Category : Headteacher’s Blog

Assemblies this week have focused on attendance with Mr Grierson outlining the importance of being in school every day for every lesson as there really is no better way to learn than being taught face to face. Not surprisingly, there are also statistics which prove that high attendance is linked to excellent exam results and, in turn, a higher future income.

So, just in case there is any doubt about exactly how much learning can take place in an hour’s lesson then it’s worth knowing that, in a lesson this week, GCSE RE students grappled with an introduction to twelve key adjectives that are used in Christianity to define the being that is God; followed by analysis of these concepts whereby students first extracted ways in which a belief in such a being might influence behaviour and world views of those of faith and then explored the way in which different concepts supported/complemented each other. Finally, students then evaluated the logical consistency of such characteristics by identifying traits which counteracted each other, leading to a robust argument against the existence of such a being.

PE students in their practical lesson were using a video of volleyball game play to develop overhead serve technique whilst, in their theory lesson, they were looking at aerobic and anaerobic respiration, examining the short-term effects of exercise on the body.

Historians were looking at Elizabeth I and her religious settlement, demonstrating their progress in an assessment, whilst in other areas of History, they looked at the 1923 Crisis Year in Germany, Invasion of the Ruhr, Hyperinflation and the Munich Putsch. Across the corridor, Geographers were using photographs to identify differences in the nature and quality of life in different areas of a city. They then studied the Burgess model, a simplified diagram of how land use in a city varies from the centre to the edge, finishing by looking into the different characteristics of each different zone and the reasons for this.

Dividing numbers into a ratio, finding missing values within a ratio and problem-solving using ratios was the mission of the Mathematicians whilst in BTEC ICT students learnt about typography, fonts, typefaces, serif and san serif, font styles and how they can portray meaning, as well as how legibility can be affected. The students were then asked to explore and experiment with fonts, using a desktop publishing package, gathering examples of all the areas they looked at.

In Business, students learnt about key laws and protections in place for employees and why they exist, why businesses must abide by these laws and the consequences of breaking them. The laws they looked at were the Consumer Rights Act, the Equality Act, the Health and Safety at Work Act and the National Minimum and Living Wage.

Linguists researched, identified, learned and applied the common and irregular verbs for two tenses in Spanish, the present continuous and the perfect.

In DT, the focus was the mechanical and physical properties of materials, how these help designers make choices for their products and how they go about analysing their needs versus their choice of materials. Food Preparation students have been looking at micronutrients analysing the role of various vitamins in the body and in their practical lesson examining the use of a baking powder as a raising agent.

Taking on the Arts, in Music students learnt why different keys have certain sharp and flat notes, and the order that those sharps and flats always take. They learnt how to find out which two keys shared the same key signature, (related keys) then composed 8 bar chord sequences in those two keys adding cadences at the end, that they had learnt about in a previous lesson. They made circles of fifths out of card to help show which chords are primary (major) in any major key: chords I IV and V; and which are secondary (minor): chords ii, iii and vi; and which chord is always diminished: chord vii, and when to use each type.  They then learnt some handy phrases to help remember all of this for the listening exam, and wrote these notes up in their books.

In BTEC Performing Arts students have been looking at the anatomy of the voice and used this information to create a robust pre-performance physical and vocal warm up routine whilst in GCSE Art, Craft and Design are beginning to research artists for their coursework project based on the theme of Disguise, they are also creating mood boards to give them inspiration for their initial ideas.

Whilst reading Act Two of Macbeth, in English, students learned about the role of witches in Jacobean Britain and James I’s interest in them; we’ve explored the relationship of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan; we’ve explored how the famous ‘porter’ scene is a Shakespearean parody of the 17th century concept of equivocation.

In Science, Year 10 have been looking at scalars, vectors and contact forces in one lesson whilst examining ultrasound in another. Having completed a mock exam, Year 11 students have been getting their feedback and developing their revision technique.

So every lesson really does matter!

In other news, we’ve had a Sixth Form and Staff Coffee morning today, raising £140.72 for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Have a lovely weekend!

