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Head of School's Blog #19 Wednesday 8th November 2017
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Wednesday 8th November 2017

In this issue of the blog, after another busy start to the new academic year, we celebrate hosting successful events such as the Open Evening, Careers Fair and Aspiration Day.  We introduce you to our new members of our peer support group and wish our year 7 and year 8 students good luck with a code cracking challenge run by University of Southampton.  Also featured in this edition is the primary school prize winners and an article on the recent visit of year 6 students from Thorney Close Primary.

There is an update on the work of Mr Bunn STEM Co-ordinator and we introduce Miss Long, the newest addition to the Languages department. 
 
I hope that you enjoy reading about the many things taking place within our Academy and in the next edition we will outline the up-coming Activities Day and Christmas events as well as news on our ‘The Big Draw’ efforts.

Richard Carr
Head of School

Primary Prize Winners

Congratulations to the primary school pupils whom have won some of the fabulous prizes up-for-grabs at our open evening in September. Gypsy Burt of Hasting Hill Academy had the closest guess for the 'sweets in the jar' competition, Tayn Blacklin of Broadway Juniors was able the correctly guess the name of our school mascot and Faith Adams from Thorney Close peddled away with a brand new bike thanks to her wonderful letter about her first impressions of Sandhill View to Miss Scott. Well done everyone!

Sandhill Students Get Cracking

Year 7 and 8 students are currently testing their code breaking skills after entering ‘The 16th National Cipher Challenge’ run by University of Southampton. The competition has been running since 2002, and regularly attracts entries from teams at over 700 UK schools and colleges. It is open to individuals or teams of school age and is free to enter. The prize for winning is worth £1000, awarded at the annual prize giving at the home of British code breaking, Bletchley Park. There is a new code to break each week for 8 weeks. The quicker the teams solve the code, the more points they get. They are not for the feint hearted! This is the second week of the challenge and the Sandhill View students are showing a lot of enthusiasm, skill and teamwork in their pursuit to decipher each code. We wish them good luck in their challenges!

Careers Fair 2017

On Tuesday 10th October Sandhill View Academy hosted its first careers fair. Our students, parents and carers had the opportunity to explore and discuss their future career paths with a range of representatives from our regional education and training providers as well as our Sixth Form at Southmoor and Connexions. We were also joined by the armed forces.

For students thinking about higher education options, university staff from Newcastle, Sunderland and York St John were on hand to answer their many questions. Many of our students are considering the apprenticeship route and the careers fair enabled them to consider the vast range of apprenticeships available in the north-east and Leibherr’s mobile welding unit certainly attracted a wide audience!

Careers events like this are an ideal opportunity for our students to find out about their long-term career aims and we look forward to inviting you to our next one!  

Attendance Drive Rolls On

The attendance team would like to thank everyone who supported our attendance drive last year, pupils with excellent school attendance are proven to make better progress over time and achieve better grades in their examinations. In order to support those children who were not meeting targets, our attendance team made a total of 933 home visits last school year!
 
Our attendance car continues to be out and about and so far we have made a further 130 visits since September. Visits are currently focussing on those pupils who have had more than one absence.  Parents and guardians who require any support to ensure their child meets our target of 97% attendance are encouraged to speak to their head of year.

Head of School's Awards

Congratulations to our Head of School's Award winners for the first half term. These pupils have earned the most Praise Points since the start of the year and are recognised by Mr. Carr with a certificate, a photo and a special 'Head of School's Award' Pen. The winners were; Charlie Peverley (Year 7), Kaitlin Hepple (Year 8), Imogen Laing (Year 7), Connor Walshaw (Year 7), Cameron Ridley (Year 10), Kaitlyn Stephenson (Year 7), Megan Forrest (Year 10), Ellie Foster (Year 7) and Joseph Johnston (Year 7).

A special congratulations goes to Layla Anderson (Year 8) who achieved the highest level of Praise Points in the school. Well done to everyone!

Remembering Those Before Us

Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day both fall outside of the normal school week this year but we are always keen here at the Academy to promote the message of ‘Remembrance’ amongst students here at Sandhill View.  This week, all students will be reminded of the sacrifices made by our service personnel and also of the significance of the 11th November this coming weekend.

In addition to this, Sandhill View Academy will be contributing to national fundraising initiatives by supporting the Poppy appeal throughout this week in school, as well as holding an internal two-minute silence at the end of the week to pay our respects to those who gave their lives for others.

Raising Aspirations at Sandhill View

From the onset of this academic year, the newly appointed Raising Aspirations team have been busy developing some very exciting opportunities for students; having established or strengthened existing links with local universities such as Durham and Sunderland, or some further afield, like the world famous Oxford University. Our aim is that students at Sandhill View are well informed and confident in choosing their next steps after leaving our school. For most of our students, that will most likely be progression onto our Sixth Form at Southmoor. For this very reason, students from each year group will experience taster sessions or trips to the sixth form which is the perfect opportunity to trial potential A Level subjects or explore whether sixth form is the right path for them.

For students who may want to take more vocational pathways, we have fantastic links with employers and apprenticeship providers through the school’s careers service. One of our long term goals is to facilitate the progression of our students into the UKs (or the Worlds) top universities. For this reason, we have Year 10 and 11 students appointed onto an honours scheme where they can develop their research skills and abilities to study independently through conducting their own research project and attending trips to local universities, concluding with a trip to Oxford University. Throughout the year there will be many exciting opportunities, so keep your eye on the blog to see what we have been up to!

