It’s been such a strange end to the term.  In a piece I wrote for the school newspaper (due out tomorrow) I used the footballing analogy of  ‘a game of two halves’,  for those of you new to the phrase, it can be explained quite simply - a match that has a drastically different feel and result in the first and second halves, due to a change in formation or a key event impacting on the way the game is remembered.  Often with all the good one team does in the first half being obscured by the events of the second and therefore totally forgotten about. I am acutely aware that ‘a game of two halves’ could easily be the epithet assigned to the Lent term of 2020.

However, even the recent tumult hasn’t dampened our team spirit.  We have come together magnificently over these past few weeks and it really has made me proud.  Many thanks for the massive part you have played in this; at a time of great stress you have all been really understanding and supportive.  There’s more to follow on the adjustments we need to make with regards to our remote schooling and I have had some very sensible feedback from parents to help here.  I will communicate these before the start of the new term. 

Finally, you’ll all receive a separate letter from our chairman, Aatif Hassan, and myself, outlining how we can support each other further over the next few months and beyond in terms of school fees for the summer term and the academic year 2020-2021.  I am convinced that united, we will get through this and hope that we will be able to celebrate together during the summer term.

Keep safe and keep healthy,

Richard

Dear families,

What a week!

This week's newsletter is a long one, don't forget to click on the 'view the entire message' link at the end of the page to make sure you don't miss anything.

Our students have coped remarkably well - resilience and flexibility are skills that will last them a lifetime.  Forgetting the online learning for a moment, the most important thing is that your families all stay well.

Aside from the health challenge that we all face, we now need to adapt our daily lives as  the freedom we take for granted becomes limited (for socially responsible reasons).  This will be especially tricky for teenagers who love to gather in open spaces once the sun comes out.

Are we really only three days of ‘virtual schooling’ in?  It has proved to me that technology can not replace human interaction.  We need people, we learn from each other, we become richer in each others’ company.  Although this may be tested as we all work from our homes together, we really must rejoice in family and friendship.  I’m already looking forward to the times I can share with my siblings and friends in the near future.

We are missing your children and the pleasure of teaching them and interacting with them in the classroom.  Thank you for all the support you have been giving students at home and for the patience you have shown.  We knew there may be some teething problems and we are all learning together.  This week has shown what hard workers Sancton Wood students are - taking their work seriously, posting immediately and  keeping each others’ spirits up through google hangouts.  I appreciate that many of you are trying to juggle supporting your children with your own home working too.  Not an easy task  - I now have three working adults and two full time students at home.

On Friday I will be joining a meeting about remote learning and how we can best teach your children remotely and protect their mental health and look after their pastoral needs.  We really do want to support our students through this journey and for them to become thoughtful adults when they look back and reflect on these unusual times.

Stay home, stay safe and healthy, exercise, enjoy the fresh air and let’s all keep washing our hands.  We send love and best wishes to you and yours.

Have a good Easter.

Debra King

Follow our sports team on Instagram @: Sws_sport or Google Classroom for a Daily ‘BEAT THE TEACHER’ Challenge.

Upload onto Google Classroom or Instagram to show your challenges!

Remember, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose; what matters is taking part (or if you beat the teacher)!

A special mention must be made to Y11

These are our stars of the week - the whole group, for coping so well with the news that their exams are not happening in the way they were expecting and for keeping on going.  They will get the grades they deserve if they persevere with their learning.

What a blow it must be for them that the traditional route to success is now not the option but we will ensure that we allow them to produce their very finest work and receive the grades they deserve.

Y11 News

We will be arranging an online assessment to help with grade predictions in the near future and we hope students will have further assessments in school. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16NHBzWlGC0tdY-1SCPXLGrtBABcSolMbKhxiQ2unnlE/edit

Key Stage 4 News

Teaching of Y10 and Y11 History - we are delighted that Mrs Woko will be continuing to teach these classes for the summer term.  In addition and for continuity Mrs Woko will also be teaching her current Y11 English class.

Ms Lord will be taking over as Y10 form tutor for the summer term.

KS3 News

Our new History teacher, Ms Walker will take over History teaching  for Y7,Y8 and Y9.  Ms Walker will also continue with her current Y8 English teaching group.

English teaching for Easter term

Ms Lord has returned to full health and will be teaching a Y7 class, Y8 class and Y9.  She will also resume teaching  her Y10 English class and supporting the English team with Y11.