As we enter our second week, there’s a welcome air of normality as extra-curricular and sporting activities are well underway. At the beginning of the week, Year 10 headed off to Xscape to take on a skiing experience. All year groups can now access afterschool netball and football with Crossfit taking place for Years 9, 10 and 11.

Meanwhile over in the Music Block, Year 8’s ‘The Firebirds’ and Year 11’s ‘Entropy’ rock bands have started their practice with both, Mrs Skilbeck comments, making a great start! The Choir and Ukulele group will start next week and instrumental lessons have started with some of Year 7 already taking part. If you’d like to know more about instrumental lessons, then please contact Mrs Skilbeck. In other exciting news, we’re just waiting for confirmation that we can get the licence to start rehearsals for this year’s musical – watch this space!

Mrs Bauwens is also planning fieldtrips to Leeds and Hornsea for GCSE Geography students.

We’re thinking ahead to Open Evening which this year, thankfully, we’ll be holding at school on Wednesday 13^th October from 6 until 8.30pm. In order to prepare for the event, when we’ll be welcoming Year 5 and 6 students and their parents, we’ll be closing school at 1.30pm. You’ll be receiving further details soon, as we’ll be looking forward to students coming back for the evening to show just what takes place at Boroughbridge High School.

Assemblies this week, led by Mr Grierson and Mrs Godsell-Wright, have focused on student safety with clear reminders of actions students need to take to ensure that everyone in our community is safe, happy and successful. A key message was that students need to talk to any adult if they have any concerns.

Have a lovely weekend!

It’s been great to welcome students back into school this week following a very successful Summer for Boroughbridge High School. You may have seen the articles on the website sharing the successes of our Year 11 and Year 13 students who are now moving on to a range of destinations including further study, apprenticeships and employment. We also had a Year 6 Summer School which prepared students for the academic year ahead through a range of exciting activities from building a shanty town to creating an animation, baking cookies to making music and developing team building activities with the Fire Service.

We’ve also had a very positive start to the term with students returning with enthusiasm, approaching testing with great maturity and then quickly settling back into lessons and routines. We’ve taken the opportunity in assemblies to revisit our standards and our core commitment to ensuring that everyone in our community is safe, happy and successful.

It’s also been fantastic to welcome our new Year 7 students who are already making a positive contribution to our school community. They’ve been enjoying a wide variety of lessons across the curriculum. In Art, students are creating a Picasso inspired portrait, initially by playing ‘Roll a Picasso’ in which the roll of a dice decides which facial features they will include in their portraits. With safety at the fore, in Food Technology they’ve been developing their skills so that they can cut safely using the bridge and claw methods whilst in Science they’ve been looking at safety in the lab and in particular the hazard symbols that they need to know. Meanwhile in Design Technology, they’ve been challenged to create a graphic logo from their name. Following their first ICT lesson, students can now gain access to the school network and the joys of Google Classroom, whilst also learning about who is on the back of the new £50 note. Over in Humanities, in RE students have begun exploring the question of whether God exists by jumping right in at the deep end, studying the meaning of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s assertion that “God is dead and we have killed him!” whilst in Geography, students are investigating the question ‘What is Geography?’ looking at the different areas and locating popular human and physical features of the UK onto maps. And, if you’d like a weekend reading recommendation, you could join Year 7 in reading Philip Pullman’s exciting story ‘Clockwork’! So with Week 1 completed, there’ll be even more subjects to look forward to next week!

We’re also very pleased to welcome Mrs Gomersal to the Geography Team.

So at the end of a very successful week, have a lovely weekend!

This week we’ve said farewell to Mrs Hardcastle, Ms Cushen and Miss Mortlock. We thank them for the massive contribution that they’ve made to Boroughbridge High School and wish them well for the future.

And so as we’ve reached the of term, at the end of a challenging year for us all, there’s only one thing left for us to say.

