Junior Chef of the Year, field trips and karaoke...

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Karaoke returns!

Year 7 and 8 had their Fun Friday in The Platform this week.  The atmosphere was… deafening!!  There were some great performances and, most importantly, everyone had lots of fun.

GCSE Geography Fieldwork

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week the Year 11 Geography students completed their Human Geography Fieldwork in Plymouth. Over the course of two days students conducted Environmental Quality Surveys (EQS) Land Use Surveys and Pedestrian Counts to look at how the development of Drake Circus has changed the shopping experience in Plymouth City Centre.

Ten Tors

A wet morning starts the first day of Ten Tors Training last weekend. Clear blue skies in the afternoon allowed the Teams to take in some amazing sights across Dartmoor.

Meeting at school at 0800 hrs, loading all onto the miniuses, they all set off to Shipley Bridge for a short circular route homing in on some navigation skills.

Cadets and students from Years 12, 11, 10 and 9 will take part in training around Dartmoor over the next few months in the hope of being selected for a place in the Ten Tors Teams. Competition for a space has already started as students showcase map reading skills and levels of fitness.

All 38 students had a great time working toward understanding what’s required to be a team member and what each can bring to the team. Navigation, team leader, fitness, pacing, timing to name a few skills required to take part. As they move through the training program, everyone will have the opportunity to have their input in the teams.

We all look forward to the next time out and walk a little further to improve hill walking fitness.

South West Junior Chef of the Year

Congratulations to Syd who took part in the final of the South West Junior Chef’s competition on Saturday, it was the most amazing day and such good experience. Syd won the competition and he was very pleased. He will be attending an awards ceremony later in the month; in the photos you can see him before he started cooking and a picture of his dish and at the end with all the judges.

This week he was interviewed by Radio Devon and next year he will also be competing in the springboard future chefs competition.

Houses Update

This week’s featured house is Nearne; when Miss Risk visited 7N, she was inundated with students who wanted to take part in our first house competition and who wanted to inform her about how great Nearne is as a house. Mr Prestoe, the Year 7 house captain, selected four students for Miss Risk to interview: Lexi Cave, Evan Ciavarella, Oscar Read and Lilly-Ann Le Feuvre. All were vociferous in their praise of Mr Prestoe and Nearne.  Here is a selection of their comments: “Mr Prestoe is really funny;he makes lots of jokes.” “We really like the tutor reading as Mr Prestoe does actions and puts on voices for the characters.” “We play Popcorn when we are reading which means everybody has to follow along as they might be chosen next.” “There are lots of smart people in Nearne, their behaviour is good and they are supportive of one another.” “Being in Nearne brightens up our day. Mr Prestoe makes it better and gets you into a learning mood. He is very loyal to Nearne.” “Nearne stands for nice.” “We are very loyal to our tutor group.” “There is an n in fantastic and an n in Nearne -so that means Nearne is fantastic.” “Just in general we have the best house because we are Nearne.”

You can undoubtedly see just how much being in Nearne means to the Year 7 students. Over the coming weeks we will interview people from other houses to see if they can put forward such high levels of praise!

GCSE English

Mr Dickin’s year 11s have continued to work tirelessly towards their English GCSEs by completing their weekly essays. Each week, pupils are given teacher-planned essay templates to support with their own planning and time to revise before completing the exam-style paper in lesson. Pupils receive feedback weekly and are able to keep their essays in their portfolios for future revision.

Kitson House Captain

Kitson’s new house captain Ellis Knowles, in his Kitson-coloured waistcoat,  handing out the Student of the Week award to Brodi Docherty.

GCSE History

Students in Mr Davis’ Year 10 GCSE History have been learning about how Hitler came to power in Germany. In today’s lesson, students created a timeline of the key events which led to Hitler becoming Chancellor in January 1933. Daisy Bond created an excellent timeline, detailing the key people involved in Hitler’s rise to power and how their actions contributed to this key moment in European history.

Mr Brett Maths and Swimming…

Mr Brett works with a Year 7 class teaching them Maths and they have been working on our place value. This helps with ordering numbers and decimals, which is a skill in itself. Once a fortnight he have the privilege of being part of a team who takes the students to the pool to improve their swimming. This week the advanced group practiced their strokes and some were good with front crawl and backstroke. At the end of the session, they then had the chance to dive in off the starting board, which a couple really took to.  He enjoys taking students out as it gives a really good opportunity to build relationships with students and the next time he sees them will be in Maths.

Lexonik Returns

This week Mrs Clayton and Mrs Aitkin attended an intensive refresher course in Lexonik which will shortly lead to their professional certification and they’re joining Mrs Rowan on our reading at speed intervention team.

For those who have never heard of Lexonik, it is an intervention that is designed to help students reach their potential in all subjects – not just English.  It is a training programme that coaches students to process sounds at speed and develop vocabulary – which as result improves reading speeds and understanding.

Lexonik teaches students how to accurately and rapidly process sound chunks and once they acquire this skill, their reading and spelling dramatically improve and is actually most successful with students of average and above average ability.  By taking part in these sessions, students boost their literacy skills and are better equipped to achieve better grades.

The beauty of this intervention is in its speed:  1 hour per week over a 6-week period.

As a school intervention, Lexonik is not new.  We have been using this intervention since 2018 but as you can imagine COVID has had an impact.  It is very difficult to run 6 back to back weekly sessions for the same group of four students when you are coming up against, lock-downs, isolations and illness.

Although suitable for all year groups, we have decided our first target group will be students in year 11.  Current exam data suggests that students need a minimum reading age of 15 years to achieve a Grade 4, the minimum pass grade at GCSE, in such subjects as Mathematics, Science and History.  Reading is not just an English thing:  every exam paper, in every subject needs a student to be able to read at speed, at a high level.  We cannot escape the fact that our current Year 11s have had their education seriously impacted by COVID but will probably be the first cohort in recent years to sit the full exams as they used to be.  This will mean much more reading!

