EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
A MESSAGE FROM THE HEADTEACHER A warm welcome to our second newsletter of the year. As I reflect on my first term at Abbot Beyne School I think all of the things that have been different this year, however ultimately the focus on learning and teaching and student achievement remains the same.
I want to thank you for your continued support of the school. It has been a challenging year for everybody and I thank you for your understanding and patience. Compared to local and national secondary school figures we do appear to have had fewer Covid-19 cases but I still recognise the impact of asking students to self-isolate and remote learning has on families. As you are aware we have closed a day early for the Christmas holidays to further minimise contact between students to try to ensure everybody can enjoy the break.
I have had a number of telephone calls with parents this term to try and receive some feedback about the school. Overwhelmingly this feedback has been positive. In particular parents have been impressed with the level of communication. To further enhance this we will be developing next term a parent and student app to keep you up to date with your child’s education and progress at the school. Please keep an eye on your emails for further details.
To support learning and teaching at the school we are going to make a slight change to our behaviour policy. All students should bring their iPads to school, fully charged. For any student that fails to do this we will be issuing an after school detention. We do not want staff and other students’ time being wasted in lessons with students who do not come fully prepared for their lessons.
I want to finish by saying how much I have enjoyed my first term at the school. I have really enjoyed getting to know staff, students and the local community. It has been strange and whilst we are not doing all of the normal enrichment activities it does take away some of the fun from school, on the whole our students have adapted wonderfully well.
Can I wish you and your family a wonderful and relaxing Christmas and New Year and I look forward to seeing our students return to school on Tuesday 5th January 2021.
JAMIE TICKLE
G O V E R N O R N E W S
Dear Parents/Carers I write to you at the end of our first term of the 2020/21 school year and thankfully after the most incredible last nine months. I hope most of you, like me, can begin to see some light at the end of the long Covid tunnel we have been in since March.
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EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
When we go back to this time last year we were all looking forward to our Christmas & New Year, but little did we know what 2020 had in store for us; fast forward to March this year and none of us were expecting this new virus that we had never heard of, to have such an impact across every aspect of our lives, in particular our children’s education. I hope after all of the difficulties between March and the end of the last school year, that you were just as relived as we were to welcome back students to Abbot Beyne in September. So yes, things are a little different in school and yes we are having to be very vigilant on a day-to-day basis but the most important thing of all is staff getting back to educating children face-to-face on a daily basis. Let me therefore please send my thanks to students, staff and parents/carers for how they have embraced the changes that we have had to make within the school to keep things as Covid secure as possible. Whilst we had some cases of Covid in the school and it is clear that everybody is always vigilant for the slightest possible case, we have done really well to manage cases across the school and indeed have never had what is determined by the County Council as an ‘outbreak’ across the school. Only one year of students has been out for one week to self-isolate due to a number of positive cases and that’s a result I think, that we can be very proud of the efforts made by students and staff to keep things as normal and focused as possible in the last 4 months. So, as we enter the Christmas and New Year holiday period, let me wish you all from the Governors a very restful but more importantly safe time with your families. Please try to maintain the levels of hygiene and common sense that clearly our students and staff have managed in regards to the virus over the last few months, so we can hopefully welcome back all of the students and staff on the 5th January to look forward to a far more positive year in 2021 as we see the light at the end of the tunnel become wider and wider. Best regards!
Ian Livingston – Chair of Governors
S I X T H F O R M N E W S
YOUNG PROFESSIONALS CONFERENCE On Thursday 12th November, the whole of Year 12 took part in an online Young Professionals Conference. From the sessions we attended, there were 11 people from 11 different businesses who spoke to us. Some of these businesses were HSBC, Vodafone, the RAF and BP. Hearing from such a wide range of businesses gave us ideas on what we may want to do in the future. Some of these people were high up in management and told us how they got there and the responsibilities that they have to take on.
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EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
The Young Professionals Conference has benefitted me in numerous different ways. It’s given me an instant insight into what I could be interested in doing in the future and the paths to get there. Before the conference, I didn’t have a single idea of what I wanted to do in the future. I now know, because of the day, that I want a career to do with business. I have only realised this because of what the people in the Young Professionals Conference were advising us about. Many of my classmates also found the day very helpful too. “It helped me realise that my career journey may not go from A to B straight away”. So overall, the day benefitted us and gave people a better idea of what they want to do in the future as a career. By Morgan Crew in Year 12
S T E M N E W S
MATHS WEEK ENGLAND As you may be aware we took part in The Maths England event from the 9th-14th November. Years 7-10 really bought into it and we have seen some wonderful engagement figures. An email has been sent to the winners so please celebrate with your child if they were one of those to receive recognition. We would also like to celebrate that Years 9-10 combined, to place the school 20th in the country in the managing M-fluencers competition – a fantastic result we are very proud of achieving!
