Remembrance Service, music Live Lounge and top of the league

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Remembrance Day 2019

At 11am on the 11th of November the guns fell silent during World War 1 and this year Torquay Academy fell silent as we remembered those who had given their lives in the hope of building a better world.

It has been my pleasure to lead assemblies over the last three years having been asked by students what the day marks and where some of the traditions come from. Over the years I have been asked and subsequently tried to answer in my assemblies various questions ranging from why we wear a poppy through to what other conflicts have British service personnel given their lives in other than the World Wars. This year I am indebted to Mrs Lay who helped organise my three student readers Woody Ronson, Ellie Mitchell and Maddy Brewer who read diary entries from the original Armistice in 1918 the assemblies.

The aim has always been to enable our students to understand what the day marks and why we pause and this year I was moved when our school fell silent at 11am on the 11th of November. Our Cadets led the school in marking the moment with readings by Flt Lt Brett and Cadet Cpl Partridge. In addition a bugler playing both the Last Post to mark the beginning of the silence and Reveille to mark its conclusion.

We would particularly like to make contact with any members of our wider school community who can help with this next year especially anyone who would like to add to the assemblies in the run up to Remembrance Day and with a local bugler. If you would like to help please contact myself or Sgt Cawood at the school and we will respond as soon as we are able.

You can watch the ceremony below (I have edited the impeccable 2 minutes’ silence from the video)

Barcelona: European Taekwondo Championships

Nick Turner from year 11 won a place in the European Taekwondo Championships which was held in Barcelona last weekend.  Nick flew out from Bristol last Thursday morning, arriving in Stiges which is just outside Barcelona in Catalonia. Having spent Friday preparing, Nick spent all of Saturday competing in two different knockout competitions and was eventually awarded bronze in the Sparring contest and Silver in the Forms contest (systematic, pre-arranged sequences of martial techniques).

Nick is no stranger to Taekwondo competitions and competes all over the UK at the national and European level.

Music Live Lounge

After executing a range of incredible performances for the opening of The Platform, our fantastic Y10 musicians have been tasked with the challenge of developing a performance that provides a complete contrast for their exam coursework. We are blown away by this acoustic BBC Live Lounge inspired performance of Way Down We Go by Kaleao. Great work Ellie, Alfie, Michael, Tallulah and Luke!

Year 11 Pre Public Exams

I have been very impressed with our Year 11s this week as they have completed their PPEs.  These exams are designed to give students a taste of what next summer’s GCSE experience will be like for them.  It also enables us to gauge how they are progressing and fin-tune their run into the examination series.

Elite Club

I was delighted to be able to pop in and see Mr Christophers and Mrs Spiller this week who have been baking after school with a number of Year 7 and 8 students.  The brownies they cooked smelled delicious!

Art Assessments

Year 7 and 8 art students have been busy this week with their KS3 Art assessments.  In keeping with their project on ‘War & Conflict’ and with us celebrating Remembrance day on Monday, the students have been busy drawing a number of different military uniforms, as well as some other fascinating war memorabilia, including a hand grenade, gas masks, a gun magazine and some rather sturdy army boots.  Mrs Lynch has been delighted with the students enthusiasm and engagement with the still life. Some excellent work has been produced, some of which will be exhibited in the end of year celebration evenings.

Maths Challenge

On Wednesday, Jak Partridge, Noah Johnson, Maggie Foulds and Thomas Gabl travelled to Exmouth Community College to compete in the regional final of the Senior Team Mathematics Challenge. The day consisted of three 45 minute rounds in which the students had to demonstrate sheer perseverance and determination to solve the mathematical problems presented to them. The competition was fierce but the dream team did extremely well finishing in 12th place overall. A huge well done to the students that took part.

What to do in PE when it’s raining?

When you have a new £3m theatre you take the Year 7 girls into The Platform and they can take part in Dance Star!  They really enjoyed their lesson this week whilst the wind and rain was howling outside.

Torquay Academy U19s stay top of the league at midseason

What an unbelievable start we have had in this season’s English College Football Association.  We started our first game of the league at the top of the table, and now at the midway point and 7 league games in, we are still sat at the top being the only team not to have lost a game.

The boys who are part of our Football Education Programme have shown they have the ability to match the best schools and colleges in the UK.  This is down to the hard work put in on the pitch and behind the scenes.  We have a fantastic bunch of players and students who are having a football experience with us that they could only get if they were at a professional club. We pride ourselves on giving them the best opportunities we can and keeping it as close to what is like to be a full time footballer.

We started this programme from scratch 5 seasons ago and we have never treated the students any different, we always had the same attitude to training and development and the high standards from our first season in the ECFA.

Since our first season where we had to start from the lowest league we have had the aim and vision to get to the ECFA Premier league and along the way we have had success; every year bar one in winning the leagues we were in. Each year we proved how strong we were being crowned champions of each league on our way up to last year being invited to join the prestigious Premier league. All the hard work of the staff and the great players we have had over the years has now given us the chance to show we can compete at a national level amongst the best schools and colleges around.

