Life Skills Update

Year 7 have spent another week looking at managing money. This time, they were looking at ways to pay and evaluating the different types of payment methods available.  A ‘shout out’ to Claudia B in 7P.

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Year 8 have looked at ‘rights and responsibilities’ and given their opinion on some of the set age limits for getting a driving licence or a free education. ‘Shout outs’ to Charlotte R and Olivia P in 8J.

Year 9 have been looking at the reasons why people run away and how to prevent this from happening and seek support. Shout outs to Anna K and Freya H, 9P.

Years 10 and 11 have now started their Life Skills course again. They each have 2 weeks to complete a 20 – 30- minute activity and submit a short forms quiz. After only going live on Tuesday, an impressive 71 students in Year 10 and 48 students in Year 11 less than 24 hours later, had already completed the forms quiz.

Year 10 have been given some information to read on drug classification, the law and the consequences. There is a 10 question forms quiz to complete to show understanding and provide evidence that students know where to access support if they need it. Parents can also access support on the topic on drugs using these resources and via the following link:

https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/for-parents/parents-guide-to-support-a-z/parents-guide-to-support-drugs-and-alcohol/

Year 11 are visiting the ‘thinkUknow’ website and accessing the information on the pressures of being online, including ways to say no and access support. Again, there is a forms quiz to show if a student understands and how to seek advice and support on these pressures. This website also contains a parents homepage. Here is the link: https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/

Mrs Cahill, Life Skills Co-ordinator

Virtual School Library

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If, like me, you’re going a little stir crazy (as I write Storm Christophe is doing his worst); have watched everything on Netflix and TV and cannot face the thought of another online family Zoom quiz, then the Virtual School Library has come to your rescue!

The Oak National Academy and the National Literacy Trust are making books available to everyone free of charge.  There are author interviews, videos, interactive quizzes and lesson resources to support reading and writing.  Everything on the website has been designed to support student wellbeing, to relieve some of the stresses and pressures that we are feeling at the moment, not add to them.

To browse the library, visit:

https://library.thenational.academy

Each week, new resources and activities will be added to develop a growing collection.

Mrs Woodhouse

Curriculum Leader for English

Bedrock

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Bedrock is an online programme that helps students learn new vocabulary.  In particular, it helps them to learn the tricky, subject-specific vocabulary that they will come across in lessons, text-books and exams.  We’ve been using it for a while now with great success.

Although the Bedrock programme is delivered through English lessons, its key focus is to support literacy and vocabulary across the curriculum.  Students will read texts from all subjects and also some texts that we don’t have time to cover in school as much as we’d like, such as Greek myths and legends.

We are now working on providing every parent with an access code – we are aiming to have sent these to every parent by half-term.  When we sent out details of reading ages to KS3 before Christmas, for many students, a target to support their reading was to access Bedrock regularly.  By providing parents with an access code, this will enable you to look at the kinds of texts and lessons your daughter is completing on Bedrock.  You’ll be able to view her progress and you’ll be provided with lists of new words that she’s been learning so that you can encourage her to practice using this vocabulary.  Learning new vocabulary works best when these words are used in everyday situations.

You will soon receive a letter with an access code to enable you to sign up.  Please bear with us in sending these out – it is a time-consuming job!  If you haven’t received one by half term, please contact me directly by email (c.woodhouse@penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk) and I can send it again.

I’ve included instructions to set up your parent login.  We’ll also make these available on the school website in the reading section.

Setting up your parent login is very simple:

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One of the best features of Bedrock is how user friendly it is.  Here are some of the features that you may find helpful:

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In addition, Bedrock has launched new levels to provide additional challenges either for students who have worked through all the levels or for those who are gifted and talented.

Mrs Woodhouse,

Curriculum Leader for English

Year 7 Mindful Colouring

winner1.jpgYear 7 were set the challenge last week to complete some mindful colouring with the emphasis on my motto ‘be kind to others’. Colouring is a fantastic activity to distract our minds from any worries we might have as it requires us to focus on the task in hand. We encourage everyone, of any age, to have a go. There were some fantastic entries as you can see below. Well done to everyone that took part and our winner, Zara H.

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Mrs Cattanach,

Associate Assistant Headteacher and Year 7 RAC

Life Skills Update

Year 7 and 8 have been uploading some superb work from their Life Skills lessons over the past week.

Year 7 – Baseline assessment, ‘Money and budgeting’.

Year 8 – UNICEF Rights of the child.

Year 9 – Managing conflict at home.

Here are just a few shout outs to celebrate all the hard work and efforts of the students:

Amber R (9P), Amelia W (8J), Hannah A (9H), Harriet M (7P), Harriet Mu (7P), Jennifer K (8J), Niamh L (7H), Sasha H (7H).

