Cotham School A Co-operative Newsletter - Term 4 April 2017

Romaine Pearcy 10JLL 2

Dear Parents and Carers

At the end of another very busy and successful term, I would like to thank staff and students for all of their hard work and achievements. I would also like to thank parents and carers for their continued support of our school community. I do hope that you are finding my weekly mailing home useful in keeping you regularly informed and that it is, in particular, giving you a real flavour of the fantastic range of opportunities we have here for students to get involved in the wider life of the school.

This end of term newsletter brings together a selection of some of the highlights of the term alongside some key information which I hope you will find both enjoyable and helpful.

I wish you all a restful Easter break

With very best wishes

Jo Butler (Headteacher) Attendance - Our Target is 96% At Cotham School we take their return. There is no student each day of absence on 0117 919 attendance and punctuality very access through main reception. 8019, (there is a 24 hours messaging seriously and have high service on this line) or Press 1 on the Holidays: Amendments to the expectations of all our students. main number. Education Regulations from the There is a proven link between the Department for Education no Medical Appointments: We would level of attendance to school and longer allow headteachers to normally expect these appointments to the student’s level of achievement. grant any leave of absence during be made out of school hours, or in “90% attendance means that a term time unless there are very exceptional circumstances, for your student is missing lessons exceptional circumstances. In child to attend at least either Morning equivalent to one half day a week. accordance with the guidance or Afternoon registration. This then equates to four whole parents or carers are not weeks a year. If a student permitted to withdraw their children continued to do this between Year from school during term time. 7 and Year 11, they will have Holidays must therefore not be missed the equivalent of one half arranged during term time or to of a school year”. end at the start or begin towards the end of term time. Your co- Students must always sign out at operation is much appreciated. the Attendance office in the Hub when they leave school during Illness: We expect parents/ school hours and sign back in on carers to contact the school on SCHOOL UNIFORM Harris Sports, one of our two school uniform suppliers, are able to offer an online ordering service. This can be accessed by clicking on their website www.harrissports.co.uk, then clicking on the Cotham school link on the left- hand side of the page and selecting from the garments available. Our other uniform supplier is www.famousbranches.com can be accessed by clicking on the Cotham icon on the homepage. Harris Sports are also available in school every Thursday from 2.30 to 4.00 pm to view and buy uniform. School Catering Menu and Pricing The school operates a six week menu rotation. Please click here to view the menu and click here for pricing information

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eligibility check We only accept Free School Meals applications through our on-line system! If your child has been receiving Free School Meals this academic year, you will need to renew your application before the start of next term to ensure that they can continue to have a Free School Meal in September 2016. This eligibility also extends to Sixth Form Students. How to apply for Free School Meals Please apply through our online system using the link on our School website/ Homepage: “Free School Meals” (www.myfreeschoolmeals.com)and follow the instructions. Checking on-line is free and takes a few minutes. You do not need to provide any documentation to the school. If you need help, please contact Mrs Hopkins on 0117 919 8013 or hopkinss@cotham..sch.uk

Once you have input the required information you will receive instant confirmation of your child’s eligibility, we will also receive confirmation so you do not need to do anything else.

Please remember to recheck your child’s eligibility if your circumstances change. It is your responsibility to inform the school if your child is no longer entitled to a Free School Meal.

Eligibility

Free School Meals are available to any full-time student who is still at school and eligible. This includes nursery children who attend full days and also sixth form students. From September 2014, parents and carers with pupils aged 16-18 in Further Education can apply for free school meals. You can get Free School Meals for your child if you or your partner gets either:

•Universal Credit. •Income Support. •Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance •Income-related Employment and Support Allowance •Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 •The Guarantee element of State Pension Credit •Child Tax Credit, provided they are not entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual income of £16,190 or less, as assessed by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs

Where a parent is entitled to Working Tax Credit during the four-week period immediately after their employment ceases, or after they start to work less than 16 hours per week, their children are entitled to free school lunches. Children who receive a qualifying benefit in their own right are also eligible to receive Free CHANGES TO PERSONAL INFORMATION - Protecting your data Please ensure that we are notified immediately of any changes to the contact details for your child. It is imperative that we have up-to-date contact numbers so that in the event of an emergency we are able to contact parents/carers. When requesting changes to your children’s record in future or asking us to confirm information held by the school, you may be asked some personal questions for verification purposes. This helps us comply with Data Protection guidelines and ensures accuracy of the information held. We hope you understand and will help us with this. If you suspect that the contact details held by the school are incorrect, please advise us as soon as possible in writing to Miss Smith, Data Manager or by e-mailing [email protected].

