Assemblies this week have featured presentations from Callum, Edward, Lydia, Niamh and Tasha in Year 13 in their bid to become Head Boy or Head Girl. Students have been invited to cast their votes to select who will represent them in the year to come. What has been most impressive has been the quality of the candidates who have all confidently presented both how the school has helped them to develop and how the role would enable them to give something back. They have lots of ideas for future developments. One of their first commitments will be to take on a key role at our Open Evening for the parents of Year 5 and 6 students on Wednesday 17th October. A quick reminder that school will close at 1.30pm on that day.

As the newest members of our school community, Year 7, reach the end of their first learning cycle, I decided to visit their lessons to see how they’re settling in. Classification was at the fore in Mr Kite’s Geography lesson where students were deciding which features fitted into the categories of human, physical and environmental geography. In Maths with Mr Izdebski students were demonstrating their long division skills building upon techniques that they learnt in primary school. Mr Woodward has started the year in RE with the somewhat pithy question, ‘Does God exist?’. Students have been exploring opinions and, if you’re a parent of a Year 7 student, I believe that you may have been interviewed for homework. During a walk through Science I discovered Mr Scott working on forces, asking students to predict what an object will do according to the forces applied. Next door, Dr Lefley and his class were exploring the mysteries revealed by the microscope whilst Miss Rayner introduced her class to the delights of using a pestle and mortar to crush rock salt leading to an experiment to investigate separating mixtures. Across the subjects, it’s clear that Year 7 have made an excellent start and are already making an important contribution to our school community.

Let’s see what next week brings. Have a lovely weekend!