I hope you had a lovely Easter break. It was great to welcome students back into school on Monday and hear about what they’d been doing over the holidays. Uniform standards have remained impressively high and our thanks go to parents and carers for your support with this.
Year 7 returned to their first set of formal exams at Boroughbridge High School. We do exams for each of our year groups so that they get into the routine of exam hall conditions so by the time they get to Year 10, they feel confident in doing so. Year 7 have certainly risen to this challenge this week arriving fully equipped, entering and exiting the Exam Hall silently and carrying out each exam in full exam conditions. Over the next few weeks they’ll be getting their results, receiving confirmation of things that they do well and identifying areas for improvement.
Remaining on the focus of exams, with the GCSE and BTEC season rapidly approaching, Mrs. Bauwens, our Exams Officer, has reminded Year 11 students of the JCQ regulations and Year 10 will have a similar session next week.
Across the year groups, students have quickly settled back into school life and routines. We were pleased to welcome our Local Authority adviser on Thursday for a visit focused on Behaviour for Learning. We had a full day with visits to many lessons across the curriculum and year groups, along with observing Year 7 entering the Exam Hall at the beginning of the day, watching assembly, walking around at social times and speaking to groups of staff and students. It was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate the progress that we’ve made with high standards of uniform and behaviour being consistently observed. We will, of course, as I outlined in my Headteacher’s Update, continue on our improvement journey.
In assemblies this week, Mrs. Godsell-Wright has focused on resilience, talking with students about how they can develop theirs whilst using inspiring examples such as Russ Cook who, you may have read, completed a gruelling feat of running the length of Africa whilst facing many challenges along the way. Students were invited to give their own examples and, this morning, Year 7 students described how Greta Thunberg in her environmental campaigns and Marcus Rashford with his Free School Meals campaign had shown great resilience.
As part of their fundraising efforts, the Friends of Boroughbridge High School are organising the School Lottery. If you’d like to take part, please click here.
On Thursday, a group of Year 11 students took part in NYBEP’s employability skills scheme, learning all about the employment application process from CV writing and how to stand out from the crowd, to interviews and employability skills. They took part in activities that they might face at assessment centres and completed group challenges to develop their team work skills, critical thinking, planning and resilience.
We were delighted to welcome back Madame Reed from maternity leave before the Easter break and this week we’ve welcomed to the staff team our new Attendance Officer, Mr. Hepburn.
For next week, a reminder that we will be holding a Scholastics Book Fair on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th April in the school library. The book fair will be open 1-1:30pm and 3:45-4:15pm for students to browse and purchase any books that they would like. Parents and carers are welcome to call in to the after school sessions too – please sign in at the main reception. The fair will be cashless and so students will need to either complete a ‘wishlist’ and purchase books online at home or pay via debit card.
Have a lovely weekend!
You may remember the weather last weekend. It wasn’t great but, whatever you were doing, you’re likely to have been warmer and drier than our Year 10/11 students out on their Duke of Edinburgh Silver Practice expedition. But, as ever, they showed remarkable resilience. Mrs. Murphy reports,
In assemblies this week, Mr. Grierson has explored how being creative and ‘The Arts’ can help our mental health and well-being. He talked about the power of mindfulness and using activities such as colouring or dancing to support positive mental health. Staying with the creative theme, in Art over the last couple of weeks, Year 8 have been looking at the illustrations of Tim Burton and layering whilst Year 9 have been exploring using acrylic paint and blending with great success.
It’s been an important week for William in Year 7 who has juvenile arthritis and was invited to be the first ever child guest speaker for Versus Arthritis at their annual Arthritis Fellows Conference. William prepared and presented his own PowerPoint describing what it is like to have juvenile arthritis at the age of 11. His audience was over 100 adults comprising of consultants, scientists, fellowship students, researchers, Versus Arthritis staff and campaigners. William described what it is like to have arthritis as a child, what his pain is like, how it affects his daily life, how he sometimes has to use crutches and the help he needs.