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World Book Day 2017 There was a real buzz around school on World Book Day and it was lovely that so many students and staff participated. We managed to raise an excellent £243.79 for Book Aid International, a charity which supplies books to children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Special congratulations go to the costume competition winners:

1st place: Jaele Clarke 7ID who was The Queen of Hearts 2nd place: Alfie Morgan 8TS who was Charlie Brown 3rd place: Abby Robbins who was Peter Pan

Additionally, we had a “Shelfie” competition in which students had to identify the teacher behind the book. This was won by Dylan O’Hara and Niamh Cary-McKeown in 7VBL. Well done. Congratulations to tutor groups 8KBO and 10RA who won the competition to identify the characters staff had become. The Book Swap run by the library was a huge success and saw more books swapped at Cotham than ever before. In assemblies, teachers volunteered as book champions. Between them they read a range of texts, from a poem in Italian to “The Gruffalo”, thus exposing students to literature they probably haven’t read for years or might otherwise never have experienced.

Thanks for your support with this event.

Jo Oxenham (Literacy Co-ordinator)

BBC School Report Nine of our Year 8 students became reporters for the day on Thursday 16 March. They were supported by Melissa Darragh who is doing a BBC apprenticeship. In groups of three, they interviewed other students and teachers on the theme of mental health in young people, making both a filmed and a written report. They worked tirelessly and this was the first year in which all reports were completed and uploaded by the mid-day deadline. Map of participating schools 2016-17 - BBC School Report As well as meeting this deadline, Shauna Mighty, Kaya Campbell and Balqiisa Ali all paid a visit to BBC Centre on Whiteladies Road that same morning. They met BBC presenter, Chris Kelly and witnessed how news feed are dealt with on the local live site. It was a fantastic opportunity for our budding reporters and one which they very much enjoyed.

Charity News

11JBA raised £217 for Macmillan Cancer research and as a result were allowed to shave their form tutors head and dye his beard green! Well done for being such a great sport Mr Barber!

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BAFTA Design a Superhero Competition

Amy Howe 7VBL won a runners up prize for the Bafta Kids Design a Superhero Competition which she entered via the Skills department at Cotham. Amy was super chuffed to receive a signed photo from one of her favourite animators as a prize! Well done Amy!

Year 7 - Science club Year 7 Science Club entered the Shell 'Brighter Ideas Challenge' to solve the energy problems of the future. They built model houses that were carbon neutral and used Renewable Energy sources, to reduce our reliance of fossil fuels. On Tuesday 4 April Year 7 science club visited @Bristol for the day to take part in a DNA code-breaking workshop and explore the centre. Currently they are building volcanoes with help from the Volcanology department.

A118 is currently available as a supervised "Prayer and Reflection Space" from 1.10 pm to 1.30 pm everyday This is open to the whole school community to provide a multi-faith space for reflection and prayer.

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PE Year 9 Football - Bristol Schools Cup Final

In March, Year 9 boys football played their Cup Final at SGS Filton WISE Campus against . Both teams had already played each other this season during the group stage of the competition drawing 1-1.

It was BFS who came flying out the blocks, putting Cotham under pressure right from the start and they took an early lead within 5 minutes. Cotham were struggling to cope with the pressure and were fortunate not to go two down but for a last ditch block on the line from Will Lee-Harvey (who might have used an arm as well)! As the half progressed, Cotham started to wake up with Jude Bounds latching onto a long through ball from defence but was denied by a great last-ditch tackle from the BFS defender. 0-1 HT.

The second was a different story, Cotham came to life and started to move the ball quickly causing BFS prob- lems at the back but mainly restricted Cotham to long shots. Unfortunately for all our possession in the sec- ond half, Cotham were unable to find the back of the net, BFS winning the final 0-1.

The boys have had a great season, but it wasn't to be on this occasion. I'm tremendously proud of them, they've worked so hard and Squad: Eric McFarlane-Bond; Tazz Clarke-Downer, Hassan Noor, Diego Lovett-Garica, Arun given their all in every Brooks, Callum Murch, Olly Southwell, Will Lee-Harvey, Paulo Antonio, Aineias Arango, Jude game this year. Well done Bounds, Sid Bass, Deondre Hylton, Josh Gibbons, Sam Northcott and Mubarik Mohamed boys on a fantastic season, Rowing On Fri 24 March Noah Okraffka-Hill (9EP) participated in 'The Scullery', an annual national rowing competi- tion. The event was held on Eton Dorney Lake and Noah's quad won a Gold medal for their category over a distance of 3800m.Overall they came in 16th place within their age group.Noah is a junior member of City of Bristol Rowing Club. Cross Country Congratulations to Abdifataah Hassan (Year 10) who competed at the English Schools Cross Country Championships last weekend at Norwich and finished 12th out of 300+ ath- letes in the Intermediate Boys (Year 10 & 11) competition. A top 10 finish would have seen