As you’re very much aware, it’s been another challenging week with students being asked to self-isolate whilst others returned to school. Our thoughts are with students and family members who are unwell and we send our best wishes for a speedy recovery. With student wellbeing in mind, Mrs Langford has updated our ‘Emotional and Mental Wellbeing Support’ presentation. You can find it at https://www.boroughbridgehigh.com/students/student-wellbeing-and-keeping-safe/

Looking forward to happier times, we were delighted last week to ‘meet’ the Year 6 students who will be joining our school community in September. Students and their parents had the opportunity to meet with their Form Tutors and hear more about the transition to Boroughbridge High School. The resources we shared can be found at https://www.boroughbridgehigh.com/year-6-parents/july-2021-parents-evening/.We’re also looking forward to Summer School in four weeks when Year 6 will join us for a week of activities organised and led by Boroughbridge High School staff. Activities will include sporting challenges, team building activities, creative writing, Science experiments, fun with numbers, making your own film and playing instruments. A great way to prepare for secondary education.

So with one week to go to the Summer break, have a lovely weekend!

With the new timetable starting a couple of weeks ago and students in Years 10 and 11 starting their new option subject GCSEs and BTECs, let’s find out what students have been studying in the first two weeks of the course.

As sunflowers start to flower in gardens, GCSE Art and Design students have been involved in a painting masterclass based on the work of Van Gogh. They’ve also been developing their drawing and mark making techniques whilst looking at various artists’ alternative ways of working.

Up in RE, Mr Woodward has had students grappling with the Sikh concept of God as both wholly within every aspect of the universe whilst simultaneously transcending its limitations as well as gaining an understanding of the Sikh aim of achieving liberation from reincarnation through attaining Mukti.

Media Consumption has been the focus in BTEC Creative Media, with students creating a ‘Media Consumption Diary’ recording all of the media they come into contact with, e.g. watching YouTube, reading books, playing on computer games and social media. Mrs Knock says that it was quite a surprise to see how much they can consume in one evening!

GCSE Design Technology students are completing a small-skills based practical to recap how to use the tools and processes in DT. Taking a resourceful stance, they are making a desk tidy out of two materials from the scraps boxes which then have to fit to given parameters. They also carried out some primary research in Boroughbridge to help them to decide which theme to tackle in the NEA tasks.

In GCSE Business, students have been learning about entrepreneurial qualities and the five main legal structures a business can have, from sole traders to Public Limited Companies.

The GCSE Geographers have been studying world cities and urban areas as part of the ‘urban issues’ unit with Mrs Bauwens and with Mrs Hardcastle they have been looking into the natural processes that shape coastal areas as part of the ‘physical landscapes’ unit. Their teachers say that they have made an excellent start to the course and really impressed with their positive attitude and organisation.

GCSE Historians have begun by plotting the rise of Hitler with Mrs Town, looking at conditions in World War I whilst Mr Sellers has taken them back to Tudor England, studying Elizabeth I.

In addition to talking about how they use their mobile phones and whether they get on with their brother, our GCSE Spanish students are brushing up their cooking skills in preparation for a ‘Fiesta’. They will be showcasing their Hispanic specialities in the final week of term.

In BTEC Health and Social Care, students have been learning about human growth and development across the life stages. Mrs Godsell-Wright comments that they have started the course well.

BTEC Performing Arts students have taken full advantage of being back in their base by studying DNA by Dennis Kelly. Already they have cast the play and begun rehearsals taking full advantage of the lighting and staging that is available in the Drama Studio. Mr West said “It is very exciting to see the students being so creative with the set, and working under the stage lights of the studio. We have been without theatre for over a year now, and seeing the students get so involved in the process of bringing a script from page to stage is wonderful.”

Mrs Skilbeck reports that ‘Music began with a boomwhacker-tastic performance of our first set work: Toto’s Africa. Playing the opening Riffs helped us to understand how the intro was put together.  We’ve been composing short pieces using Minor Pentatonic scales like the one David Paich and Jeff Porcaro used in the song.’

As you know, having been very fortunate in recent weeks, our bubble finally burst this week as we’ve had to ask Year 8 and some Key Stage 4 students to self-isolate so learning has been taking place in the classroom and in homes around Boroughbridge. I understand how frustrating this is for parents and students and really appreciate your support with this. We’ll look forward to welcoming students back into school.

