What a wonderful celebration of our community Open Evening was on Wednesday evening! It was fantastic that so many of your children volunteered to return to school, looking smart and eager to talk to prospective TKA families about their experiences. Visiting parents were full of praise, and so many of our staff have commented on how wonderful it was to see the interactions between our students and the younger pupils. As I hope you know, we are firm believers that developing these social skills, manners and respect for other members of the community is a crucial part of students’ education at TKA.
Outreach into the community is being developed as part of our ‘Going Beyond’ programme for Year 9. This week 9G hosted a group of students from Strathmore School with learning disabilities. Together they created a cafe in the canteen, and shared and practised skills relating to preparing food and drink, purchasing items at a till and socialising together at meal-time. Further opportunity to celebrate our diverse community is embedded into Y7 ‘Going Beyond’ with 7G attending Shree Ghanapathy Temple in Wimbledon to learn more about the Hindu faith. On Sunday, Jewish members of our community will begin celebrating their new year, so we wish them a happy Rosh Hashanah. This important festival marks the date that Jewish people believe that God created the world, and provides an opportunity for believers to reflect and pray. We wish all those marking this event a happy and peaceful start to the new year.
With very best wishes Ms C Venter
Head of School
Key Dates in TKA's Calendar 2022-23
Please see attached TKA's dates for this calendar year.
Summer Reading Challenge
The author of our Summer Reading Challenge for Y7, Andy Mulligan, visited our school on Tuesday 20th September. He regaled all of Y7 with brilliant and moving tales about the Philippines, the inspiration behind his book 'Trash'. He worked with two groups of pupils in fun and creative workshops where they created characters for some short stories. Finally, he helped Ms On judge (with great difficulty) the three competitions for our Summer Reading Challenge - details to follow!
PE & Sport Roundup
Welcome to the weekly round up of PE & Sport at TKA. Firstly this week a massive well done to; Otto DJ (Y9), Albert K (Y8), Izzy C (Y8) & Joseph S (Y7) who have qualified to compete in the London Mini Marathon for Kingston. Well done to all, we are super proud of you and know you will run a great race on mini marathon day.
This week has seen our competitive fixtures kick off. At the time of writing I am eagerly awaiting the results from the U14 Girls ESFA Cup match vs Kingsdale and the Y7 boys debut match vs KGS. Unfortunately, our Y10 boys lost a tight match against Rutlish School 3-1 this week in the ESFA cup, a battling display did not bring about the right result.
In the PE department we do not offer opportunities to just participate, we run a number of leadership opportunities. Firstly in the coming weeks Y8 & Y9 students will have the opportunity to apply to become lunchtime leaders at Fern Hill. The role involves students leading small group activities for the Fern Hill students during their lunch break, where the leaders will develop their organisational, communication and creativity skills. Please look out for notices in the coming weeks on how to apply to be a ‘Fern Hill lunchtime leader’.
Furthermore, we run a female only sports leadership programme through the Youth Sports Trust and Sports Leaders organisation called ‘Your Time to Move’. The programme aims to develop female sports leaders alongside increasing competitive sporting opportunities for females. The programme will be open for Y9 female students to apply and they will undertake six online learning modules with regular meetings with the course leader. The programme will end with a showpiece event delivered to a number of Y7 girls. Please look out for notices in the coming weeks on how to apply to be a ‘Your Time to Move’ leader.
Mr Waters, Director of PE & Sport
Next Week's Fixtures
Monday
Y11 Boys: ESFA Cup vs Harris Wimbledon (Away): 3.40pm KO
Y7 Girls: Surrey Cup vs The Matthew Arnold School (Away): 3.30pm KO
Tuesday
U13 Girls: ESFA vs Orleans Park: (Away) DWA 2pm KO
Wednesday
U15 Girls: Surrey Cup vs Rosebery School (Home): 3.45pm KO
Y9 Boys: Friendly vs Hollyfield (Home): 3.30pm KO
GCSEPod
All pupils in Years 10 and 11 have access to an amazing resource called GCSEPod which breaks down their GCSE courses into short videos that they can access on any internet-enabled device. The videos use lots of key language that students need for their exams and are a great support throughout the course. We encourage all students to engage with GCSEPod.
To help maximise home learning using GCSEPod, they have created this 4-minute video for parents/carers and are hosting a free webinar on 6th October - further details and registration are here.
If your child is having difficulty accessing this fantastic resource, please contact Mr Holmes.
Young Carers
Is your child a Young Carer for someone at home? Perhaps they help look after someone at home with:
A sensory impairment
A long-term illness
A physical or learning disability
A drug or alcohol problem
Mental ill health
If you think that this applies to your child, and you haven’t done so already, please complete this Google Form. We have around 40 Young Carers who are known to us, however we also know that that number will be much higher.
We work closely with Kingston Young Carers Project who come in once a month for lunch with our Young Carers. Kingston YCP is a fantastic organisation that has a weekly youth club and provides excursions and activities to the Young Carers that they support. If your child is a Young Carer and you haven’t signed up yet, do consider registering with KYCP.
In school we run a weekly Young Carers Club after school on Tuesdays in Pupil Support.
If you would like any further information please contact Mr Holmes or Ms Jacques.
Support for low level anxiety and/or low mood
Due to our membership of the Mental Health Support Team we are fortunate to have an Education Wellbeing Practitioner based in TKA one day each week, doing group work and supporting individual pupils who are experiencing low level anxiety and/or low mood. Click here for more information. If you think that this would be a helpful service for your child, please complete this referral form.
Talking to your child about online sexual harrassment: A Guide for Parents
The Children's Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza DBE, has recently published a guidance document for parents/carers helping to support them to understand online sexual harassment.
The commissioner's team brought together a group of 16 - 21 year olds and asked them talk about what they think parents should know, and what they should say to their children when talking about sexualised bullying and the pressures of growing up online.
The report and poster 'The things I wish my parents had known…' can be downloaded here.
Organisations Offering Support to Families
Please click on the link to access a number of organisations for support.
