Playground upgrade, PSHE Day, Ten Tors and amazing art...
Playground upgrade
We continue to try and improve each of the year group hubs. We have installed two sports areas in each of the Year 7 and 8 playgrounds.
PSHE Day
Our second PSHE day of the year saw years 7 have a variety of sessions on health, including the changes that happen during puberty and the issues surrounding the use of tobacco and alcohol. Students also looked at ways to determine if things they are watching, on the TV or online, were appropriate. Students also looked at sensible ways of spending their money – how to budget and how to decide if something is value for money. The session on gangs looked at the reasons why people joined gangs and the impact of joining. This session also looked at the issue of peer pressure and ways to combat this. The final session looked at coercive control within relationships.
This session was also ran with the year 8s. They also looked at various aspects related to health such as the law relevant to drug use and the impact of cannabis and alcohol. They also looked at ways to maintain good mental health with appropriate ways to cope. The final health session looked at cancer. Students also looked at strategies to deal with situations where they might find themselves watching things that they find challenging. Sessions were run by Proud2be to look at different aspects of identity and discrimination.
The year 9 sessions were focussed on relationships, they included how to recognise a healthy or unhealthy relationship, how to identify domestic abuse and the laws connected to it. Students looked at how to manage online relationships including the ways in which they are different to ‘face to face’ relationships. Students also considered the options surrounding an unplanned teen pregnancy, but also looked at issues that might affect someone’s ability to have a child, such as male and female infertility. Students reflected on their prior learning about the meaning of consent and extended this to identify situations where someone might not have the capacity to give informed consent.
Year 10 students also had sessions run by Proud2be to look at different aspects of identity and discrimination and by ‘The school of sexuality’ looked at how every body is different and how to keep our genitals healthy. Students also looked at how peer influence may affect our risk taking behaviour and connected this to drug use. The final session showed students how to use ‘Careerpilot’ which enables them to plan their future by identifying job sectors that might be of interest to them and the options available to them.
Ten Tors
A frosty Saturday morning starts to the Ten Tors walk out of Okehampton. Meeting at the school for 0800hrs, loading the minibuses and heading off to the moor in full tune.
The teams were taking on an 18 km route with visits to Higher Tor, Oke Tor, Dinger Tor, Higher Wilhays, Yes Tor, West Mill Tor and Row Tor. The focus of the day was to put into practice the skills of navigation, timings and directional awareness to name a few.
Everyone took turns on navigating their team from one point to another. Making stops on the way to identify their location. Some amazing map reading skills were shown which lead to all the teams finishing the whole route.
Moving forward with the training will involve passing, bearings and group management, some of the skills needed to be selected for the Ten Tors Teams.
The weather played a part in what was a great day out on the moor. Team spirit was at a high point when the sun eventually came out.
Well done everyone for a great day out.
Year 11 Art
Students in year 11 have been working on the theme of “Personal Identity” They have been exploring this theme using a wide range of materials, processes, and techniques. They have been introduced to different print-making processes. Here are some of their examples of relief block printing using linoleum.
Art Exhibition
Students from Torquay Academy past and present have for the second consecutive year successfully managed to have their work accepted into the Artizan Gallery winter exhibition. They have contributed a number of photographic works, ceramic sculpture, and two wonderful paintings. Their work sits alongside established and professional artists. All the work is for sale and the exhibition runs right up to Christmas. We wish our students every success in their future artistic endeavors.
Artists include the very talented Reshad twins, Alice, and Ellie for painting and ceramics. Grace Halett, Tilly Skeffington, Mattew Wineyard, Gracie Clements, and Izzy Minty, all for photography.
6th Form Art & Photography students take a trip to Plymouth!
6th form Art & Photography students had an exciting and enlightening day when they visited ‘The British Art Show’ at The Box gallery in Plymouth recently. The A Level students had their eyes opened to some diverse and unique artwork. The artwork produced in the show explored a number of different disciplines, including photography, sculpture, installation art and film. The students then left the gallery to complete a photography assignment linked to their current themes. A really productive and inspirational day : )
Tallest Towers!