Mrs Corpas has set up a parallel google classroom called "For the Love of Geography; geography extension with Mrs Corpas" for her students in years 9 and 10 who want to extend and enrich their knowledge of geography. Among the 15 volunteers who plan to go on virtual field trips, debate contemporary geography issues and undertake voluntary research assignments was Aaron. He was set the task of looking at river processes and granite scenery in Yosemite using this link: https://vrglaciers.wp.worc.ac.uk/wordpress/tuolumne-meadows-virtual-field-trip/ and he took it a step further, completely of his own initiative with a fantastic exploration of fluvial (river) processes in Yosemite National Park. It is so interesting to explore these places from the comfort of our own homes. Google Earth is a firm favourite.

Young Medics….

This new lunchtime club started in early November 2019 with 3 members. As news has circulated we have now grown to 7 students in regular attendance. All students are in Year 10 and have some interest in pursuing a medical career, from studying medicine at University, to forensic Science, Pathology or Psychiatry. In just over a term we have already covered so much and wanted to share a few details about what goes on.

ANATOMY

Skeletons

We have been learning the names of the bones in different parts of the skeleton. The approach taken is both collaborative and competitive using an online learning tool called Whack-a-bone. You are able to build up experience through practise and by watching others but have to get fast enough to score enough points to progress to the next level. We are all now really confident in naming the larger bones in the human skeleton.

Eyes

In addition we studied the eye over a couple of weeks - firstly to learn about its structure and the names of various parts of the eye - followed by watching a bull's eye being dissected.

DISEASE

Inherited disorders

Each student at Young medics was asked to research and prepare a presentation to the group on an inherited disorder which interested them. There were a wide variety of diseases researched and included Down Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Disease and Polydactyly and Ecterodactyly. This gave us an opportunity to also look at some mechanisms of inheritance and genetic crosses, a unit normally studied in Y11 GCSE Biology.

Corona Virus

We have taken a few opportunities to keep ourselves updated on the outbreak of Covid 19 and worked to keep the group informed about the nature of this virus and how it might be spread. The BBC documentaries have been really helpful and Mrs Ainscough has also shared some research that she did.

FIRST AID

We recapped the essentials of attending an incident recalling DR-ABC. We have some resuscitation dummies kindly provided by The British Heart Foundation and using these we discussed and practiced CPR techniques including rescue breaths and chest compressions.

PREPARING FOR SIXTH FORM AND MEDICAL APPLICATIONS

Personal Qualities

Each student has their own notebook to record activities from Young Medics in - rather like a diary. Many students find writing a personal statement a difficult thing to do and yet in the early part of the next academic year our current Y10s will need to do this to apply for sixth form colleges. This process will then soon be repeated to apply for a place at University. For this reason we have spent some sessions reflecting on the qualities expected or useful for our desired profession (medicine). We then spent time thinking about what we do which can provide evidence of those skills or qualities. This will be a work in progress for several months but we hope it proves useful for those personal statements.

UKCAT or BMAT

Another activity we have explored was to discuss the entry requirements for Medical Schools. All medical courses require that applicants pass a clinical aptitude test. We have sourced a selection of the types of questions posed in these tests and as well as practising the questions we have analysed approaches. These tests are not easy but we hope that with exposure they will become more accessible.

DofE

Some of our students are registered for the Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award. They are able to use the skills they learn at Young Medics to count towards the skills section of the award.

VISITING SPEAKERS

We were so lucky to have such great visiting speakers during STEM week in Early March. If you work in a medical field or know of someone who can help and would like to volunteer some time to come and talk to Young Medics please get in touch with Mrs Ainscough (rachael.ainscough@sanctonwood.co.uk)

Chemistry News from Dr Kay

Y7 and Y8: The on-line teaching was off to a flying start this week with the Year 7 and 8 and 9 eagerly logging on as soon as the school day started. By the end of the day we counted 90% engagement and 75% completion of the work set. In Chemistry students were to study a PowerPoint presentation and complete two on-line revision tasks. Each task contained a clue to a puzzle which was eventually solved by all with a flurry of ‘Yay! and emojis’. In Year 8 Jordan was the first to complete all the work followed by Eric, Elise, Guy, Henry, Lukas, Giulia… The excitement was palpable! Y10 students did us proud again by completing and submitting the work within the scheduled lesson time. Antonio was the first to solve the Easter egg challenge beating Sanika by one minute (sorry Sanika), closely followed by Justin and Joseph.

Y9: It was very encouraging to see that some students teamed up with peers to complete the work: ‘This e-mail is on behalf of Maddie and I because Maddie’s internet is very slow’ arrived 15 minutes into the lesson as both Ellie and Maddie had completed the first task and were asking for guidance on the second task.

Day 1 was very rewarding indeed. By Day 2 a few of us teachers were beginning to master recording our PowerPoint presentations and the Y11 were sent a full Chemistry Unit revision pack complete with 3 revision videos, interactive on-line material, on-line self-assessed tests and levelled exam question papers.