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DESMOS PLATFORM During Maths Week England, a competition was run for all years involving the use of an online graphing software to create art. Although, we are still waiting to hear the result we are incredibly proud of three entries we received and would like to share them with you. The participants were in years 7, 8, 9 & 10 and they used the Desmos Platform to create pictures with a massively impressive commitment of time and effort. Please join us in congratulating them.
SIGNING UP TO SENECA All work can be accessed on SHOWBIE for all students. Please remember that this is not just found on iPads. Under the current restrictions we are not able to carry out whole class practicals using heating equipment or chemicals. Instead we are carrying out demonstrations and streaming these on the whiteboard and/or videoing them for students to watch on the SHOWBIE lessons. We have also adopted a few interactive websites and apps to enable some online practical experience to take place. I will keep you informed as when we can change and go back to our preferred way of working.
Homework for all year groups will consist of an online learning tool called Tassomai. Please ask your child to show you their Tassomai account and how it works. Until half term the Tassomai algorithm uses all questions from all topics, (some of which your child will not yet been taught), however, after half term only the topics they have either been or are being taught will form part of the questions. The importance is to get students into good learning habits and attempting to complete the Daily Goals (we recommend at 5 out of 7). This will enable your child to recall science facts and improve their overall attainment in this subject.
As well as Tassomai we are also using SENECA Learning to help consolidate learning. Again, please ask your child to show you their SENECA account and how the assignments work and what they do to complete the learning.
Both of these can be found on the web, at present only Tassomai is an app that is on your child’s iPad out of the two.
Your interest in this part of your child’s learning will enable them to improve in our subject.
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EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
For more information regarding SENECA Learning please use the following link http://abbotbeyne.staffs.sch.uk/learning-teaching/seneca
SIGNING UP TO SENECA Following on from the above article below is how you can sign up for a free SENECA account:-
Type into your search engine app.senecalearning.com/parent.
There is a handy 2 minute video to help get you started or you can read how to get your free account if you prefer.
If you have any questions about how SENECA works, you can get support from the SENECA Team using the live chat on their website or you can email them at [email protected].
We really hope that your find SENECA’s free parent account useful! If you have any queries then please do not hesitate to contact me at school, Mrs Lowe at [email protected].
Please see the letter below which was sent home earlier this term for further information.
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EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
TASSOMAI TOP TEN
CONGRATULATIONS!
AUTUMN TERM Year 7 Connor Tilley & Kaiya Jackson Year 8 Evie Winfield & Cyprian Stojek Year 9 Ella Gummow & Emily Dempsey Year 10 Katie Owen & George Springall Year 11 Eve Clay & Georgia Sutton
UK SPACE DESIGN COMPETITION The annual UK Space Design Competition (UKSDC) challenges four teams to compete against each other in an event where they must plan and design a theoretical space station on the surface of Mercury. It is a great opportunity to show your passion for your future employers in mathematics, engineering and astronomy by placing it on your CV. In the UKSDC, 100 people are divided into four teams, which are then divided into four engineering divisions (Structural, Operations, Human and Automation) which all must work together to create a presentation which will be assessed by the judges at the end of the day. The event takes all day and usually you would travel to the college where it takes place but due to the pandemic the 2020-2021 competitions took place digitally over Microsoft Teams. Winning the local finals will take you to the national finals at The Imperial College, London and if you succeed then you could win a trip to the NASA Kennedy Space Centre in the USA. When I did it at 8am one morning, we were presented with all the information. This was also the time the UKSDC Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections took place, of which I took part in. Then from 9am to 10am, there was a discussion on the basic ideas of the station and then time was given for theoretical measurements to be made and a lot of geometry goes into this. I helped to communicate the structural division with other divisions. The presentations took place at 5pm followed by the winner announcement. Personally, I found the event very enjoyable and I highly recommend it to anyone who is passionate about the subject of engineering, mathematics and physics. By Hubert Serafin – Year 12
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CONGRATULATIONS FROM TASSOMAI Abbot Beyne has won a tree in our Christmas competition! This year Tassomai were proud to launch ‘The Tree’, a new way for Tassomai users to watch their knowledge and understanding grow. To celebrate the launch they wanted to reward student achievements in the run up to Christmas by turning these virtual trees into real trees. Throughout December until the end of the term they are checking their Tassomi statistics and announcing the most active and engaged schools on Social Media.