Year 7 Know How to Party

Just before half term our Year 7 were given the chance to get their groove on in their annual school disco. The evening involved fun games, snacks, music and some very wild dancing that gave our pupils the chance to bond socially outside of lesson time, make friends and learn more about their new peers.

Aspiration Day

The jobs market is changing and so are the skills needed to be successful in life. Robots and artificial intelligence mean that young people today need to be able to adapt quickly to these changes. Over the last few weeks students have been learning about key employability skills and how subjects develop these essential employability skills. During the course of our first careers focus day students had the opportunity to demonstrate and further develop these skills so they will be ready to compete in the fast-changing world of work.

Students were also given an insight into the many different pathways which our staff have followed throughout their careers and with this realising that learning never stops! Throughout the day all lessons were linked to the heart, whether it was learning about heart surgery, your heart rate during exercise or the heart-felt passion which artists (and teachers!) have for their work.

By the end of the day our students believed that they could achieve and that’s what we want them to do! Thank you to the Futureme representatives who joined us to help deliver lessons and seminars about career progression.

Peer Supporters

Some of our Year 7s have recently been selected to act as members of a peer support group. The group includes such duties as being attendance prefects and anti-bullying monitors. Although our new Year 7 group are settling in to life at Sandhill View fantastically, having a level of support amongst the year group itself is a great way to help our Learning Coordinators make sure that their time at Sandhill continues to be a happy one.

Footballing Frenzy!

Our boys football teams have been playing tough games against the league favourites this week. All our our games ended very close, with Year 7 & 11 loosing out to St Aidan's Academy in some truly nail biting matches. Year 7 & 11 were also in action in the Academy Trust Derby, with Southmoor again taking narrow wins over our home teams. Year 7's next game is away to Kepier where the lads hope to end their run of close defeats with a solid victory. Good luck lads!

Thumbs Up for New Lunch System

Thank you to all parents and guardians who have supported us in vastly improving the lunch-time experience for our students by supporting our move away from a cash and card based system to a more modern finger-print based method.  After our recent consultation period with you, we are pleased to inform you that the new biometric lunch system began operating on the first day back after October half-term break.

Pleasingly, there have been very few first teething issues with the new system and feedback from students is telling us loudly that the move towards a finger-print based system has been a successful one.  Students are telling us that the new system has rapidly reduced waiting times and by removing cash having to be paid into machines, the new system has also reduced queues, meaning that students are now getting longer to eat their chosen option whilst also socialising with friends.

We would ask for further support from parents/guardians in providing the Academy with consent for your child to move to the finger-print based system if they have not already done so.  Students who have not yet moved are required to enter a number based pin code.  Although still an improvement on the previous system, if we can manage to move all students across to finger-print based operation then we will have a very swift and hugely effective lunch period by using the new system to its fullest capacity.

At last week’s Year 7 Parent Evening event our Head of School had a number of discussions with parents about the parental experience of the new on-line system where payments are made.  Once again, initial feedback was positive but there were queries about the new system not always allowing parents/guardians to see what their child has eaten that day.  We have raised this with the software company who provide and maintain the system and will be sure to feedback further to parents once they investigate this and provide us with an update into this issue.

Your support with the move to the new system has been greatly appreciated.

Brave Biologists

Pupils from Thorney Close Primary joined us recently to take part in a special biology lesson as part of our transition programme. Year 6 pupils got the chance to handle animal organs, watch a dissection of a pig's heart and learn about it's structure. Despite the squeamish prospect, the pupils really enjoyed getting hands on with anatomy and getting a great idea about the type of lessons and topics they will study in Science at Secondary school.

Stupendous STEM

We are pleased to announce that under the leadership of Mr Bunn, the Academy has recently received acknowledgement of our work in STEM by being the proud recipients of the national ‘STEM Ambassadors’ Award. STEM stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. This means that Mr Bunn looks for opportunities and initiatives that our learners can benefit from. 

At Sandhill View we realise the huge positives in giving our learners as many STEM opportunities as possible. One of the primary reasons for doing this is the amazing career benefits that it can bring. There are new jobs being created every day that simply did not exist ten years ago. By using STEM we coach our learners into being the ‘problem solvers’ which all businesses require.

As well as working with our current crop of youngsters, Mr Bunn is looking to increase our Academy’s links with local Primary Schools as it is never too early or too late to learn a new problem solving skill. To help our older learners when it comes to moving onto further education they will be invited to STEM careers evenings where they will have the opportunities to talk to STEM industries, which could open the door to an amazing career.  If any students are interested in becoming involved then please speak to Mr Bunn who will explain how this can be arranged.

What do you do at Sandhill View?
I teach French and German to Years 7,8 and 9. I also have a year 7 form class (7HL) who are fantastic!

Who was your favourite teacher at school and why?
My favourite teacher at school was my English teacher as she always had so much energy and enthusiasm in lessons. She was passionate about English and organised school trips to the theatre to watch adaptations of the texts we were studying. I still remember feeling utterly amazed watching 'An Inspector Calls' and Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice' at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle- awesome!  

What do you like to do in your spare time?
In my spare time I like to bake cakes and spend time eating them with family and friends! I am also learning Arabic which is great fun and a new challenge.    

Who is your favourite musical artist or band?
I am a real Ed Sheeran fan, particularly his new album Divide.   

What's the best thing about Sandhill View?
The positive atmosphere and enthusiasm around the school is wonderful and I'm really enjoying working in a great, supportive MFL department. 

What's the one thing you could never be without?
A cup of tea- everything is better with tea!

Have you missed out on previous editions of our Head of School's Blog? Click Here to check out our blog archive.
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