In a challenging and unprecedented week, the strength of our community has been demonstrated in so many ways. Our approach at Boroughbridge High School has been to keep things as normal and in perspective as possible. I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the staff team for their efforts throughout and to thank parents and carers for your support, understanding and patience.

So we started the week with a number of engaging learning opportunities. Year 7 reinforced the four operations with fractions through Bingo whilst in Geography they made 3-D drainage basin models which will be used to make a learning display. In French they were learning personal pronouns and in IT made links or created a sentence using 3 or more spreadsheet symbols and key terms. In PE, in gymnastics, they explored travelling and rolls, practising different ways to travel around. In DT, Year 7 had their eyes opened to the exciting world of Computer Aided Design (CAD). Having designed some Alessi inspired spaghetti measurers, they began the tricky task of transferring their designs to a computer programme to be eventually cut out on the laser cutter.

In DT, Year 8 saw the culmination of their design and technology skills as they completed their USB lights. Mrs Flowers says that, ‘It was fantastic to see their faces light up not only with the colour changing LED light from their creations but also with the realisation that using their own skills they’d made something fantastic!’

We welcomed Mr Cooper to the Pastoral Team this week. He’ll be looking after Years 9 and 10 and, during conversations with students, he explained the importance of dealing with stress and to ‘box’ it away until it happens so that you don’t worry about everything.

In Health and Social Care, Years 10 and 11 were doing role plays to demonstrate how care values are important when working with people. In GCSE PE students discussed how athletes may be tempted to use performance enhancing drugs. Meanwhile, down in Maths, Year 10 were extending themselves solving quadratic algebra problems including completing the square, factoring to solve, curve sketching, sketching inequalities and solving iteration problems.

In History, Year 12 were using a collection of contemporary sources to study the attitudes and arguments against women’s suffrage using a speed dating type activity.

Mrs Rainbow, our Careers Adviser, visited Askham Bryan College to see and learn about their unique range of FE and HE courses. They have a great choice for Post-16 and Post-18 education ranging from agriculture, animal care, public service, sport, motor sport and engineering.

The Professional Development Day on Wednesday gave us the opportunity to put together online resources for study at home and, little did we know that less than 36 hours later, the decision to close schools for the majority of students would be announced.

Thursday was a day of confusion as Year 10, 11 and 13 students and their teachers were coming to terms with the fact that they wouldn’t be sitting exams and, for Years 11 and 13, that they would be leaving much sooner than they had anticipated. Whilst we hope to have further celebrations later in the year, we took the opportunity to have a Year 11 leaving assembly this afternoon, celebrating the achievements of our students. Year 13 were presented with their own personalised leaving card, including a photo of their Year 7 selves. We will, of course, continue to provide support to these students in the weeks ahead.

So, as you’re aware, school will close for the majority of students today, opening only for children of key workers and vulnerable students from Monday.

I’ll keep in touch in the coming weeks and will look forward to the time when we all return to school and when, I suspect, we will have a different view of the things we value.

Take care.