We Are Looking Forward to a New and Exciting Year Ahead! Best Results Ever!
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Welcome back to Mount Grace School – we are looking forward to a new and exciting year ahead! Best results ever! I am delighted to tell you that this summer we received our best ever GCSE exam results – where one in five of all grades awarded were A* to A including over 12 of the highly elusive new Grade 9 scores in English and Maths. 64% of students received five A*-C grades including English and Maths which is in line with the national average and a 17% increase on last year’s results. Well done to the Year 11s and to the staff who taught them – who all worked tirelessly to achieve this magnificent outcome. Open Evening | Wednesday 20 September 2017 | 5.00 – 9.00pm Our Open Evening is being held on Wednesday 20 September. Parents and students in Years 5 and 6 are invited to come and look around the school, visit classrooms, talk to teachers and see great displays of work, as well as find out more about the process of applying for a place for September 2018. The Headteacher’s speech will be at 6pm and 7pm in the Hall. If you know of friends or relatives who are looking for a secondary school for 2018, please invite them. We would love to meet them and answer their questions. We would also welcome members of the local community to come and look around – either at the Open Evening (please sign in as a local community member) or during the school day (please phone 01707 655 512 extension 202 to make an appointment). Peter Baker Headteacher Volume 3 Issue 1 | Thursday 7 September 2017 Page | 1 Summer School 2017 Thank you to Mr Bhura and his team who organised a fantastic four day Summer School at the end of July. 28 children attended and took part in an exciting range of activities including arts and crafts; drama and dance, Science, a visit from the Tottenham Hotspur Youth trainers and some Potters Bar firefighters. Children were able to explore the school in an informal way and learn new skills in a safe and fun environment. For more photos please visit: http://www.mountgrace.herts.sch.uk/gallery4/4384.html Parents said: ‘Summer school was amazing. My daughter didn't want it to end. Well worth the money and a fantastic opportunity for the children to take part, meet other children in a quieter environment and get the chance to look round the school and meet some of the staff.’ ‘My son had an amazing time and really enjoyed all the different activities, in particular rocket making in science with Miss Cook and football with Ahmed from the Tottenham Hotspur youth team. It has been wonderful seeing him get up in the mornings and get ready with no arguments as he's been so keen to get to school. It's done him a world of good and I think it's a great way of making the jump from primary to secondary school.’ ‘It has made my son feel a lot more confident about starting secondary school. Thank you’. Volume 3 Issue 1 | Thursday 7 September 2017 Page | 2 Year 11 feedback We gave our year 11 students a questionnaire on their results’ day. This has given us not only some great feedback, but some suggestions for further improvement. Our students said that the revision tools listed below had the most impact on their learning: 1. Dedicated exam board past paper practice 2. Study leave revision lessons in school 3. 1-2-1 time with teacher in class and in ‘The HUB’ 4. Holiday revision classes 5. GCSEPod They have suggested starting ‘The HUB’ earlier in the year, perhaps before Christmas. They suggested more online tasks set for completion at home and more set tasks to complete in ‘The HUB’ under direct supervision. Topic learning resources as given by year 11 students: BBC Bitesize, MathsWatch, Maths Genie, GCSEPod, SAMLearning, Tassomai, Past Papers, You Tube, Internet Research. Google Classroom We are going fully Google Classroom this year! Each class will have a google classroom where staff will post resources and class information. Pupils will be able to access their classrooms at home if they do not have a phone in school. Our Year 11 students gave us very good feedback about its impact on their learning and our Sixth Form students love it. GCSEPod – let’s get back to the number 1 spot! You may remember that last year we gained the top spot nationally for our use of GCSEPod. Our students viewed five times more pods than the national average. 