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EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
We are pleased to announce that Abbot Beyne is one of the top performing schools of the day! As part of their commitment to planting trees, they are sending us a real tree. Tassomai are passionate about helping students’ knowledge grow and think that these trees act as a fitting symbol for this nurturing process. Well done to everyone at Abbot Beyne for their outstanding efforts.
HEGARTY MATHS
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L E A R N I N G R E S O U R C E C E N T R E N E W S
Our Top 3 Readers for November 2020 are: USER LOANS Samaiyah Arif 14 Lily Lee 8 Nikola Lis 7
A total of 311 books were borrowed across the whole school during November and the most popular book was:
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New releases for December
The Deep End: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (15) By Jeff Kinney Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle By Dav Pilkey of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 2 School Rules Are Optional: The Grade Six By Alison Hart Survival Guide 1 Glassheart By Katharine Hart Catch Me If I Fall By Barry Jonsberg The Midnight Guardians By Ross Montgomery Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature: Natural History Museum Football School Epic Heroes: 50 true tales By Alex Bellos & Ben Lyttleton that shook the world Folding Tech: Using Origami and Nature to By Karen Latchana Kenney Revolutionize Technology Bill Nye’s Great Big World of Science By Bill Nye & Gregory Mone
O T H E R N E W S
CHILDREN in NEED On Friday 13th November we had our annual ‘Come as You Please’ day (Pudsey themed) in aid of Children in Need. Students looked very dapper and enjoyed the spirit of the day with a few Pudsey onesies on show. As we are now a ‘cashless’ school, donations were paid in via ParentPay and we are pleased to announce that we raised £568. Very well done to all for taking part!
£568
REMEMBRANCE DAY Sadly, this year we were unable to fully commemorate this important historic event due to COVID-19. Our annual Remembrance Assemblies, where we are usually joined by members of the ‘Old Boys’ Association had to be cancelled.
To commemorate on the 11th November we had ‘Remembrance’ lessons followed by a one minute silence across the school.
As we could not raise funds as usual via the selling of poppies we made a whole school donation of £100 towards the Poppy Appeal.
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CHRISTMAS JUMPER DAY On Friday 11th December students and staff supported the charity, ‘Save the Children’ by having a Christmas Jumper/Come as You Please day. Charitable donations were made via the ParentPay system and I am pleased to announce that we raised £277.
RSPCA
Mrs Kurz would like to say a big thank you to staff for buying her ‘treasures’ such as children’s games, colouring books, Christmas wrapping paper and more from the staff rooms, raising a whopping £153 for this worthy charity.
WINSHILL RESOURCE CENTRE After hearing about the work that the Winshill Neighbourhood Resource Centre do for our local community, we decided as a school to try to help them out this Christmas. The Resource Centre deliver food packages to families who need them most, so we have donated lots of items to go in to these packages to help families over the Christmas period. 2020 has been a really tough year for everyone, so hopefully the items donated by the staff at Abbot Beyne School will bring a smile to families in Winshill this Christmas.
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EVERYONE A LEARNER EVERYONE LEARNING
CHOCOLATE CONTAINERS Over Christmas I’m sure many of you, like my family will have consumed numerous calories enjoying sweets, biscuits and chocolates but what do you do with the containers when you are finished? We would love your empty and clean containers in our Food Technology Department. Please send in your tins/boxes to either school office where they will be gratefully received. We thank you in anticipation.
C O V I D S A F E TY
Please keep safe over the Christmas holidays and if you feel scared, sad or unwell please speak to your family or teachers straight away. Protect yourself and stay healthy.
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Monday 4th January - Inset Day Tuesday 5th January - School re-opens for students Thursday 7th January - Virtual Year 11 Consultation Evening Thursday 14th January - Virtual Years 12 & 13 Consultation Evening Friday 12th February - School closes for half term Monday 22nd February - School re-opens
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