Year 7 News - 20th January 2017

Year 7 Newsletter – 20^th January 2017

Welcome back! I hope you had a lovely relaxing break over the winter holiday. I have attached some fun photos from the last day of term however it feels like such a long time ago as we have had such a busy start to the new term.

Both academic review evenings have been very successful with parents being able to see just how much the teaching staff care and support their children. It is as always a huge pleasure to teach such amazing students – we all feel very lucky to do the job we love with students who are so keen to learn.

We welcome two new students into Year 7 – Helena Zhang in 7A who joins us from Beijing and Elly Embly in 7B who joins us from Dubai. Both students have been made to feel welcome by our incredible students who always make people feel at ease immediately.

We start this term with a fresh form challenge. Last term 7A were the winners and they’re off to a flying start this term with two challenges already completed and in the lead already.

Just a quick reminder to let you know that the Temple Fair will be held in school on Sunday 22^nd January from 11-3pm – I hope to see you there to celebrate the new Chinese Year. And as we break up for the Chinese Holiday, some of our students are off to Iceland with Miss Cuskin. I wish them all a safe journey whilst they make memories that will last them a life time.

Housepoints

In this newsletter, I must congratulate Anya Lu and Garance Roule (both from 7C) for achieving 100 house points – this is a fantastic achievement and a testament to the sheer amount of hard work that you do in school. Well done to you both.

View from the classroom

This week the students Guidance lesson was entitled “Getting on with others” particularly focusing on getting on with parents and siblings. They were given some homework on the ten top tips for diffusing any potential confrontations with parents and it has been lovely to see the students returning to school to stick in the tips that they used into their Guidance books.

In History both in Mr. Guiney and Miss Cuskin’s class they are focusing on “How and why did castles change across time?” The students have loved being involved in different team tasks; from making models, to creating castles on Minecraft to being super silent sleuths with presentation work.

In ICT Mr. Rasool has been teaching how to use spreadsheets, in particular formulas within the spreadsheet. The students in 7A were clearly challenged in this lesson as they were working together to work out what some of the formulas meant.

Thanks to Mrs. Howell who sent me a brilliant picture of Ben van der Putten winning at a swimming meet – well done Ben!

Student Reporters

These are from 7B this time, who have given us an insight into some of their lessons.

Mahaut Barral - Maths

In Mathematics we learned about standard form. Standard Form is when you you have lots of zeros just for one number then you count the zeros and put the number of zero as the power of zero.

Kaiyao Jiang - Languages (French)

It was very impressive that everyone was working well as it was very fun when we learnt how to do present tense in French. It was a wonderful unit about learning French we learnt many new and exciting things.

Mia Dajani-Keenan – Art

In Art we have been copying and sketching out Gargoyles. It’s a fun but hard lesson but Mrs. Proctor did say she would challenge 7B this year. Before the holidays we had drawn out our gargoyles then in the lesson we had shaded in some of the places to make out picture more realistic. Our whole class can’t wait to see what we will be doing next with our gargoyles.

Araya Richards – PE

This week we have been learning about volleyball. We learnt how to serve on the court line then doing short distance, working our way up the full court. The following lesson, we did a warm up including dynamic stretches and pulse rashes followed by a full match. We were in four groups of four and two groups of five. We were allowed two turns of serving - if we don't get it the first time and only letting it bounce once. Altogether we played three matches and then got changed. It was great.

Jefferson Chen – Drama

We had a lot of fun in drama this week. We were learning about Romeo and Juliet. We had done a lot of activity for the final big play and so far all the activities that Mr. Bradshaw has created involves in getting a lot of house points. The activity that I enjoyed most was when we are trying to create the tension between the two families (Montage and Capulet). We were split into two groups and pretended that we were the two families. We succeeded and we all loved that lesson.

Emma Lubrano – Music

This week in Music, 7B have learned how to play and figure out chords on the piano. After having mastered all types of chords (major, minor and diminished) we started to look at improvising. To get us more familiar with it, Mr. Bailey showed us a video from a Juilliard band. The saxophonist was improvising on one note! We had lots of fun.

Coming up in the next newsletter will have student reporters from 7C. We look forward to reading their highlights.

Upcoming dates are:

26^th Jan – Chinese New Year Dress up day + break up for holiday

27^th Jan – 3^rd Feb – Iceland trip

6^th Feb – School re-opens [Week A]

24^th Feb – STEAM Day 2

8^th Mar – 17^th Mar – Secondary Assessment Cycle 2

20^th Mar – School photos – more details to follow

27^th Mar – 30^th Mar – Into the Woods School Production – more details to follow

31^st Mar – Last day of Term 2

I wish you lots of happiness, health and prosperity in the Year of the Rooster.

Paula Alderson

Year 7 Leader