I’m so proud to have achieved what we have in the last 5 years and I am very happy with the start we have made this season, our aim is to continue improving and keep the standards high.  We have more targets to chase and Mr Hogg’s job now is to keep everyone hungry for more and finish the second part of the season strong. If we finish in the top two at the end of the season we will go into the final national knockout cup against other premier teams in the UK.

With the team doing so well and confidence high we have had a lot of interest around our players and we hope that we can support them in playing the highest possible standard of football they can outside of TA as we are confident we have some outstanding players that are capable of playing much higher at the weekends.

Finally I want to say a massive congratulations to Josh Parry who has been chosen to represent the England Colleges’ National Team, this is a huge achievement and we are so proud of him. I will have a full story on his journey to the national team in next week’s blog.

Please take a look at the video of all our goals so far.

Team TA Sports Roundup

Rugby

The year 7 rugby team travelled to the under 12 South Devon Championships last Friday hosted at Brixham.  The group games went well with comfortable wins over South Dartmoor (15-5) Dawlish (15-0) and Teignmouth (10-0).  We qualified for the Champions league where we played the winners of the other 3 groups. We lost to TBGS (0-5), Kingsbridge (0-5) and beat Coombeshead (5-0). We were extremely impressed with the students’ attitude on the day. To compete so well against such good teams demonstrates real progress in the standard of rugby being played at TA.

Overall we finished 3rd out of 16 with is a great achievement with only 4 club players.

Year 7 Cruise into Round 4

Our year 7 football team put on another outstanding performance beating ISCA college 9-0 to go through to the next round of the English Schools national cup. It was great to see the work we have been doing at training pay off on game day. The lads have shown a superb attitude to training since starting at TA and they are improving as a group all the time. We have goals from all over the team and have been solid at the back, again keeping a clean sheet. Let’s keep this attitude and belief going into the next round and see how far we can get in our first year.

Next week we enter the elite competition for the first time ever at Torquay Academy and we are looking forward to challenging ourselves against the best school teams in the UK.

Netball

This week year 7 competed in their second CVL tournament. The girls played well this week. We were very pleased to come away with 4 out of 4 wins. The girls have been training every week and the skills they have picked up as a team have really started to pay off and were evident this week.

Player of the tournament was Summer Connolly. Well done, Summer, and to all those who took part.

House Climbing

The house climbing finals for the year 8 took place on Wednesday at Exeter’s clip and climb centre. Students have been training and competing on TA’s fantastic new climbing wall for qualifying places. The event involved practising on all the different climbing walls before racing on the speed wall. Students had 2 speed races each with their fastest time counting. Congratulations to all the students involved as they all gained points for their houses. Below are the results for the top 3 boys and girls.

Girls
1st- Sky Warner – Kitson
2nd-Ellie Chammings – Harrison
3rd- Rose Bradly – Fawcett

Boys
1st- Will Green – Brunel
2nd- Steven Jeffs – Fawcett
3rd- Nikodem Piasecki – Christie

Tammy Tumbles to a Bronze Medal

This weekend Tammy Westacott (7K) competed in a gymnastics south-west tumbling competition, which in itself is a huge achievement for her having just come back from a bad elbow dislocation injury! Tammy competed really well and won a bronze medal!  Congratulations, Tammy!

Student of the Week

Students of the week with me this week are: Jacob Mason, Natasha Gregory, Jasmine Powell, Mia Sharman, Leo Murray, Nisha Cosslett

House Stars of the Week

Year 7

Brunel –

Christie – Harvey Wootton

Darwin – Maddie Coulter

Fawcett – Esme Brabon

Harrison – Olivia Kirby

Kitson – Aj Alexander

Nearne – Lilly John

Pengelly – Clara Gooderham

Year 8

Brunel – Hayden Gibson Roche

Christie – James Scrimgeour

Darwin – Ethan Sanders

Fawcett – Lily-May Bruton

Harrison – Oscar Bidmead

Kitson – Anna Brailsford Dunn

Nearne – Nikita Howells

Pengelly – Erin Allen

Year 9

Brunel – Bethany Stockton

Christie – Maddie Hele

Darwin – Gareth Mufford

Fawcett – Boris Pugh

Harrison – Indi Johnson

Kitson – Teah Gaisford

Nearne – Leo Dunkley

Pengelly – Charlie Nunn

Homework Stars of the Week

Year 7

Brunel –

Christie –  Riyan Riyan

Darwin – Jessica Taylorson

Fawcett –  Finley Herbert

Harrison –  Joe Hosking

Kitson –  Caden Somerset

Nearne – Sajor Camara

Pengelly – Harry Russell

Year 8

Brunel –  Matylda Bednarska

Christie –  Phoebe Staples

Darwin -Charlie Pope

Fawcett – Phoebe Lown

Harrison – Sam Charman

Kitson –

Nearne – Callum Edwards

Pengelly –  Joshua Nagy

Year 9

Brunel –  Jonah Handford

Christie –  Elisha Perrow

Darwin –

Fawcett – Ben Eales

Harrison – Emily Coates

Kitson –   Umeiko Melodious

Nearne –  Abi Jones

Pengelly – Lottie Hodgson