Newsletter Belly 27:1
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27th JANUARY 2017 THE MAGAZINE FOR MOUNTS BAY ACADEMY Some of our HPI English students BE YOUR BEST Principal’s Report Celebrating Success At Mounts Bay Academy we are dedicated to giving our students the best learning experiences that we can and a major part of this is to celebrate their success when they achieve great things both academically and in their sporting/personal development. This is one of the reasons that we have set up so many High Performance Institutes to encourage students to develop their skills in lots of different areas in an environment of people with like-minded interests. You are all aware that we have a number of ways that we can reward students ranging from the popular Vivo Rewards System to our new Da Vinci Excellence Awards and it gives me great pleasure to announce that we will be showcasing some of their excellent work on the website and on the large screen displays around the campus. Our Senior Leadership Team has been amazed at the quality of the work that we have seen and our front cover features some of the students from the English HPI. If you would like to take some inspiration from the work, you can view them on the “Discover” section our website here: http://mountsbay.org/discover/ GCSE Mock Examinations This week has also seen the start of the GCSE Mock Examinations for our Year 11 students. They have been working very hard preparing for them and you will have noticed the signage around the campus indicating when they are taking place. As ever, I am pleased to report that students are giving appropriate consideration to their peers by moving quickly and silently around the school to minimise any external distractions. MBA Futures It is always great to hear about our Alumni who are pursuing successful careers after leaving us and news has just reached us that Tyler Gendall has just been signed by Harlequins as a prop to reinforce their front row. Elsewhere our Olympic Snowboard hopeful Rowan Coultas is competing in a World Cup event in Seisar Alm, Italy. I am also pleased to say that we have had an incredible uptake of local employers who will be attending our latest Careers Fair in February, I am looking forward to meeting them and discovering the wealth of opportunity available to our leavers who chose to enter the world of work. Best wishes Sara Davey - Academy Principal BE CURIOUS Young Enterprise Revamp All systems are go with the Young Enterprise team. A complete change in direction has occurred and the whole team are excited to share this. The new concept is to create a surf and skate clothing brand that is affordable and its target market will span across different age groups. ‘Kapital Clothing’ is now in its initial design and concept process in order to begin creating their logo and the items of clothing. John, the teams Business Advisor, has been working closely with the team to ensure they reach their maximum potential as well as offering his extensive business knowledge. The team are now in preparation for the Spring Trade Fair held at the Eden Project on Saturday 18th March. Keep your eyes peeled!! Report by Miss Walters Digital Leaders Yesterday morning the Digital Leaders met with Mr Hall and Mr Elliott to discuss the future of tablet devices at Mounts Bay. They spent the previous evening writing some in-depth questioning and research in cases for the devices, along with comparisons of the models on the market today. Mr Hall found their opinions very helpful and this will be the first of number meetings building up to the Autumn roll out in which the DLS team will share their experience as students and end users. If you wish to join the team and be known to staff and students as IT helpers please see Mr Jones. Report by Mr Jones BE INSPIRED HPI English Club Recently all HPI English students were asked to write a story with a maximum of 2,500 words based on the topic of 'memories', for the chance to win £1,000 and have their story published in a Litro Magazine and on iggy.net. Iggy is an online community where bright 13-18 year olds collaborate, learn and share ideas. They host competitions with Litro to challenge young adults. The competition we entered was, 'The Young Writers' Prize 2016/2017'. We all brainstormed a range of ideas in our HPI English sessions and helped each other with our starting paragraphs. Throughout the next few sessions, we worked hard on our individual stories and gave each other feedback on how to improve. All of our stories, although all to do with memories, are very different. Examples are: Emily Rees' (Year 9) is about a young girl who has just lost her parents, whereas Kate Matthew's story is based upon a genuine memory of war which her cousin told her. Amber Sanders' story, however, is based around her grandfather's life. All of MBA's entrants have amazing plots and have been written extremely well. An extract from Kate Matthew's story: "Hazel and I huddled together to try and block out the horrific sounds coming from upstairs: the smashing of homes, screaming children, the thrum of planes. In nervous anticipation, we sat next to a carcass of meat in the butcher's cellar. My mum and Hazel's family were there too. Everyone was there, all terrified of what might be happening to their much-loved houses. Nobody spoke. An almighty crash came from nearby....." BE INSPIRED An extract from Marlene Favata's story: "I wake up to a cold, damp bed, the sheets flung to one side and my legs bared to the chilly breeze wafting through the open window. My hands shake as I wipe the cold sweat from my brow, and then flop back onto the lumpy pillows. I'm not going back to sleep... I might as well get some breakfast..." HPI English is a very welcoming club that really boosts our ability to understand our language and create with it. Those of a higher ability are invited to come every other Wednesday after school to study harder texts and take part in wonderful opportunities like the Iggy and Litro competition. Our skills have really improved thanks to this amazing club! Many students from varied Year groups have entered, and due to the fantastic stories, we believe at least one of our stories will be considered as a winner. We find out who has been shortlisted on Wednesday 29th March 2017 and find out the winner of the whole competition on Wednesday 26th April 2017. Good luck to all who applied! A special thank you to Mr Williams for helping us improve our stories and giving us some helpful tips! To read the stories in full, click on the link: http://mountsbay.org/category/ discover/hpi-institutes/ Report by Emily Rees and Kate Matthew BE INSPIRED Key Stage 3 ELEMENT Project For the last couple of weeks, Year 7 and 8 ELEMENT students have been busy bringing their designs to life. Students have reached the stage where all of their hard research, investigating, planning and designing comes together in the form of a final product. In the Year 7 ELEMENT Project, “Think Global, Act Local”, students are in the middle of re-purposing collected marine litter from a beach clean into a useful product to be used for beach cleans. Items such as broken pallets, ghost netting, and ropes are being transformed into sand sled boxes, bowls and framed nets. Laboratory experiment using the Buchner filtration process to calculate what percentage of sand at low tide is marine litter. Students working in teams to create their beach cleaning products. BE INSPIRED In the Year 8 ELEMENT project “Eco-Architects”, students have been using the industry standard Computer Aided Design (CAD) software “Autodesk Fusion 360”, to create key components for an eco-town. This has been a challenging engineering project where precision and imagination are key to a successful project. The created objects vary in purpose yet are all fantastic examples of how a town of the future could be engineered in a sustainable way. Students using Autodesk Fusion 360 to create their key components for an eco-town. Report by Mr Lane and Mr Hopper BE INSPIRED PiXL Maths App The PiXL Maths App is a great revision app and website we are using with Year 11 during registration time each week. It has proven results with students across the country and includes a combination of question, videos and help sheets. All students have the app on their iPad automatically. They can obtain their login details and more information from: https://mountsbay.fireflycloud.net/mathematics/revision/pixl-app Each week the top students using the app will be awarded a prize. This is not a prize for the students who get the most questions correct; it is an engagement score, as we want students to be challenging themselves. The top 20 students are listed below. Keep up the great work Year 11. This week the top form using the PiXL Maths App was 11 Purple who win themselves a box of Cadbury's Heroes. Well done to: Niema Brandon Renae Jodie Alistair Jessica Anya Jamie Skylar Dillon Bonnie Isaac Louis Archie Mawgan Shannon Charlotte Alfred Jordan Archie Report by Mr Kent BE CURIOUS Library News New Books Not long ago I announced that we were delighted to have been successful in our bid for a Foyle Foundation grant in order to refresh our library stock.