Lexonik promise that a 6-week course, delivered effectively, can improve a student’s reading age by an average of 24 months.  So, it was a pleasant surprise to be told by our trainer that our data for the sessions that we have run over the past few years have, on average, improved individual reading ages by 37 months.  We are looking forward to our next cohorts of Lexoniks.  May the reading begin!

U18 Netball CVL

The U18 TA Netball Academy, consisting of one Year 10, seven Year 11’s and one Year 12 student, travelled to Churston Grammar School on Monday to play in an U18 Netball tournament against other local schools. The girls made a strong start, winning their first game against Newton Abbot College 7-2, followed by a well-fought draw against Torquay Girls Grammar School. Whilst they lost 2 matches, they finished on a high beating Teignmouth School 7-4. This is a well-deserved achievement for such a young squad, some of which played two year groups up and Miss Lewis cannot wait to see how much more these girls have to offer for the rest of the season. Congratulations to Ellie Denby, who was voted player of the match by her teammates.

U18 TA Netball Academy: Mia Denby (C), Elisha Perrow, Grace Povey, Charlotte Sweeney, Freya Davies, Ellie Denby, Ellie Chammings, Tammy Westacott and Evie Sutton

Year 8 Boys Football

For the second time in a week, the boys travelled to Ivybridge for another cup game. We knew it was going to be tough against an exceptional side, but above all else, we were determined to work hard and learn from last week’s defeat.

Unfortunately, once again, the result went against us, but the boys made us all incredibly proud, with the amount of effort they put in. Their attitude for the entire game was outstanding, and they made Ivybridge earn their victory. Mr Jones, who took the team in Mr Hogg’s absence, could not have been more impressed with all of them and can hold their heads high.

Squad: Olly Payne, Toby Waring, Miko Piasecki, Harrison Richards, Riley Calland, Ben Jolly, Callum Pile, Thomas Ross, Josh Parkinson, Oscar Mills, Lewis Phillips, Liam Anthony, Nick Heale, Mason Bryant and Charlie Wise

U13 Girls Football

The under 13 girls team played the first round of the the ESFA Cup on Monday away to Churston Grammar School. They progressed to the next round with a 7-2 win and some outstanding individual performances. Well done on a great performance girls !!!!

Goals – Leela, Farrah, Kayla x3,Tallulah,own goal

Players: Leela Cartwright, Farrah Ambrose, Marcia Nintyanova, Kayla Hadly, Poppy Bettridge, Daisy Humphreys, Neeve Thompson, Evie Ford, Tallulah Houlahan, Ava Mills, Bella Kendall and Amelia Rose

Year 7 Rugby

The Year 7 rugby team travelled to Paignton Sports College on Tuesday to Play a mini cluster tournament against Paignton and Churston Grammar School. It was the very first competitive rugby game for a lot of the boys with most players still in the early phases of learning the game. The team are showing some excellent potential and travel again to Paignton on Tuesday.

We played two teams in the fixtures and all of the boys did brilliantly and made a great start to the season.

Well done to all the boys!

Year 8 Rugby

The year 8 rugby squad entered the south devon 10 aside rugby tournament on Thursday for the first fixtures in a long time. Led by Louis Tillen they showed some exceptional phases of play with some great full pitch tries coming from Thomas Ross, Toby Waring, Ben Jolly in our wins over Paignton and Teignmouth. Well done to all the boys involved.

6th Form Football

Diamond Award

Congratulations to Ben Jeffs who last year achieved the prestigiuos diamond award!

Students of the Week

Year 7 – Kiara Ujj and Noah Margetts

Year 8 – Mason Bryant and Lauren Tanton

Year 9 – Isabella Richards and Jamie Palmer

Year 10 – Megan Sellick and Thomas Harrison

Year 11 – Mia Denby and Ethan Sanders

Sixth Form – Alice Little and Emily Johns

House Stars of the Week

Year 7

Brunel – Ben Nicholson

Christie – Janzen Flores

Darwin – Ashton Lynch

Fawcett – Phoenix Reeman

Harrison – Brooke Birchall

Kitson – Brodi Docherty

Nearne – Evan Ciavarella

Pengelly – Anastasia Tukilush

Year 8

Brunel – Ben Jolly

Christie – Mikolaj Piasecki

Darwin – Emilia Hunt

Fawcett – Oliver Cocker

Harrison – Millia-Anne Adamson

Kitson – Ethan Lynch

Nearne – Mason Bryant

Pengelly – Ayden Goldsbrough

Year 9

Christie – Daisy Faulkner

Darwin – Adam Wright

Fawcett – Daniel Eales

Kitson – Amber Dicken

Nearne – Dolce Zulhayir

Pengelly – Ruby Donaldson

Homework Stars of the Week

Year 7

Brunel – Chloe Bayliss

Christie – Riain Leal

Darwin – Tom Weaver

Fawcett – Zakariyah Haridi

Harrison – Emily Kenny

Kitson – Amy Cooper

Nearne – Hattie Gamble

Pengelly – James Beer

Year 8

Brunel – Lena Galazkiewizc

Christie – Lola Benney

Darwin – Layla Loizides

Fawcett – Rebecca Quarshie

Harrison – Naphtali Phinehas

Kitson – Faye Cassidy

Nearne – Bella Williams

Pengelly – Malachi Morris

Year 9

Christie – Harry Taylor

Darwin – James Hutt

Fawcett – Sara Mills

Kitson – Daytona Vickers

Nearne – Charlie Hope

Pengelly – Charlie Porter

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