There was a buoyant atmosphere in school on Thursday following the Euro 2020 semi-final on Wednesday. So, with the Final on Sunday along with the Wimbledon Finals, have a lovely weekend!

So, it been ‘Happy New School Year’ at Boroughbridge High School as we’ve moved to the new timetable and, whilst we’ve still maintained bubbles, students have been moving around to subject classrooms and seeing parts of the school that they last saw in March 2020. Teachers are similarly delighted to be reunited with their own teaching rooms. Students have made an impressive start to the new school year which will stand them in good stead for the weeks ahead.

Following on from the success of the Year 7 ski trip last week, new Year 9 have had their own experience on the slopes of XScape.

We also have news of Boroughbridge High School’s success in a project carried out throughout lockdown months this year. Mrs Langford reports,

‘Over the last year, our school has been involved in a project called the Festival of Friends which was aimed at supporting Service students in North Yorkshire and held in conjunction with both York and York St John Universities. We chose to promote Further and Higher Education to our Service students as we felt that this would benefit them the most.

 Since March, the Year 10 and 11 Service students have taken part in the project supported by myself and our Careers Adviser, Angie Rainbow. We started in Lockdown and have held eight one-hour sessions in total to each of the year group bubbles.

 As part of this project, the school submitted a short video starring two of our Y10 students and a case study, detailing what the students have achieved. We were informed late last week that we have been shortlisted for a prize. The online celebration event that was held on Tuesday night was attended by many VIPs – from the military, the Council and the Universities of York and York St John, as well as Paralympian Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson and Steve Royle from Britain’s Got Talent. As for the result… we fought off stiff competition from The Joseph Rowntree School in York and won first prize in the secondary category! After well over a year of feeling like life was at a complete standstill, it has been an absolute delight to work with our Service students to help them to plan a brighter future for themselves.’

An excellent achievement and our congratulations go to the Service Student team, Mrs Langford and Mrs Rainbow. We also thought that it was lovely to have this success in Mrs Rainbow’s final week at Boroughbridge High School. Mrs Rainbow joined in July 1997 and has made a massive contribution to our school community. She’s had many roles during her time here including Teaching Assistant and Resource Centre Manager showing total commitment throughout. She has taken an active role in the wider school and community including being a parent governor and a member of the Friends of Boroughbridge. Fundraising has always been her thing with the Rotary Shoe Boxes campaign, the Christmas Fair and the Macmillan Coffee Morning being a regular focus. More recently, she’s been our Sixth Form mentor and Careers Adviser, ensuring that students know what opportunities are available to them and how they can secure them with a genuine belief in Aspiration for All. Most of all though Mrs Rainbow will be missed for her no-nonsense approach, words of wisdom and kindness. We wish her all the best with her future ventures.

A reminder that Monday (5^th July) is a Professional Development Day when students do not attend school.

Have a lovely weekend.

It’s been a week of action with Year 12 Geographers travelling to Redcar sand dunes to study how and why the vegetation changes with distance from the sea in a psammosere.  This will help these A-Level students understand how to collect valid fieldwork data in preparation for them designing their own fieldwork investigation to do over the summer.  Mrs Bauwens reports that the weather was kind to them and the sun shone all day but they ran out of time for ice-cream!

Moving to conditions of a different kind, Year 7 students put on their winter clothing as they made their way to Xscape in Castleton with Mr Field and Mrs Simmonds. As you can see they had a great time and Years 8 and 9 (or 9 and 10 as they’ll be!) can look forward to their own ski trips in the coming weeks.

Following the success of securing the PE grant, this week Mr Field won a Monster Kickabout competition, receiving the prize of a £200 voucher and £1000 of PE equipment which included 30 footballs, on-pitch training equipment, bibs and an electric ball pump. They were put to immediate use in a monster kickabout penalty session.

Fundraising has been at the fore this week for Year 11 students completing National Citizen Service. They’ve been washing cars, selling plants and asking students to guess the number of sweets in a jar, in order to raise money for good local causes.