Layla Broadway and Lili Budavolgyi excelling at the Tall Tower challenge for 8T8 along with Harrison Harkin and Edward Evers who had a slightly alternative approach! For this module the students worked in pairs to design and make the tallest tower they could, using only straws and pipe cleaners.
Year 8 French
Miss Hammett’s year 8 French class had fun this week learning about food and drink in French. We practiced our new vocabulary (and drawing skills!) with mini whiteboard games, and cold calling with our friendly “pain au chocolat” and “sandwich”.
We are also very lucky in MFL to have Foreign Language Assistants, and this week year 8 discovered some delicacies from Laurence’s home city Québec such as “la poutine” (chips, cheese and gravy, yum!)
Mrs Haines’ Classroom
In Mrs Haines’s classroom, they focus on the qualification of Hospitality and Catering Level 2 qualification, a vocational course, that is a GCSE equivalent and centres on the Hospitality and Catering business and industry. Students learn about the way businesses work and operate with visits from employers to enhance the education they receive at TA. They have a written examination in this and their overall grade is supplemented by written assignments on nutritional health. They also complete a practical examination that involves creating and cooking dishes inspired by local and international chefs.
Year 9 students have been working on mastering pastry-making skills creating many dishes both sweet and savoury, whilst the Year 10 students are continuing this year to improve their knife skills in preparing the dishes and enhancing their presentational techniques. The Year 11s have been developing their presentational skills and started to carefully consider their practical examination to prepare and cook two dishes for a fictitious bistro. The photos highlight the amazing results produced by our students; we are extremely proud of their accomplishments.
Hospitality and Catering
This week they have been working on a variety of skills and perfecting our techniques. Year 9 focused very much on knife skills throughout the preparation and making of the vegetable samosas, making pastry from scratch, rolling it out and folding it into the triangles. The year 10s and 11s had a tasty and nutritious treat in the creation of egg fried rice and salt n pepper chicken. The mastering of the egg fried rice is very complex and they soon developed an understanding of how to achieve this. Year 7 baked some cheese and bacon scones and Pudding Club created some yummy chocolate brownies.
House News
When Miss Risk went to visit 7F earlier this week to find who would like to be interviewed to explain the benefits of being in Fawcett house, she was overwhelmed by the response, nearly every student in the group wanted to have their say. Four students were selected and they had plenty of comments extolling the virtues of Fawcett.
Pheonix Reeman stated, ’Percy Fawcett was the inspiration for many adventurous films; he was the real -life Indiana Jones as he was brave and adventurous.’
Daisy Humphrey’s added,’ Fawcett students are typically brave, kind and they remember lots of things. We all get on as a group and we all look after each other.’
Ellie Bowden mentioned, ‘The majority of the class have lots of house-points, in fact nearly everybody has a certificate.’
Dylan Tripp claimed, ’we have lots of funny and amusing people in our house; I would say that Pheonix and I are the funniest members of our group. Another characteristic of a Fawcett student is that they are intelligent.’
Fawcett are definitely going from strength to strength this year and it is largely due to the efforts of 7F, their house-captain, Miss Piggott, head of house, Mr Gale and sixth-form representative Igor Sniegowski: ‘Miss Piggott is nice-she shares facts for us to discuss. She explains things clearly and has ‘banter’. She is very good at reading.’ ‘Mr Gale is a very funny and very proud leader of Fawcett house. On Friday’s he wears a top-hat and a yellow shirt with Percy Fawcett’s face on it. He always makes such an effort.’ ‘We enjoy Igor coming down to see us. One Friday we had to vote whether Igor or Mr Gale had the best Fawcett hat and we all voted for Igor.’
Some of the successes that Fawcett have achieved this academic year are; Winning the ‘Best house in the School’ writing competition, moving steadily up the weekly house-points chart and finally winning weekly house-points totals on several occasions. Pheonix, Daisy, Ellie and Dylan are all confident that Fawcett have a really good chance of victory in our forth-coming house Bake-Off competition.