16 out of our top 20 performing students viewed more than 40 pods per subject which had an impact on their grades. English Literature was the top performing department with over 8,000 views of their content alone. This is more than many schools manage in a whole year! Miss Horn said that this did have an impact on results within the subject. We will soon be back in the swing building up our pod count so that we can try and reach the top spot again. SAM Learning SAM Learning is back on the digital learning agenda for this year. There is a wealth of new material for the GCSE subjects aimed at the new grade 5 as well as new content for subjects such as Citizenship. Such is the input that the company has made that we felt it beneficial to purchase this for our students across the school. Seesaw blogs We will be running three international blogs this year – the Wallace-Grace blog with Iowa in America, The Olav-Grace blog with a school in Sweden and the Onda-Grace blog with our friend Ricardo and his team in Brazil. We will let you know what happens when we have news. Volume 3 Issue 1 | Thursday 7 September 2017 Page | 3 We are delighted to say that over the summer holidays we sent £757 to Ricardo and Onda Solidaria. This money is being used to finance the building of the kitchen and dining hall area at his education facility. This building is being dedicated to Chibuzo Omisa, a student of ours, who very sadly passed away last year. As Chibuzo loved to read, Ricardo has created a reading area within the buildings that overlooks the nearby hills so that volunteers working on site might relax and read as well as work with him. We will be holding more charity events this year and non-uniform days to help fully fund this fantastic project. As and when we receive new photos from Ricardo we will post them on the blog and put this into HEADlines. New School Instagram account You can now follow us @mountgraceschool You can also follow the ADT department @adt_mgs Open Evening – School closures and request for Helpers As we mentioned earlier in the newsletter, our Open Evening is on Wednesday 20 September between 5pm and 9pm. In order to get the school ready for visitors, we will end the school day at 12.40pm on Wednesday 20 September and we will have a late start of 11am on Thursday 21 September. Letters are being sent out to Year 8, 9 and Sixth Form students asking them to sign up to be tour guides for the evening. Year 7, 10 and 11 students may be asked by Heads of Faculties to help within faculties with various demonstrations. Both roles are very important and our students always impress visitors to the school, so if you are willing to help please return the permission slips as soon as possible. Thank you. Easy Fundraising helps you and helps the school Please do your online shopping and help to raise donations for Mount Grace School at the same time. Visit www.easyfundraising.org.uk and sign up now! Every penny helps. Thanks for your support. Congratulations to Ben Bloomfield who has just graduated from the University of Hertfordshire with a 2:1 Physics degree. We wish him well in his future career. Volume 3 Issue 1 | Thursday 7 September 2017 Page | 4 This week’s words are: parsimonious and vicarious. You can either take a slip from the library or you can enter online by going to the ‘Words of the Week’ page of the website: http://www.mountgrace.org.uk/words-of-the-week/4373.html School Cleaners are needed Working hours are 4.00 – 6.00pm or 4.30 – 6.30pm term-time only. If you are interested, please contact Tracy Biggs on 07938 234898. Diary dates for this term For details of upcoming events please see the School Calendar by using the following link: http://www.mountgrace.herts.sch.uk/calendar/3384.html Friday 8 September School Photographs for Years 7, 10 and 12 Tuesday 12 September Year 12 Welcome to Sixth Form Evening 6.00 -7.00pm Wednesday 20 September Open Evening 5.00 – 9.00pm (Headteacher’s Speech at 6pm and 7pm) Sunday 24 September Stamp Fair (PTFA Help needed to serve refreshments) Wednesday 4 October Year 7 Mariners’ Trip Saturday 14 October Family Quiz Evening Here’s our pick of things going on around the capital over the weekend. But please check details before you journey out. Totally Thames 2017 | Until 30 September Celebrate the Thames and its culture with a vibrant programme of river-inspired art, live performances, archaeology walks, boat races and more along London's famous river http://totallythames.org/whats-on Hackney One Carnival | Sunday 10 September 12noon to 8pm Missed Notting Hill Carnival? Why not join Hackney’s this Sunday? https://www.hackney.gov.uk/carnival Volume 3 Issue 1 | Thursday 7 September 2017 Page | 5 ZIP World London | Until 1 October Take a ride on one of the world’s fastest urban zip wires.