Sportshall Athletics Congratulations to Kaylen Smith and Tyie Thomas-Smith (U/13) and Keni Wilks and Ny- heam Kefenste (U/15) who were part of the Avon boys Sportshall Athletics teams that won the South West Competition last weekend. They will now go onto compete in Manches- ter at the UK Championships after Easter. We wish them all the best for the finals.

Football Scholarship Well done to Joe Hall in 11JBR for being one of only 6 selected from the Under 16s team for a 2 year scholar- ship at Bristol City Football Club. This is a great achievement and something Joe has been working hard to- wards since he joined the BCFC academy as an under 11s player. We are very proud of him! Kung Fu Congratulations to Ezra Penny 7SL - For achieving Green Belt in Kung Fu.

Cricket Sarah Walsh (8SHA) has been named by Gloucestershire Cricket Board in the Girls County U13 Development Squad!

Student Achievements Outside of School It would be great if parents/carers could let the school/PE department know of any students achievements outside of school please. It is sometimes only at subject evenings that we find out what students are doing outside of school. 7

CEIAG and WRL CAREERS EDUCATION, INFORMATION, ADVICE AND GUIDANCE AND WORK RELATED LEARNING YEAR 9 Year 9 were busy in January & February, learning about and making their GCSE option choices. To help clarify what might be best for them, they spent a morning off timetable on 12 January playing the REAL GAME, which gave them a taster of what it is like to be a young adult in the working world, having to live within their financial means.

They also went to a RAISING ASPIRATIONS EVENT on 25 January, at UWE Exhibition Centre, where they had the chance to explore future possibilities and careers. After a motivational keynote speaker, all students experienced:  A Higher Education session - where they could question student ambas- sadors from UWE.  Post-16 and training provider workshops with a sixth-form or college and a training provider, where they learnt about Post-16 courses and appren- ticeships.  An Employability session - where civil servants led activities based on the work of various government departments, emphasising the skills needed to succeed in employment.  Business workshops - where a range of employers, including the NHS, Airbus, Avon & Somerset Police and Burges Salmon, told students about their opportunities and offered some taster activities. Students left full of ideas for their own futures.

YEAR 10 On 16 March all Year 10 students took part in an ENTERPRISE DAY to learn what it takes to start a new business, supported by businesswoman Jackie Matthews. Working together in teams, they were tasked with creating ideas for a new restaurant and took on the roles of business manager, finance manager, marketing manager and catering consultant so they could put together a proposal which they then presented to their peers. Skills in project management, financial planning, communication and entre- preneurship were put to the test, resulting in some very imaginative schemes!

In the afternoon, the winning proposal from each tutor group was presented to a panel of judges, including Mrs Matthews, who especially praised the creativity and teamwork she had observed during the day. The overall winners were Kayan Patel, Peter Stables, Ella Bragonier and Mathilda

KEEPING YOU INFORMED:

We have now created spaces on our website where you can see dates of forthcoming FE & HE open days, careers-related events and opportunities, apprenticeships and school-leaver schemes - go to Menu and select News, Events & Dates - School & Community News Updates - Careers News. To find useful sources of information on a wide range of different careers and help with making choices, go to Menu and select Students - Careers Information.

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Performing Arts

Connections Drama Festival 2017 Connections is the National Theatre’s annual festival of new plays for youth theatres and schools. It gives young people experience of professional theatre-making. Their experience mirrors that of a company producing a new play in any theatre in the country. They create marketing campaigns, design sets and costumes, operate lighting and sound boards and stage-manage their performances.

“On 28 March a group of students in Year 10 had the wonderful opportunity to per- form at the Bristol Old Vic theatre as part of the national theatre connections festi- val. The Blue room theatre company performed “Zero for the young dudes” by Alistair McDowall, a play about an ex- tremely odd camp for children and the revolution that the kids there are secretly planning. During the day of the performance, the cast spent the day rehearsing at the Old Vic, which was incredibly fun and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Having seen plays on the main stage before it was so surreal to be on the stage, looking out at all the seats. We were all very excited to have our own dressing rooms complete with mirrors adorned with lightbulbs and red curtains. The actual performance in the evening was magical and we all enjoyed it very much. We were all very happy with how it went and were blessed with great reactions from the audience. Obviously a huge amount of credit needs to go our fabulous director, Miss Miles-who we all enjoyed working with immensely and was so helpful, lovely and hilarious from the very beginning. A massive thank you is also due to Mr. Barnes for working his technical magic. Also thank you to Miss Mochrie for providing us with such helpful feedback during the rehearsals. Vive la revolucion! “ AMIRA CLARKE (10LAL)

“What a fantastic piece of theatre. We really enjoyed it. Thank you. We’re so proud of Mathilda, and indeed the whole cast were brilliant. Please pass on our congratulations to everyone involved.”

