Headteacher’s Blog – 20th January 2023
Schools are hives of activity and if you’d been able to see into every area of school at precisely 10.30a.m. on Thursday, celebrating a moment in time, you’d have seen the evidence.
Over in PE, Year 8 were engaged in inter-form badminton with Mr. Field, learning about working individually to achieve a goal as a team whilst also developing a sense of belonging and responsibility as part of a form group. An excellent way to develop resilience in a sporting context.
Meanwhile in Science with Miss Camy, Year 9 were learning what happens to animal cells when they are put in different concentrations of sugar solution; burst, shrivel or stay the same. Mrs. Hutchinson was working in the prep room to make sure all of the different sugar solutions were ready for the required practical next week. Year 11 Physicists with Mr. Errington were engaged with equations of motion whilst Mrs. Weston was supporting Year 9 students in Biology, learning about osmosis; hypertonic, hypotonic and isotonic.
In English, Mrs. Wellock reports that ‘Year 8 students were gripped when reading ‘Brother in the Land’ as a shocking explosion and death left then wondering what will happen next and how will Danny (our protagonist) survive now?’ Meanwhile, Mr. Cockerill was reading and marking students’ drafts of their non-fiction piece about Mount Everest before they redraft it.
In Computing, Mrs. Knock and Year 8 were refreshing their understanding of binary numbers, changing decimal numbers into binary and back. Over in MFL, with Madame Reed, Year 8 were learning the immediate future tense and saying what they were going to eat and drink.
In RE, Mr. Woodward reports that ‘Y9 were discovering what support St James’ Church offers the local community as we try to work out whether religious buildings should be sold to help people living in poverty or not.’ Along the Humanities corridor, Mrs. Bauwens and Year 9 were looking at how the rainforest ecosystem works. They used key vocabulary learnt in science to describe how living and non-living parts of this biodiverse ecosystem are linked together.
Year 7 were exploring Surrealism in Drama by looking how our dreams skew our concept of reality. At 10.30a.m. they were watching a very creative and imaginative performance! Mrs. Coates was supporting a group of students who were acting out a scene as a Victorian reporter.
Mrs. Flowers was offering an extra session for NEA 1 for GCSE students who have recently been ill and missed their lessons. Alongside this, Mrs. Leeming was supporting a student to carry out an investigation of different flours and the starch content in them.
Discussing prejudice in PSHCE with Mrs. Murphy, Year 7 considered which things you can change about yourself and which things cannot be changed.
Mrs. Cummins was exploring methods for drawing linear graphs whilst Mr. Richardson was covering a Year 10 Maths group who were finding the equation of a straight line from the gradient and a point.
Up in the SEN base, Mrs. Thompson was supporting a student and Mrs. Collings was carrying out a Dyslexia Gold Literacy Intervention with a small group of Year 7 students.
Miss Stamper was working with the school council who have decided to raise money for Ukraine. One way that they want to do that is to learn Ukrainian. Over in the Bungalow our counsellor, Mrs. Buckley, was working with students along with the Wellbeing in Mind team.
Mrs. Town was having a telephone meeting with an Educational Psychologist to discuss how best to support students. At the main office the admin team were answering the phones, accepting deliveries and administering First Aid whilst the catering team were preparing the mid-morning break snacks! I had the pleasure of doing On-call, walking around the school, and going in and out of classrooms watching all of these excellent activities taking place.
In other news this week, we were delighted to be awarded the Runners Up trophy for a Tenpin bowling event held in York, particularly exciting as this is the first time that Boroughbridge High School has entered such an event. Well done to all and to Harvey who scored more than 100!
Have a lovely weekend!