3rd March 2017 STANDING OUT THE MAGAZINE FOR MOUNTS BAY ACADEMY Cover: Physical Literacy 13th October 2017 It’s all about you... PRINCIPAL’S REPORT The Place To Be Your Best... When we say to our students that we want them to find their element and focus their learning on the things that they enjoy in their subjects, we know that it is because a happy learner is an engaged learner. That is because we want everybody who attends the Academy, both staff and students, to have the support to be “the best that they can be.” This week we have seen the comparison results of our students recent GCSE results published and they make great reading. Progress 8 (this is the main measure used by Government) Mounts Bay Academy = +0.05 St Ives School = +0.04 Humphry Davy School = -0.06 Hayle School = -0.19 Cape Cornwall School = -0.64 EBacc (Academic curriculum subjects only) Mounts Bay Academy 21% Hayle School 15% Cape Cornwall 13% St Ives School 9% Humphry Davy School 8% Staying in Education and Employment (2015 leavers) Mounts Bay Academy 95% Hayle School 93% 3) Add school/college logo to St Ives School 92% corner or centre of poster. Patience…This is a large file and may run slow on older PCs. Humphry Davy School 88% 4) Formatting your photo. All 1) Make sure you have the photos should be black and white correct template. The logo in Capeand high contrast. WhenCornwall you add School 88% this version is the ‘FF light’ so your photo, right click on it and go you’ll need to choose a photo to ‘Format Picture’. Or ‘Format Background’ if following that with a dark background. option. Set saturation to 0% in 2) Adding your photo. Add ‘Picture Colour’ to turn to B&W. Set Contrast to around 25% under your photo by going to ‘Picture Corrections’ to further Insert>Picture – it will need to Itdefine is(use own also judgment – white always great to hear from our former students (or alumni) to let us be high res (this template is and black should be defined rather A2 so 5000x7000 pixels than all grey). approx. know5) Ordering your photo. how If they are getting on. We always say that whilst Penzance is “at the Alternatively, if your photo is photo has been inserted ‘ready-made’ for the rather than set as template, you can add it as a background, right click on it, background. Right-click on endgo to ‘Arrangement’ of or the line”, Mounts Bay is the “beginning of the world” and have been the grey outer-area and select ‘Order’ and select ‘Send to ‘Format Background’ . Select Back’ ‘Picture or texture fill’ and updating our Alumni pages on the website to show you just some of the select file. I went to Mounts Bay Academy and I I went to Mounts Bay Academy and now I’m 6) Adding the text. Enter your themanaged Southwest the Teaching construction Assistant of the of theWorld text in here – 42pt should be Finished? Year!”Trade Center building Gibraltar.” acareer good size but you can to which our alumni have progressed. Why not take a look here: http:// Save the file as a regular Powerpoint change this to add more or Sarah Parsonage, Stephen Teaching Cary, Manager Assistant Construction of the Year Team 2017 file first. Then, when you’re ready to less copy. send to the school/college/printers, mountsbay.org/category/discover/discover-our-alumni simply convert it to a PDF in one of 7) Change box colour. Go to three ways: Format tab, shape fill and a) ‘Save As’ PDF through ‘File’ MOUNTS BAY ACADEMY chose the colour. b) Download CutePDF on your computer CONGRATULATIONSWORLD CLASS LEARNING ON YOUR DOORSTEP c) http://www.freepdfconvert.com N.B. The instructions may differ for your computer /programme so please shout NOTE: The file has a 3mm bleed which a print firm (if applicable) will need to know as the design is ‘full bleed’. if any uncertainties. The government measures us by our Progress 8 score, our students measure us by the learning experiences we give them and our parents measure us by the wealth of opportunities we provide to our students. I am pleased to say that the results above indicate that we are unashamedly right to believe that we are “the place to be”. Best wishes Sara Davey Academy Principal DABE VINCI YOUR PROGRAMME BEST English Da Vinci Students in Year 9 are studying John Steinbeck’s novella ‘Of Mice and Men’. Written and set in 1930’s America during the Great Depression, ‘Of Mice and Men’ chronicles the lives of displaced working people. My teaching group looked at the powerful documentary photographs of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans; we then studied these in the