Anna K (9P) for excellent work! Well done!

‘ThinkUknow’ from the CEOP education team, have produced some great resources. With children and young people relying on their tech at home for learning and entertainment during lockdown, it remains vital to keep conversations about online safety going and raise awareness of reporting routes if something goes wrong.

This link contains some 15-minute activities that you can do at home and provides support and ways to approach topics around children being online.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/Support-tools/home-activity-worksheets/

Mrs R Cahill

Computing update – Remote Learning

Key Stage 3 Computing

Remote learning has got off to an amazing start.  Well done, girls!  Please keep up the hard work and remember to be constantly uploading your work to be marked.

This half term sees the girls completing a variety of units.  Year 7 are learning about interactive presentations and hyperlinks, Year 8 are learning all about the history of technology including the history of computing.  This will lead to looking at the future of technology and designing a new piece of future technology. Year 9 are looking at theme parks and learning a range of skills from marketing to working out the finances and designing a ride. I am looking forward to seeing a variety of ride ideas and to see how the theme park will make money.

GCSE Computer Science

Live sessions have taken place already and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed keeping in touch with the students using TEAMS.

Year 11 are currently completing exam papers, following an exam paper walk through last term. We are planning to cover pseudocode again to build confidence in this area.

Year 10 are going to start to look at the environmental and ethical impact of computing in everyday lives and I look forward to seeing what work they produce over the next few weeks.

BTEC Creative Media Productions

Year 11 are currently completing a practise component 3 (externally set work). They are preparing for the component brief that was released last week as part of their final assessment. The students are designing a media product for a music company, Harmonica Music. They can either produce a magazine or website for music enthusiasts. They have to research ideas and then plan their product before creating this. Once this practise is completed, we will look at starting the preparation for the live brief. Good luck!

Feature Artist: Dennis Wojtkiewicz

As part of the Year 10 Photography Scheme of Learning, we will be studying the spectacular imagery of Dennis Wojtkiewicz.  It may be hard to believe that the image on the left is indeed a painting by Wojtkiewicz who is best known for his large scale, Hyperrealist paintings.

As part of the Year 10 Photography GCSE course, we will be studying how Dennis Wojtkiewicz creates his photographic reference images and also how the techniques of ‘macro photography’ and ‘back lighting’ are successfully deployed in his work.

Further Examples:

Miss Morris

Technology – TEEN TECH Live Sessions.

There are some fantastic live events that students can watch from home that link to science, technology and engineering. The sessions will focus on how to get into various careers in these fields. As part of D&T and/ or computing, students in KS3 and 4 may be directed to watch specific sessions over the next week, including games design, space, music and much more.

All the sessions will be streamed live but can also be watched for up to 3 days after. There are also optional worksheets to complete and design problems to solve. If entered, your design could be looked at by industry professionals who will give live feedback during the feedback sessions.

Well worth a look!

Email Mrs Gornall if you would like more details or visit this website to register at home.

https://www.teentech.com/live/

RE Competition – Open to all Year Groups!

Year 7 are taking part in a national competition to celebrate World Religions Day but we are opening the competition up to all year groups. The competition has been set by the RE magazine, RE Today.  Winning pieces may even end up in their magazine!

The challenge is to design and create a logo for ‘World Religions Day’ that represents its’ key message ‘respect for all’. Think about how your logo would look on a t-shirt or a mug!

You will need a short paragraph with your logo to briefly explain how your logo represents the key message.

Make it as beautiful, interesting, respectful and wonderful as you can. It doesn’t matter what your own religion or belief is, we are interested in shared ideas for all humans.

Here are some examples of artwork that may inspire your logo.

My sculpture has three hands together. It is called ‘Faith in the Future’. People who are different can share the world and live together. We can all help people to respect each other.”

“My picture shows a girl who is shy. People think she is just a grey person but in her imagination it is full colour, with unicorns! You can’t always see a person’s spiritual side. Even when we look ordinary on the outside, our spirits can be lively, exciting and burning with life. You have to listen really carefully to people if you want to know them for real.”

All year 8-11 logos to be emailed to Miss Hollier or Miss Brooks by Friday 29th January!

We can’t wait to see them and display all of your amazing work in future newsletters!

Miss Hollier

Teacher of RE

  • Artsmark Platinum Award - Awards by Arts Council England
  • Lancashire Socio-economic Equality Badge
  • SMART
  • UNICEF
  • School Mental Health Award
  • Ofsted - Outstanding Provider
  • International School Award
  • Artsmark Platinum Award - Awards by Arts Council England
  • Lancashire Socio-economic Equality Badge
  • SMART
  • UNICEF
  • School Mental Health Award
  • Ofsted - Outstanding Provider
  • International School Award