FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE No 3 West Coventry Academy A New and Exciting Beginning Head Girl Holly Hawkswood and Head Boy Alex Jones STUDENT LEADERS Woodlands Academy and Tile Hill Wood Student Leaders have got off to a flying start this academic year and have taken part in numerous activities both in and out of school. A group of Student Leaders worked with the local Police as part of the Commissioner Take Over Day presenting their ideas about the local area to Coventry City Councillors and the Police. The Council is now looking into a crossing on Tile Hill Lane based on the group’s findings. Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 Student Leaders took part in the 11 Million Day Summit at Coventry City Council discussing their ideas on healthy eating, pastoral care and mental health, to name but a few, which will now be used to plan effective service provision for young people in Coventry. A school wide £100 challenge was launched for all tutor groups to plan a charity event to raise the most money, with all proceeds going to Zoe's Place and Myton Hospice this year. They also organised a Teacher Lip Sync battle where lots of teachers took part raising £206 for Zoe’s Place through ticket sales. Still to come... • Four members of the Head Boy and Girl team will take part in a project aimed at creating a PREVENT app to help vunerable children who may be at risk of radicalisation. The project is in conjunction with the Home Office, Coventry University and Action for Children. We can't wait to hear their ideas and see the final app. • Year 9 Lead Ambassadors are arranging a trip to a local care home where they will serve tea and biscuits and chat with the residents. • Student leaders will join the Tile Hill Litter pick morning on Saturday 4th March which has been organised by the Tile Hill Village Residents Group. • The next student leaders assembly will allow Key Stage 3 students to pose questions to some of our teachers. The student voice sub group are busy roping teachers in to sit in the hot seat and we are hoping that the students come up with some good questions that really put the teachers on the spot. The Student Leadership team have worked well as a group this year and are excellent ambassadors for the school. They are working hard to make a positive difference to the school community and wider community. Well done to all involved. Page 2 Issue 3 Message from the Head Boy and Head Girl As Student Leaders at the heart of the school community, we’ve had a really positive year so far, working hard to be helpful, constructive and to put as much as possible back into the school as a whole. Within our five Student Leader sub-groups we’ve already organised and taken part in lots of exciting events and projects, both within the school and the wider community. These include ‘Switch it off Fortnight’, a peer mentoring scheme with our Personalised Learning Centre and a Year 9 project involving a loal care home. There have been lots of exciting charity events including cake sales, a very popular Teachers Lip Sync Battle, the launch of the £100 challenge and writing a children’s book in conjuction with Christ the King Primary School. We feel like we’ve worked really well together as a team during a year of change but a very rewarding one, and are looking forward to seeing what the future brings! Taken from a piece written by Holly Hawkswood, Head Girl and Alex Jones, Head Boy. Student Leaders meet the Director of Education Student leaders took part in the Young People Shadow Board Meeting, where they had the fantastic opportunity to discuss education with the Director of Education for Coventry. They were asked to give their opinions on the current state of education in the UK and give suggestions as to how they felt it could be improved. The students enjoyed the chance to discuss issues that mattered to them and came up with some excellent ideas, including the use of the internet in exams and more vocational courses such as brick laying. Year 10 student wins the design a new logo competition Hinnaa Hassan in Year 10 created the winning design for our new school badge soon to be launched. The logo will be used on all the school paperwork from September 2017 and will signify the new beginning for West Coventry Academy on the Nutbrook Avenue site. Watch this space! Sports Club for Year 7 and 8 Kian Hamer in Year 8 has set up and organised a lunch time Student Leaders Sports Club for Year 7 and Year 8. Students can play indoor football at dinner time and Kian has introduced an element of competition. The club is proving to be very popular. Well done Kian for all your hard work. Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award Students from Year 10 and Year 11 enjoyed a lovely presentation evening at Coventry Cathedral after completing their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award this year. Hopefully next year we will have both boys and girls completing their Bronze and Silver awards. Mrs O’Connor, Mrs Powner and Miss Feeney were proud to be a part of the evening with one of the largest representations from Coventry schools. Page 3 Issue 3 PSHE Day PSHE Day was a great success again this year. All school years took part with very positive feedback on how useful they found the wide range of PSHE related activities. The theme for Year 7 students was Healthy Lifestyles, Year 8 looked at Personal Safety while Year 9 students learned about Mental Health and Relationships. Students in Year 10 had a fabulous Enterprise Day working in teams and Year 11 looked at Careers and Sexual Health issues. Year 7: Healthy lifestyles including breakfast and a swim. Year 8: All Year 8 were off timetable to take part in different sessions including internet safety and Road Safety. They also enjoyed a walk in the local community looking at Road Safety issues. Page 4 Issue 3 Enterprise Day Year 10 took part in a fantastic Enterprise Day with each Tutor Group forming their own business to produce cookies with a unique theme. The students costed their proposals and agreed prices to produce a profit, create prototype packaging, and produce marketing materials. They also produced a newsletter outlining what happened during the day. Each company had a Managing Director and an Assistant Managing Director along with departments for Production, Publicity, Marketing, Packaging and Finance. The companies were judged on their originality, attention to detail, knowledge of the product and their overall presentation. 10E won the best stand and 10H won best overall company. Well done everyone! Page 5 Issue 3 Careers Focus Skills Show Experience A group of students travelled to the NEC in Birmingham where they had the opportunity to experience a number of hands on activities and also to see the fantastic work and skills that young people are engaged in within vocational occupations. This event brings many people together where students could speak about and learn what their future options are such as Universities, College Courses and Apprenticeships. The students found it a very fun and informative experience. A look at Engineering Apprenticeship Opportunities Students enjoyed a very successful morning when they visited two Employers/Training Providers offering Engineering Apprenticeship Opportunities. All our students engaged well, asking some really insightful questions, which will hopefully result in some of them becoming our Engineers of the Future. Our thanks go out to MGTS – Midland Group Training Services and MTC Academy for giving up their time and showing their facilities to our students. Page 6 Issue 3 Careers Fair This year’s Career Fair at Tile Hill Wood Jaguar Landrover, National Grid, Coventry related careers. School & Woodlands Academy was a great City Council, the Army, Police, Belgrade The event was open to students in Year 11 success once again. Building upon last years Theatre, PCMS Group and a local Vet. and the West Coventry Sixth Form – all at event, we expanded the event to include not important stages of their career planning The event was extremely well attended only visitors from Universities, 6th Forms, and choices. and included a large STEM area for all the Colleges and Training Providers but also All students had a very interesting and students to visit and find out about STEM employers such as British Telecom, BMW, informative time. A look at Engineering Apprenticeship Opportunities West Coventry Sixth Form Support the Coventry Cyrenians Charity Students from West Coventry Sixth Form once again this year supported the local Cyrenians charity by donating food, gloves, hats, scarves and toiletries for use by Coventry’s vulnerable people. Science News... Science Club runs every Tuesday after school and we have made a fantastic start conducting different experiments each week. Year 7 girls and boys are all invited to join in the fun! We have made and fired paper rockets with a prize for the furthest reaching. We have extracted DNA from kiwi fruit very successfully and carried out lots of examples of chemical reactions. Think Science Conference - As part of our aim to encourage all students studying Science subjects to consider pursuing STEM subjects at Higher Education, all students studying A-Level Science subjects were invited to attend this conference which was hosted by the Think Science team at Warwick University. The conference was a day-long event aimed at A-Level students looking to study STEM subjects at university.