Someone who has done much fundraising over the years is Mrs Rainbow, our Careers Adviser and 6^th Form Learning mentor. She’ll be leaving Boroughbridge High School at the end of next week and I’ll say more about her outstanding contribution to our school community in the next blog.

As part of our safety measures to ensure that students are safe, happy and successful, we’ve practised our Lockdown Drill today. As you would expect, students responded positively, understanding the importance of this sort of drill.  And for your information, over the Summer holidays, we’ll be installing a fence at the front of school to improve the security of the site.

And so we have our new school year and new timetable on Monday to look forward to. As you’ll be aware, we’re also changing how we organise school so that students are taught in subject areas. We’ve got an exciting week ahead.

Have a lovely weekend.

It’s been Exam Week for Years 7, 8 and 9 and so they’ve had the experience of both being in the Exam Hall along with completing in-class assessments. We’re really impressed with the way in which students have prepared for these and also at how quickly they have demonstrated that they know how to conduct themselves in an exam situation. These exams will help us to check students’ progress and also inform our future planning and teaching. This is important at this time of the year for us as it’s the penultimate week of our 2020-2021 school year as we’ll be moving on to our new timetable on 28^th June. Doing this enables us to maximise teaching time for our Stage not Age approach at GCSE and helps everyone get fully focused for the year ahead.

With students now able to use the PE changing rooms this week, we’ve been delighted to see the standard of uniform rapidly approaching pre-Covid times. This will continue to be a focus in the coming weeks.

It was excellent to see the initiative shown by some Year 7 students, now that lunch time clubs are possible, in setting up their own band, the Firebirds. I dropped in on their Wednesday lunchtime practice and, along with Mrs Skilbeck, was impressed by their enthusiasm and performance. I’ll look forward to seeing how they develop.

It’s at this time of year that we’re preparing to welcome Year 6 students who will be joining us in September with Mrs Wilson and Mrs Langford visiting primary schools. Unfortunately, we’re unable to have face to face transition days due to Covid restrictions so, instead, we’re planning to have a menu of virtual resources so that they can still ‘meet’ us all and find out about Life in Year 7 at Boroughbridge High School. We’re also really pleased that we’re able to offer a Summer School in August.

National Citizen Service for Year 11 and 12 is well underway this week with an action-packed programme based around skill based, team building and problem solving activities including input from the Army and Fire service. Students appear to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

A reminder that we have a Professional Development Day on Monday 5^th July when students do not attend school. We’ll be using that day to plan for our priorities for the year ahead with a focus on our core aim for students to be safe, happy and successful.

Have a lovely weekend!

Whilst it may not seem that long since Britain voted to leave the EU, Donald Trump was elected President of the USA and the Summer Olympics were held in Rio, it was in fact in the year that our Year 11 students were leaving their primary schools and joining the Boroughbridge High School community.

This week it’s been their time to reflect on their journey at Boroughbridge High School and enjoy a number of celebration leaving events.

Following their enjoyable trip to Flamingo Land prior to half term, students embarked on a number of activities this week which they’ve suggested over the last few weeks as to how they’d like to mark the end of their compulsory education. So they’ve created memory posters, nominated each other for Form Awards including categories from most enthusiastic, most courageous and best Christmas door organiser and participated in Form sporting challenges including dodgeball, rounders and benchball.

Then, on Wednesday, the tradition for shirt signing was continued with inspirational, kind or funny messages written to students from students and staff. Students then went to their Leavers’ Assembly where Mrs Godsell-Wright shared pictures from the past, award nominations were revealed and 11BR and 11SF were crowned the winners of the sporting challenges. Then, as is customary at these events, Mr Grierson was accompanied with his rendition of Wonderwall. Students had a leisurely lunch followed by a BBQ and, although they may deny it, could be found having an occasional dance to tracks such as ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ and ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

Above all, after the challenges of the last few months it was great to see students enjoying some quality time with their peers and the staff team. A perfect way to celebrate all that they have achieved. We wish the class of 2021 well for the future and will look forward to hearing about their future successes.

We are however delighted that we’ll see so many of them very soon when they return for National Citizen Service next week.

So, with this glorious weather forecast to last, have a lovely weekend!