There is still a lot to learn and many details to iron out but students need to be congratulated for their willingness to adapt and the level of patience and professionalism shown during the past two days. Y11 are to be commended for their determination and utter professionalism considering how many changes have taken place in the past few days. Malak. Louie, Sophie, Lucas and Martha (to name but a few) have kept up their daily 10 minutes a day revision programme and Martha completed an assessed task under test conditions during the normal time of the lesson. The groundwork has been laid for a productive time with on-line learning.

Creative Arts News

Year 10 drama students, luckily, were able to perform their practical coursework before the school closure. They chose, learnt and performed their monologues which account for 20% of their GCSE and I could not be more proud of them. Truly wonderful performances! Well done Year 10 !!!!

Fantastic effort from students trying to learn and experience drama in a very different way. Special mention to Carla di Fiore for completing her Greek Theatre presentation so brilliantly already!

Year 11 have had the most difficult time and I am so impressed with those of you who have persevered and continued your drama studies under such uncertain times.  Have a well earned break and then be back ready to complete some timed assessments with me after the holiday. These will be online  in our usual lesson times. We must ensure we have the evidence we need to get you those excellent results you deserve!

Thank you to Nathan, Bea, Lottie and Johnny for sharing their lovely performances with us under such unique circumstances for the online Easter Service!

Year 8 Music students have been busily writing their own songs and Year 7 are developing their working knowledge of the pentatonic scale!

Year 11 music students also managed to record their exam performances before we became an online community and excellent performances they were too.

Year 10 music students had their first online lesson this week and collaborated on a shared message board to plan an answer to a question on The Beatles songs they have been studying up to now. (see below)

Just before we went online Year 9 began some work on computer game music and you can listen to some of their work here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ydQCbzL44jS6cppLH_ViAgrDn0x6Zg_p

Mrs Alton and Mrs Worker have received some fantastic art work and are working on a format to set up an online gallery to share these images. For now a google drive has been set up as a temporary solution - students are invited to upload images of their work onto their year group folder. This is a great way to share ideas and celebrate their success.

Special mention to Selina in Year 10 who has made a cracking start to her Unit 2 Art coursework.

All GCSE Art students are encouraged to keep in touch and send images of their progress..

Sophie in Year 7 has created an outstanding sketchbook referencing the formal elements.

Maya Roberts  in Year 7 has produced a well observed line drawing of a tree - well done!

Ben in Year 8 has created a excellent Day of the Dead composition

Vicky in Year 9 has made an excellent start to her formal elements project

Everyone - keep your eyes peeled - we may not be together right now, but we will make sure there are plenty of performance opportunities to prepare for in the coming weeks - watch this space!

Mrs Robinson, Dr Armitage, Mrs Cooper, Mrs Alton and Mrs Worker.

Y10 and Y11 students - online career experience programmes

InvestIN Education will be providing some of its most popular career experience programmes live and online in April for students aged 15-18. These programmes give students the opportunity to gain crucial career coaching in a live, interactive environment, from home.

They will be delivered by top professionals who will be on-hand throughout to answer students' questions live from London.

The Young Investment Banker Programme: 18th April

The Young Engineer Programme: 19th April

The Young Doctor Programme: 25th April

The Young Psychologist Programme: 26th April

Despite the lockdown, Year 10 Classicists found themselves perusing the Parthenon Gallery in the British Museum on Tuesday morning! We explored the original pediments, friezes, metopes after we constructed our own mini model in last week’s lesson (as shown in the image).

It is easy to think that Classics and Latin might be subjects that technology is incompatible with but we’re looking forward to trialling new ways of bringing the ancient world closer and to life over the next few weeks!

If you want to virtually visit some popular museums for some light escapism, follow these links to the British Museum (London), The Louvre (Paris), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) & the Vatican Museums (Vatican City).

Mrs Pankhania & Miss Hambly

Y8

Well done to Year 8, who have been keeping on top of their classwork with such good humour! Thank you to everyone involved, students and parents, for keeping to good routines, taking self-care breaks and transitioning to online learning with such ease.

Do remember, Year 8, your form Google Hangouts are a way for you to stay in touch with us and your peers. Stay safe and well, and have a lovely break when you get there!

Mrs Ainscough, Dr Kay & Mrs Pankhania

Y9 Maths

Well done to Ted, Skye, Leia, Gabriel, Lottie, Jessica for not just keeping up with their work in maths fantastically but helping each other with challenging issues on Inequalities.Brilliant!

What a team spirit!

Y10

Year 10AN Form agreed to  launch a planting and possibly a poem competition soon. Wow!

Well done Harry, Stella, Libby, Justin, Max, Antonio, Rosy, Sid for posting  encouraging, lifting messages, pictures and poems.

We are so proud of you!