Golden Mortarboards, national award & Fun challenge

Golden Mortarboard Awards

On Monday I paid a visit to the winners of last year’s Golden Mortarboard awards. We would have loved to have handed out these awards at our celebration evenings, but our students had to settle for me on their doorstep and having their picture taken in front of the minibus! certificate and badge for last year.

This Golden Mortarboard is given in recognition of academic excellence in the core subjects of English, Maths and Science. Last year they achieved the highest average marks in the exams for these three subjects in their year group. In addition to the Golden Mortarboard certificate and badge, their name will go up in the main atrium on the awards wall to recognise this achievement.

Year 8

Marcus De Lucis

Rebecca Glasson

Year 9

Gabriel Prior

Penny Richards

Year 10

Jessica Breach

Toby Leaver

Year 11

Paige Godwin & Anthony Brooking

Fun Friday Challenge!

We have a Fun Friday challenge for you all! Please watch the video below and then send your clip of Your Best Shot to fun@TQacademy.co.uk

Shortlisted for national award

You may have seen in this week’s Torbay Times that we have been shortlisted for a national educational award. The article published is here:

A unique partnership between a Torquay school and an education technology company has been recognised by the judges of a national award.

Tassomai worked with Torquay Academy, training its teachers online in the process of creating questions for its online learning programme that gives students personalised daily practice activities to identify gaps in their learning.

Within four weeks the academy’s teachers had written 26,500 questions, covering the entire curriculum.

Now the partnership has been nationally recognised, shortlisted for the Collaboration with a School award in the 2021 Bett Awards, to be held in June 2021. The Bett Awards are part of the annual Bett Show, the world’s leading showcase of education technology solutions.

Mr Broome, Head of Online Learning at Torquay Academy, said: “We’ve used Tassomai for a couple of years but the use of the app has gone into overdrive since the first lockdown in the spring and the support we got from Tassomai has played a big part in that.

“It really engages students. Our students know the importance and value of Tassomai because they can see that they have made clear progress in their assessments compared to two years ago. The stats show just how engaged they are; our students have answered more than 3 million Tassomai questions this year, with 320,000 being completed in just one week last term.”

Reece adds: “The magic of Tassomai is the algorithms that underpin it. The questions a student gets wrong come up more frequently than the ones they get right and their understanding is reinforced by asking the same questions in slightly different ways.”

Murray Morrison, founder and CEO of Tassomai, added: “We’re so pleased that the partnership with Torquay Academy has been recognised as a contender for a Bett Award. Reece and his colleagues have really run with Tassomai and the program is now an integral part of life for pupils.”

Enrichment Activities

It’s been another busy week at home for our students! The winners of this week’s £10 vouchers are: Kole Gjikolaj, Sophie Packer, Jsoh Rogers and Ellie-Jayne Scott

Dancing success

Phoebe has gained two more Bronze Medals, in another Nationwide Dance Festival for her Tap and Song and Dance Solo.

The Adjudicator of the M.H. Academy of Performing Arts Festival in Stockton on Tees, advised that Phoebe’s particular section, aged between 12-14 years old, was of the highest standard, with competitors from the North, London and some overseas.

Phoebe is dancing four times a week, via Zoom with Buckingham Dance Studios.She has performed since she was six years old, and hopes one day to gain a scholarship to Bird College in London or any of the main Performing Arts or Dance Colleges in the UK.
She is currently in the Year 7 Performing Arts production of ” Annie” playing her favourite role of ‘Miss Hannigan’.

Aladdin rehearsals

I was lucky enough to see some of the read-through for Aladdin by our Performing Arts Academy students in Years 8-11. We are not sure when or how the final performance will be carried out, but we are determined that the show must go on!

Amazing Algebra!

Tom Pattison in 8T5 in Essential School has worked so hard with his algebra work this week. We’ve simplified expressions and collected like terms. Well done, Tom!

Year 7 clay work

The Year 7s have been drawing insects and then starting to model their drawings in clay. It is amazing just how quickly they have been able to master this skill

Year 12 & 13 ceramic project

Our 6th Formers have been creating some amazing pieces of art recently that I wanted to share with you.

Year 13 music

In order to complete their course, our Year 13s are continuing to work on their performances as well as their written work. Listening to them is always a highlight of any of my days.

Pasties!

This week in Design & Technology, students in the essential school have been preparing and cooking cheese and onion pasties. This involved developing knife skills, organisational skills and pastry making.

If you’re currently home learning and would also like to cook these at home with your family, we will be making video guides and recipes available via Google Classroom from next week. You have all been doing such a great job engaging with the tasks set that we thought you’d like to have a go at some of our recipes too!

A special additional thank you to Ms Gould (our trainee teacher) who has provided the video guides.

Lockdown Home Baking

Thank you to all our Hospitality and Catering students who have sent photos of their wonderful baking creations that have been made with pride from home. We are impressed by the time, effort and skills you have demonstrated to produce the accomplishments. Please peruse just some of the photos we have received from them-we are so looking forward to acquiring more for our “Lockdown Baking from Home” display.

Brilliant Customer Service from Harvey

Harvey has been doing a newspaper round before school every morning for two years now (getting up at 5.30 am and cycling the 5 mile route delivering the 45 + papers). He received a gift voucher and card from McColl’s last week as an extra special thank you to him as they had received such tremendous feedback from their customers about Harvey.

KS3 Art Club

Mrs Lynch would like to invite all year 7 & 8 Art & Design students to apply to join our new virtual Art Club. At Art Club we hope to learn new skills, participate in competitions and challenges, and have fun!
Our first competition will be entitled ‘Reflections’ (more information to follow).

Art Club will be set up through Google Classrooms. Many of the tasks will be linked to the TA ART & DESIGN Website: https://www.ta-artanddesign.com

Please contact your Tutor or Head of Year if you are interested in getting involved, they can then pass your details onto Mrs Lynch. Alternatively you can contact Mrs Lynch directly at klynch@tqacademy.co.uk

Principal’s Silver Certificates

Daisy Faulkner

Principal’s Bronze Certificates

Lisa-Marie Szewczuk, Olivia Walters, Samuel Alcock.

Year 7 – Oliver Jones

Year 7 – Emma Kestell

Year 7 – James Evers

Students of the week

Year 7 – Charlie Hope & Sophie Nicholson (not pictured)

Year 8 – Reeve Spink

Year 9 – Jack Alcock

Year 10 – Toby Clark

Year 11 –

Home Learning Students of the Week

We are delighted to celebrate the excellent work that is being undertaken at home. Thank you for sharing your pictures!

Year 7 – Paige Clements

Year 7 – Thomas Thorner

Year 7 – Cerys Lowe

Year 7 – Gideon Prowse

Year 8 – Phoebe Hewings

Year 8 – Kevin Vieira

Year 9 – Danny Frankum

Year 9 – Jack Iris

Year 9 – Anya Page-Dove

Year 10 – Charlie Trapp