It was a real privilege to work with Sarah from Social Fabric again last week, making new fabric banners to help launch our Tallis at 50 celebrations. A dedicated team of boys from Year 8 worked hard over two days, cutting stencils and screen printing onto the banners with Sarah's expert help. The banners will appear in various forms over the next academic year. See if you can spot the people and places that have helped to shape our history. More pictures here.
In this newsletter
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Dear Tallis family
As we approach the end of the Summer 1 half term, we have had to learn all sorts of new skills to go with the old ones! Governors met for one of their strategy planning sessions on Saturday last, and set us a range of tasks. These include student voice, IT development, lockdown insights, work on race and gender and whether the online parents evenings are an improvement or not! I’ll be contacting you about some of those, especially the last question, before the summer holidays.
It’s a good time, therefore, to be thinking about the future. At the very end of this year we’ll be launching the programme for Tallis is 50, our birthday year. We hope to celebrate past and present, think about the man Tallis himself and ready ourselves for the next 50 years. Those of you who were Tallis students yourselves might have memories and photos that would be good to see – or even perhaps not-so-good memories we can learn from. I’ll be putting out a call for parts of our history in July!
Thank you for your support, and I hope the weather is kind over half term. We could all do with a bit of sun.
Yours
Carolyn Roberts, Head
Don't forget to read the latest blog post in Mrs Roberts writes, a regular column about school life.
This half term's Tallis Habits focus has been imaginative. Next half term we invite our whole community to reflect on those habits of mind that they have exercised this year and which might need further strengthening through deliberate practice.
New Zones for Years 9 and 10 after half term If you are the parent or carer of a Y9, your child will now need to be on site, in their new zone on the concourse for 8.45am, and they will enter through the top field gate by the main entrance, and they will finish their school day at 3.25pm, unless they have XFN, a club to attend, or a sanction.
If you are the parent or carer of a Y10 student, your child will now need to be on site, in their new zone on the basketball court for 8.30am, and they will enter through the bottom field gate opposite Aldi, and they will finish their school day at 3.15pm, unless they have XFN, a club to attend, or a sanction.
Tom Williams, Assistant Head
Physics Olympics!
Jenny Duckworth in Year 13 recently obtained a top Gold award in Round 1 of the Physics Olympiad. She then did brilliantly in Round 2 finishing in the top 14 students in the UK. She subsequently was offered a place on the prestigious training camp for the UK team organised by Oxford University. Although she missed out on a place in the 5 strong student team, this is a magnificent academic achievement! Jenny has been offered a place to read Natural Sciences at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University next year.
Here she writes…
"Due to my performance in the Physics Olympiad, I was invited to take part in a 5-day physics training camp in the Easter holidays from which five of the group would be selected to compete in the International Physics Olympiad this summer. Normally this camp would be held in Oxford but unfortunately this year it was virtual. While I wasn't selected for the team, I really enjoyed the experience, which involved lectures and problem solving on physics topics I will study next year at university, such as thermodynamics, electromagnetism and relativity."
Promoting the importance of students’ vocabulary has been a whole school focus for the past few years, as research shows that explicit teaching can have a huge impact on student confidence and progression. In order to support this further, we have been promoting four whole school Words of the Month during May.
For May, our four words were:
Dyna – a Greek word root meaning power
Arguably – a discourse marker that will improve your academic writing. It shows you are being tentative (open-minded) and considering more than one idea.
Pungent - a Tier 2 descriptive adjective, meaning ‘having a strong taste or smell’
Omniscient - a Tier 3 specialist word, meaning ‘all knowing.’
Please encourage your child to use these four Words of the Month in their lessons and beyond! We will be announcing our Words for June after half term.
Tallis Reads
A huge thank you to Ms. Shenton for a fantastic reading of the opening to ‘And The Mountains Echoed’ by Khaled Hosseini. You can watch again by following this link: https://tinyurl.com/TallisReads180521
Our final Tallis Reads of the half term will be delivered by Ms. Patel live on Tuesday 25th May at 8.40. Students will be watching it with their tutor groups, but you can watch it at home if you log on with your Tallis email address. The link is here: https://tinyurl.com/TallisReads250521.
Tallis Reads will return on Tuesday 15th June with a live reading by Mr. Wright.
Well Ahead
As part of Mental Health Awareness week, we wanted to signpost the National Literacy Trust Well Ahead page, an online platform which supports young people to look after their mental health. The site includes creative writing activities to promote a positive mindset, as well as a wellbeing reading list. The link is here: https://wordsforlife.org.uk/zone-in/well-ahead/
Check out our Mental Health Awareness display in the library (above).
eBooks and Audiobooks
Tallis has subscribed to eBooks and audiobooks which students can read on their browser or on the Sora app. If your child is isolating at home please encourage them to have a look at our collection. In addition to the wide variety of books on Sora, Tallis has an entire set of Diary of a Wimpy Kid in eBook format and The Harry Potter collection in audiobook format.
Use your School email address and password to log in
Enjoy reading our collection of eBooks and audiobooks
Library book returns
A gentle reminder to request your child to bring their overdue library books back, we will be available at the Year Group Zones to collect book returns.
Hay Festival
The 34th Hay Festival will be broadcast for free online from 26 May–6 June. The programme for schools which will run from 24th to 28th May has a number of exciting events including creative writing workshops, authors filmed on location and inspiring performances. To find out more about the programmes for secondary schools, click here.