context of Steinbeck’s writing. Students were then challenged to write creatively from the perspective of a person or describe an event captured in a photograph. It has been a pleasure to read some fantastic THE DUST BOWL writing. I believe the work showcased here by Rugile Talackaite and Katie Trahair-Davies shows great creative flair and engages the reader. I’m sure you will agree - worthy of Da Vinci Awards! Endless dusty, windswept fields lay ahead of me. A slight breeze sweeps dust Report by: Mr Whiteman across the vast stretch of land and I instinctively pull Joey, my baby, closer. Everyday I'm finding it harder and harder to carry on being strong- LIFE IN BRAWLEY CALIFORNIA 1939 for my children, for my husband and for me. But even I am finding it hard to adapt to the brutal life we are now living. Texas seems a million miles away and California (the so-called ‘Golden State’) feels like a distant dream. Zac leans his chins on my shoulder and I can hear his shallow breath in my ears. Out of the corner of my eyes I can see him watching Joey, making sure he is okay. Since the start of our never-ending journey he has doted on him By Rugile -cuddling him when he's cold and sacrificing his share of food. Only a few months ago my children looked fit and healthy; now they are only skin and bones. I can feel Joey’s ribs as he slowly inhales and exhales, fighting for breath. Jeff -my husband- says he's an inconvenience, but he'll never be an inconvenience for me. Diving deep into my memories has become a favourite pass time of mine- reminiscing about our safe , happy old life eases the pain deep down. If only the dust bowl hadn't happened, we wouldn't be trekking hundred of miles. No sleeping by the side of roads in makeshift tents, no scavenging for food, no more worrying if if we’ll survive another day. Instead we would be happily living on our farm: working outside in the day and relaxing in a warm house. How did our life change so suddenly and It was back in 1939. In Brawley California… rapidly? “Mother, how much longer is it until we reach California?” Zac asks nervously, knowing that the answer won't be good. I remember living those hard old days in the dusty migrant camp, crammed in a small, wooden tent We have been journeying for a long time, hitch-hiking and walking have been with 5 other people and big black bulky rats scattering around the floor. Life was extremely difficult our main sources of travel, so long that I have lost all sense of date and then. time. Spare money- which is extremely sparse- goes to extra food, not luxuries like a watch. Consequently, we end up living our day by the sun and stars. When the sun rises, we rise, when the sun goes to sleep, we do as Every morning we had to walk 2 miles through the soaring heat to pick fruit (mostly apples) or well. crops just to earn enough money for the family. We all had blisters on our feet and our bones would “Not long now darling!” I reply, although I honestly don't know. It could be days, weeks or months before we are working on a farm again. ache from walking. That's if we ever make it to California… I remember we all had a limited amount of clothes usually wearing the same outfit everyday. The Katie Trahair-Davies protection was appalling, our tent would let in heaps of heavy rain and the gusts of vile wind would whistle through the holes of the tent. It was horrifying! Hunger gnawed at our bellies like a rat in a trap. There was barely enough food to feed our family. All we dreamt about was that one day when we would have a better life; more money, more supplies and opportunities.EXCELLENCE We thrived better lives. I remember that one day,REWARD the scariest of my life, when a huge tropical storm hit Southern California. I was awoke by the rain and the clattering thunder, the whole camp was almost drowning in water. The wind surged through the air making the trees clatter. I was terrified. We were immediately escorted to the safety shelter of the camp, but unfortunately, many others didn’t make it! Everything was destroyed, thousands of people were killed by the flood. We were just lucky enough to have stayed alive. About 2 million dollars worth of crops and structures were damaged. It was a disaster…. Rugile Talackaite BE INSPIRED Shakespeare Workshop As part of the Schools Shakespeare Festival, GCSE Drama students took part in a workshop at the Regal Theatre in Redruth on 11th October to support their understanding of Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, the play selected for them to perform.