Following a wild weekend of weather courtesy of Storm Ciara, we returned to school on Monday to find school relatively unscathed. I’m aware that this wasn’t necessarily true for all of our families and appreciate the efforts that parents made to ensure that their children were able to get to school.

With Ofcom reporting in 2019 that 99% of 12 to 15 year olds go online for 20 ½ hours per week, an understanding of being critical of sources and questioning published information is vital for our young people so assemblies this week have focused on ‘fake news’ and how to spot it. Further information can be found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/51271837

Remaining on the technology theme, Mr Inglis has been exploring how we inspire students to research fast moving topics that may well become obsolete in less than a decade due to a fast-changing world. You can read his blog published by The Royal Society here. https://blogs.royalsociety.org/associate-schools/

On Monday, GCSE Musicians had a productive visit to Cundall Manor, where they heard the classical set work performed live and analysed with live illustration. Our thanks go to Mrs Skilbeck for organising this opportunity and, as you can see, for her performance.

In English, Year 7 students concluded their travel writing project by bringing into school food to share from the country they’ve each been writing about. Perhaps you can guess which countries they’ve chosen.

Year 9 have been fully focused on their exams this week, having a taste of what’s to come in just over a year’s time when, as part of our Stage not Age approach at KS4, they’ll be taking two of their GCSE option subjects. With that in mind, we can look forward to Year 9 Parents’ Evening on Wednesday 11^th March when parents and students will have the opportunity to hear about our Key Stage 4 curriculum offer, meet with teachers, and make the important decision about which four option subjects to study over the next two years.

In sporting news this week, Martha (Year 7) has come 6^th in North Yorkshire and 15^th across the North-East counties in cross country and the footballing season is underway for the girls across the year groups as they start their 7-a-side matches.

And so, after a productive half term at BHS, we look forward to our half term break. I hope that you and your families have a good one!