Maths 11T7
In Year 11 Maths, the students have been working on improving their excellent PPE grades.
The students are given yellow sheets to show the questions that they have been successful in and areas for development, This allows students to focus on improving their skills on area of weakness using Sparx independent learning clips.
Also from Analysing the exams a class booklet is built based upon the data as you can see above.
To allow areas of weakness (from across the class) to be addressed, I do, we do you do booklet of exam questions is done. From this we expect every student in the class to improve by between 1 and 3 grades by their final GCSE in June depending upon how hard they work.
Year 10 Tutor Maths Tutor
The year 10 Maths tutor groups have been continuing to improve using their maths using the tuition software called completed maths. For more details of being able to access the tuition software from home please watch the video below.
Year 7 Football
The Year 7s cruised into the next round of the national cup with a 14 – 0 win over Brixham College. This was an incredible performance by the whole team.
You can watch the highlights below.
Year 8 Cruise to round 2 of the Devon Cup
On Tuesday the year 8 Football team beat St Peters from Exeter in convincing fashion. TA dominated the game right from the very first whistle and never looked back. It was a fantastic team performance and one the boys and girls should be proud of as it was only their second game on the full size pitch. The eventual score line was 10-2 with the goals coming from:
Thomas Ross x3
Miko Piasecki x2
Callum Pile x2
Ben Jolly x2
Jamie Tully
A big well done has to be given to both Jamie Tully and Stan Austin who stepped up from the year 7 team.
Year 9 Football v Newton Abbott
The Year 9s narrowly lost out to Newton Abbot College. After conceding a very early goal, they couldn’t quite manage the equaliser despite having many opportunities.
Medals for Daisy
Daisy took part in Devon County Championship Athletics competition for her South Devon Club on Sunday. She got a silver medal in speed bounce (very narrowly missing a gold medal as both gold and silver scored the same some it came down to the their last score) and she got a silver medal for vertical jump. Well done Daisy!
Students of the Week
Year 7 – Phoenix Reeman
Year 10 – Jacob Tarr and Nina Hocking
Year 11 – Olivia Painter and Bogdan Pamfile
House Students of the Week
Year 7
Brunel – Chloe Bayliss
Christie – Oscar Rogers
Darwin – Immy Pace
Fawcett – Toby Hamilton
Harrison – Harry Hutchings
Kitson – Naomi Szyszka
Nearne – Bodhi Williams
Pengelly – Edi Ferencz Csibi
Year 8
Brunel – Laurentiu Mihai
Christie – Maddie Kenyon
Darwin – Tegan Ross
Fawcett – Rebecca Quarshie
Harrison – Naphtali Phinehas
Kitson – Millie Swift
Nearne – Edwards Evers
Year 9
Brunel – Brooke Tully
Christie – Henry Tregea
Darwin – Jaccob Tripp
Fawcett – Owen Waller
Harrison – Laila Heavens
Kitson – Harry Smith
Nearne – Ethan Lane
Homework Students of the Week
Year 7
Brunel – Monica Wanstall
Christie – Cassandra Foster
Darwin – Neave Thomson
Fawcett – Stella De Rose
Harrison – Emily Colclough
Kitson – Mollie Peters
Nearne – Lily-Ann Le-Feuvre
Pengelly – Mia Hawkes
Year 8
Brunel – Abigail Hytche
Christie – Frankie Skelly
Darwin – Ellie Farthing
Fawcett – Alana Livermore
Harrison – Sunny Long
Kitson – Adam Copping
Nearne – Joeslyn Full
Year 9
Christie – George Scrimgeour
Darwin – James Billingham
Fawcett – Ben Poston
Harrison – Albie Baker
Kitson – Jayden Trevelyan
Nearne – Dolce Zulhayir
Sparx Leaderboards – 10 most improved students
Tassomai Leaderboards
Accelerated Reader Leaderboards
Reading Plus
Power Up!