It’s been reading all the way this week to mark World Book Day. A book inspired Bake-Off enabled students to use the medium of cake to show remarkable creativity with winner Zander (Y8) representing ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ by Roald Dahl, and runners up Freya (Y8) representing Ghostbusters by John Sazaklis and Freya (Y9) representing ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ by Holly Jackson. They were then put to a very good cause with students buying a delicious slice with funds raised going to the Read for Good charity.
In Geography, Mrs. Gomersal and Year 8 and 9 read part of ‘The Explorer’ by Katherine Rundell which is a best selling children’s book about four children that crash-land into the Amazon Rainforest. Mrs. Gomersal says, ‘Although Geography related, I like the message of the book. The four children learn that although utterly alone, in order to survive they must work together and trust each other.’
Working with a similar theme, Madame Joly in French with Years 7 and 8 explored ‘Le Petit Prince’ which is a book which talks about the importance of taking care of the people important to you. Years 7 and 9 looked at ‘Voyage au Centre de la Terre’ by Jules Verne with Madame Llaurado who said ‘Jules Verne in general, and this book in particular, is good in nurturing critical thinking and stimulating understanding of other cultures.’
We’re looking forward to the BHS Big Quiz tonight, the first event organised by the newly formed Friends of BHS. We thank them and you for your support with this and look forward to future events.
The week started well with our second phase of tree planting. Mr. Woodward reports,
In preparation for World Book Day next week, in assemblies, Mr. Cockerill has been talking about the value of reading in supporting positive mental health and wellbeing before looking at some of the books which have had a significant impact such as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.
Earlier in the week Mr. Field reports that ‘The Year 8 and Year 9 rugby teams took their chance to shine in the recent York Schools’ 9 a side rugby tournament. The boys impressed the York Knights’ staff with their resilience and positive gameplay throughout all of the games. The boys played games against King James’s, Manor, Tadcaster Grammar, York High and Joseph Rowntree. There were some positive results for the boys in some tough competitive matches against strong competition.’ We are really proud of the commitment shown by the boys and by the fact that we were the only school to field two teams in the tournament.
You’ll be aware that next Friday is our BHS Big Quiz night, the first event organised by the newly formed Friends of Boroughbridge parent/carer group. Tickets are available on Parent Mail and at Reception for £10. We hope to see you there. 
In Science Club this week, students have been testing their designed and constructed parachutes. The winning parachute was made by Cole, Ethan and Connor! Miss Camy was very pleased with their efforts commenting that ‘It worked so well due to the large surface area of the parachute slowing the fall of our plasticine models.’ Science Club takes place every Thursday lunchtime in B9 at 12.45p.m. and is open to students in Years 7, 8 and 9.
We were delighted to hear that, over half term, Alice in Year 8 who is a keen bell ringer has become a qualified member of the Yorkshire Association of Change Ringers, one of the youngest to do so. To do this she had to ring a quarter peal which took the team of six ringers 43 minutes and involved 1260 changes. A superb achievement indeed. Following this, Alice was asked to do a Radio interview with BBC Radio York on Thursday morning.
We’ve also been able to celebrate students’ success in assemblies by awarding certificates to those students who have done consistently well in their Attitude to Learning, Behaviour for Learning and Homework, as shown in their recent tracking.
With the completion of a full cycle of the timetable, we’re now fully back into routine. A continued focus for us this term is to embed our three phases of learning which, as we’ve reported, is having a positive impact on focus in lessons along with the quality of responses to questions. If you want to know what it looks like in practice then this week I’ll focus on the Group and Pair work which has been taking place in classrooms across the school over the past week. As you can see, the important factor is that students ensure that their talk is about the activity being carried out. In English, Year 7 students talked in pairs about the best way to sequence a series of pictures into a non-fiction story about a camping trip to the woods whilst in Music they have recalled and discussed in groups the main points to a story connected to a piece of music. In Geography they discussed the impacts, positive and negative, that different weather conditions can have. Up in Science Club, students worked effectively in teams to create lava lamps!
