area trials had to be cancelled the previous month for Covid 19 issues. We selected our best competitors for the day who put in outstanding effort on an extremely boggy course. The final results are yet to come in but congratulations to all who ran and we are looking forward to the summer’s athletics season.

House Dodgeball

Last Friday after school, the PE department hosted our annual dodgeball competition for years 7 and 8’s. The event turnout was outstanding with an amazing 110 students entering. The competitive atmosphere was the best we’ve had in a long time with everyone giving it all for their houses. The event was split into 2 groups of 4 houses in a league formation. The winners from each group won a place in the final with the runners up playing in the 3rd and 4th place playoff. Congratulations to Nearne for winning the participation award with 21 entries! Well done to everyone who participated, winning house points for their efforts. The top 4 positions are as follows;

1st Christie
2nd Nearne
3rd Darwin
4th Harrison
5th Fawcett
6th Kitson
7th Pengelly
8th Brunel

Year 10 Football vs Teign

On Tuesday year 10 bounced back from their national cup exit in style with an emphatic 12-2 win against Teign school. With the advantage of the new changing room being used, TA started brightly and we were 2-0 up in the first 3 minutes with goals from Josh Thompson. TA dominated and was in complete control throughout with the best goals coming from Jack Alcock x2 and Harrison Shaw. Also on the score sheet was Cole Shobbrooke x2, Will Hemus, Harry Clarke, Danny Frankum, Zac Rowland-Steele and Will Green.

We will now be at home to Colyton in round 2.

Year 8 Football

The new changing room worked its magic again for the Year 8s as they took the lead after 30 seconds. A through ball from Seth Margetts put through Charlie Green for the first of his six (yes, 6!) goals in an emphatic 9 – 0 victory over Stoke Dameral School, Plymouth. Toby Lee scored two, including a sweet long-range goal, and Albie Baker got one

It was a brilliant team performance and they can look forward to the next round of the Devon Cup now.

Year 7 Football

Our year 7s bounced back with a brilliant win in the County cup against Okehampton. We added a few players to the squad and they came in and performed really well, the game was an entertaining one with 7 goals being scored. We finished the game winning 5-2 with our goals coming from – Thomas Ross x3, Farrah Ambrose and Joshua Parkinson.

Table Tennis

On Sunday our two teams: girls U13 and boys U16 qualified for the Regional Schools Table Tennis Final at Bristol Academy in February.

– Torquay Academy 4:4 Bournemouth Boys School

– Torquay Academy 7:1 Taunton Prep School

– Torquay Academy 6:2 Wadham School, Crewkerne

– Torquay Academy 8:0 Highcliffe School Christchurch

Well done to both teams. The winners of the Regional Finals will play in the English Schools’ Table Tennis Butterfly National Team Finals in April in Wolverhampton.

Fitness

It is great to see so many students in Years 10-13 using the fitness suite after school! This is free of charge to all students and watch this space for more exciting opportunities in this area!

Floorball

Mr Yao recently launched a new recreational sports club; floorball! Similar in many ways to hockey, but played inside with slightly different equipment, it’s a really fun and fast-paced game! The club is currently open to Year 7 students, and if you want to try something new, please come along on Tuesdays after school!