Headteacher’s Blog – 3rd March 2023
If you have younger children, then you’ve probably been battling with costumes of your child’s favourite character for World Book Day on Thursday. Here at Boroughbridge High School we’ve taken a DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) approach with teachers, for a couple of lessons in the day, choosing an extract from a favourite book or article relevant to their lesson, topic or subject and reading it aloud to the class before discussing it. So looking at a sample across school, in the Maths Department, Mrs Bloomfield read a passage to Year 7 from “The Number Devil – a Mathematical Adventure” by Hans Magnus Enzensberger which is a fun journey through the world of Mathematics through the eyes of a 12 year old boy who hates Maths but ends up dreaming about it!
In Mrs. Murphy’s Year 7 Maths lesson, student either read or wrote a short story involving a fraction. They then listened to the short stories, lots of food was mentioned in some really imaginative stories. Year 8 had a starter matching up descriptions with graphs. They were then shown a different graph and asked to write a short story that could be represented by the graph. Mrs. Murphy commented that ‘They all had a go and produced some stories that defied gravity.’
In Year 9 History, Mrs. Town read Chapter 1 of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ as they are starting to study the Holocaust.
In GCSE, Mr. Field shared an article tilted ‘Lizzy Yarnold: GB’s two-time Winter Olympic champion calls for stop on high-carbon sponsorship deals’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/64785138 which linked two topics that he has significant interest in; snowsports and the environment. The article also linked perfectly to the specification as it covered topics that students are about to learn about in GCSE PE, Commercialisation of sport.
Mr. Errington and his class read pages 52 to 55 of “Surely You’re joking, Mr Feynman” by R.P.Feynman. Mr. Errington says that ‘Richard Feynman was arguably the world’s greatest theoretical physicist and when I first read his books when I went to school in the 80’s, he inspired me to keep learning and my love of physics.’
In MFL, Y9 students looked at the bilingual (French & English) edition of ‘Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’ and heard excerpts in both languages. Madame Bailie reports that ‘They were very pleased with themselves to recognise some of the French vocabulary!’
Mr Woodward reports that in RE, ‘I read (in a slightly dramatic fashion) extracts from the Book of Job in the Bible to Y9 students as we analysed the Biblical response to the existence of unfair suffering in the world and then, during Lesson 5, extracts from Damian Hall’s “We Can’t Run Away From This” were shared in our exploration of the issue of climate change.’
So, not only did students get the opportunity to read and get an insight into their teachers’ reading but they may also have some ideas for future reading.
Setting the scene throughout the week in assemblies was Mr. Cockerill who talked about a range of books from different genres and different times and their impact at the time demonstrating the true power of the written word.
Next week is our Parent Information Evening on Thursday (9th March) at 6p.m. where Mr. Grierson (Deputy Head) and I will discuss Attendance in the first part of the evening and you will have the opportunity to ask any questions that you have during the second part. Please e-mail schooladmin@boroughbridgehigh.com if you’d like to attend.
Have a lovely weekend!