October 2020 - Page 3 of 3 - Penwortham Girls' High School

During Lockdown, we were consistently impressed with how effectively students were able to motivate themselves outside of the classroom environment. The resilience that many students showed when completing their home learning tasks was exemplary. This commitment to developing their own understanding in maths has inspired us to develop further opportunities to stretch and challenge our fantastic students outside using online platforms.

On the 21st September, we launched our Maths Enrichment Online site. Every week, students are given a new mathematical problem or puzzle to solve. Many of the tasks are open ended; encouraging students to explore different mathematical concepts and work with resilience to independently discover patterns and processes within real life contexts.

Every week, one student from each year group will be awarded a Head’s Commendation for demonstrating resilience with the given task. In addition to this, merits will be awarded for logical thinkers and rigorous researchers.

Students can take photos of their work and email them to mathsenrichment@penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk Below is a picture of the first task with some exemplary work from a student.

To access all future weekly enrichment tasks, please visit the school website and type ‘Maths Enrichment’ into the search bar.

Mrs Walsh
Curriculum Leader for Mathematics

Breaking news for all year 8 students! We are very excited to announce that during RE lessons on Friday 2nd and Monday 5th October we will be joined in lessons by a Humanist guest speaker using a video link. Throughout the term so far, we have begun to explore ultimate questions: such as ‘what does it mean to be human?’ Within the lessons so far we have held debates that delved deep into these philosophical questions, but now you will have the opportunity to ask a Humanist, from Humanists UK, questions about their beliefs and what their response would be to different ultimate questions.

Humanism is a non-religious approach to life that is found throughout time and across the world in many different cultures. Roughly speaking, the word humanist has come to mean someone who:

trusts to the scientific method when it comes to understanding how the universe works and rejects the idea of the supernatural (and is therefore an atheist or agnostic)
makes their ethical decisions based on reason, empathy, and a concern for human beings and other sentient animals
believes that, in the absence of an afterlife and any discernible purpose to the universe, human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.

Prepare yourself now by looking at their website and start to create some questions that you would like to ask them in your next RE lesson.

Find out more here: https://humanism.org.uk/