“I just wanted to say thanks so much for all your hard work on Zero For The Young Dudes. We thought it was absolutely bloody brilliant on all levels: direction, acting, set, costume, sound. It was so great to see the fruits of all that effort and commitment, especially in the face of these current times when the Arts subjects are having such a hard time staying afloat. Biba thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience so thank you very much.”

“What a fantastic evening at the Old Vic last night! I thought the kids put on wonderful performance. It was really worthy of the venue. I really think it was very mature and polished”.

“I am really enjoying how this group has developed as actors over the years. They have really come a long way from Year 7”

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Cotham School Spring Concert 2017

On March 30 we hosted our annual Spring Concert. Big congratulations and thank you to all who performed. With performances ranging in size from soloists and duos right up to full steel pan ensembles and the Cotham rookies orchestra, there was something for everyone to enjoy. It's never too late to get involved with any extra-curricular clubs so if you are interested in joining any of the Cotham School bands or ensembles, speak to your music teacher in the new term.

Macbeth After weeks of preparation, our bleak and stripped back interpretation of Macbeth finally met its audience in February. almost 500 people came to watch the Macbeths’ decent into madness and the hard work of the cast and crew was rewarded by a series of wonderful performances.

To pick out individuals would be a dis-service to the outstanding cast, who whether they had one line or hundreds of lines were committed, driven and a credit to the school.

The extraordinarily talented Orchestra (under the expert guidance of Year 13 student Carlos Rodriguez.) composed a series of haunting pieces (based on some of my favourite early 1980s tunes!) to accompany the performance.

Special mention should go to 2 students. Daniel Southwell and Ruby Barnes. These extraordinary Year 13 students took on all roles within the production team and without them I would have been lost in a mire of Witches and murders!

Thank you to all staff and students who gave up their time and enthusiasm to help out.

Year 10 connexions performance is just around the corner and then in term 6 are our lower school shows: "3 plays in search of an audience" Keep an eye out for details

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Visual Arts

Year 11 trip to the London’s Tate Modern In February, Year 11 Art, Photography and Textiles students visited the Tate Modern to see the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Wolfgang Tillman’s whilst also exploring the gallery’s permanent collection. Armed with their sketchbooks and cameras, the students gathered material to inspire their GCSE work.

Visit from photographer, Jonathan Cherry Jonathan Cherry, a Staffordshire-based photographer, visited Cotham in March to talk to students about his work. He also showed the students his range of cameras including a 5x4 format camera. It was a fantastic opportunity for GCSE and A-level students to talk to a professional photographer about their work.

Year 13 visit to Centrespace Gallery Year 13 students organise and curate an end of year exhibition every year in Visual Arts. This year, the exhibition committee had the opportunity to visit a number of artists in their studios at Centrespace which will be the venue for their exhibition. They spoke to illustrators, a screen printer, puppet maker, architect and letterpress printer and heard about their work and what inspires them. Everyone is welcome on the opening night of the exhibition: Friday 9 June, from 5pm.

Year 7 Millie Marotta Competition We had an incredibly high standard and volume of entries to this year’s Millie Marotta competition and were lucky enough to have Millie herself pick the winners. The winners were Holly Puttick and Madeleine Spilling with their wonderfully detailed collaborative illustration of snakes. Congratulations also to Amina Birdi, Rowan Stanger-Jones, Liang Hu and Esme Pykett who were shortlisted. Millie was extremely impressed with the standard of the entries and would like to congratulate all students on their efforts.

Visit our Instagram page for latest images of activities and work from Cotham Visual Arts: https://www.instagram.com/cotham_visual_arts/

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MFL

Bristol French Drama Festival 2017 On Saturday, 25 March Cotham School took part at the Bristol French Drama Festival, a fun event where schools in and around Bristol present their short scenes and creations at Bristol University. Seven Year 8/9 students presented their self - written piece “Une palme vers l’égalité”. Since November they have been creating and rehearsing the piece and delivered an outstanding performance. They have been rewarded with an Excellence Award for “Creativity, great use of compulsory prop and inspiring story” as well as little gifts and a big round of applause. Congratulations to all of the students! All of this would not have been possible without Miss LeClerc's hard work and countless hours spent helping them get ready for their big day. Thanks also to Annika for being their on the day and supporting our troops! Mr Morton & Ms Baeza

Vocab Express Global Challenge

Last week Cotham took part in this exciting event, competing against schools all over the world. We had three fantastic winners from Cotham, who learnt the most vocabulary over the week. Congratulations to... 1st Place - Jacob Thorn 2nd Place - Hafiza Bibi Hussein 3rd Place - Laurel Jelbert-Cook Year 13 Spanish Exchange - IES Pintor Antonio Lopez, Madrid / Cotham School

Following our very successful visit to Spain in November, our Spanish Exchange partners came over to Bristol in early March to stay with families. In 5 days we gave them the full Bristol Experience; immersing them in English culture and language, including local landmarks such as the suspension bridge and slidy rock, museums, a graffiti tour & workshop, Bath for a cream tea, a London trip for some, and miles of walking in the sunshine, which luckily came with them! It was a very positive experience and many of the students have plans to return in the summer holidays to see their Spanish families again.

The visit comes just before our Year 13 students take their final exams with renewed confidence and a far deeper understanding of Spanish culture as a result of this partnership. We look forward to offering this often life changing opportunity to more students in the future and would like to thank all students and families who took part in our first Spanish adventure - they made us very proud!

Clare Swayne, Teacher of Spanish

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Drama Queen Theatre Company Visits Cotham School ‘Drama Queen’ is a one woman theatre company, run by actor Kate Morris who is based in Cornwall. Kate cam to Cotham on the evening of Monday 27 March to perform ‘Hammered’. The performance was organised by Cue Bristol Youth Theatre group who meet every Monday at Cotham. The audience was made up of mostly Cue members but some brought their friends and family too. ‘Hammered’ is a show about Gemma, a shy teenager who starts drinking alcohol to give her confidence at parties. However, things go horribly wrong as Gemma’s drinking gets out of control. She loses her real friends, discovers her drinking mates aren’t such good friends after all and makes some dangerous choices. Hammered’ kept the audience gripped. There were moments of great humour but also some shocking scenes with a hard-hitting message about under age drinking. After the show, Kate was kind enough to do a question and answer session with the audience. There was no shortage of questions as the audience showed lots of interest in the process that Kate has to go through in order to create such a show from scratch.

Here’s what the audience had to say: “ It was very thought provoking.” – Marianne Year 10 “A powerful message.” - Eva Year 7 “ I learned a lot.” - Olivia Year 7 ‘“ Funny and sad at the same time “ – Amira Year 7

Community News

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Anaphylaxis Support Group - Wednesday 26 April Anaphylaxis Campaign has set up a group to give support and information for adults with severe allergies or parents of children with severe allergies. The next meeting is on 26 April and the guest speaker will be Dr Unsworth, Consultant in Immunology and Allergy at SouthMead Hospital. We have been asked to promote this event to our school community. Places are free but limited, and so must be reserved in advance. To book or for more information click here.

National Autistic Society AGM Cotham hosted the AGM for the Bristol branch of the National Autistic Society on the evening of Wednesday 15 March. Click here to find out more. Cotham School looks forward to continuing our collaboration with the NAS in continuing our commitment to being a fully inclusive school.

English Conversation Club Do you need more English conversation practice? Do you want to feel more confident when speaking in Eng- lish? Do you know someone who might benefit from practising their English? Or are you someone who speaks fluent English and could help by volunteering? Click here to find out more

TERM DATES 2016 - 2017 Term 1 Thursday 1 September 2016 to Friday 21 October 2016

Term 2 Monday 31 October 2016 to Friday 16 December 2016 Term 3 Tuesday 3 January 2017 to Friday 10 February 2017 Term 4 Monday 20 February 2017 to Friday 7 April 2017 Term 5 Monday 24 April 2017 to Friday 26 May 2017 Term 6 Monday 5 June 2017 to Friday 21 July 2017

INSET DAYS 2016-17 Thursday 1 September 2016 Friday 2 September 2016 Friday 21 October 2016 Tuesday 3 January 2017 Friday 7 April 2017 Monday 5 June 2017

Cotham School, Cotham Lawn Road, Bristol, BS6 6DT T: 0117 919 8000 E: [email protected] W: www.cotham.bristol.sch.uk