Last Friday six of our students visited St Mary’s Church in Penwortham to clean up the First and Second World War graves that had unfortunately fallen into a poor condition. Armed with buckets sponges and brushes the students demonstrated a fantastic work ethic to scrub the headstones clean despite the torrential rain! Ron Drakeford, a local veteran, had noticed the poor condition of the graves when visiting them before the Remembrance weekend, and had requested help in cleaning them. The students were eager to offer their support and were a real credit to our school. An extra thoughtful touch, Isabel Wrennall placed white roses on each of the graves as an additional mark of respect.
National Antibullying week took place last week between the 14th to the 18th of November and had the theme ‘Reach Out’. As a school, we organised Odd Socks day last Friday and many students and staff took part in the event by wearing a colourful array of socks.
We normally sell wristbands to support the organisation but this year we invited students to ‘sign up’ for a wristband, showing others they are someone who can be relied upon for support. We had 100 wristbands to give out and they were claimed very quickly, showing the students and PGHS have a keen sense of compassion and social responsibility.
Online Bullying
CYBER BULLYING
National Antibullying week was last week (14th-18th November) and the National Online Safety organization published a guide for parents and carers, providing useful information about cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place online. It can involve anything from sending messages to posting offensive comments to uploading and sharing private or embarrassing photos. It is classed as an indirect form of bullying when compared to verbal or physical bullying, given it usually takes place through a digital device.
However, for those experiencing bullying behaviour, the consequences can be just as serious and have far-reaching effects. Use the link below for further information and guides.
Many children enjoy playing online games and having a social media presence. As children get older this often involves speaking with others online and with this comes the potential risk of grooming and exploitation.
Speaking to your child from a young age about who they are talking to online and helping them recognise when a conversation may be putting them at risk can help to keep them safe from abuse. The NSPCC has published new advice on how to start age-appropriate conversations with your child on this challenging topic.
The advice includes how to:
• help your child recognise unhealthy online chat.
• have age-appropriate conversations about sexual abuse.
• explore the different communication features online.
• review safety settings.
You can access more information using the link below;
We have asked students how we can support them further if they need to report a concern or worry and based on their feedback we are launching an email address; safe@penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk where they can share their concerns confidentially. The email will be sent to the pastoral team who can provide the support needed.
Once again this year, Year 8 have had fun working on the life story of everyone’s favourite rock, Bob the Boulder! The level of creativity combined with the excellent Geographical content have blown me away. Images of some of my favourite pieces of work are below, and if you want a closer look, you can come down and check out the Bob Gallery on the Humanities corridor.
Special mention goes to Evie F; yet another amazing model to accompany her work. She has picked up where she left off last year on her Year 7 Treasure Map. Well done, Evie – geotastic!
Since September, our students have been ‘rocking’ Bedrock. Bedrock is a proven way of making great gains in vocabulary acquisition, improving reading age and mastering grammar. All our KS3 students are expected to achieve 20 points on Bedrock each week. 20 points is the minimum each student should achieve to guarantee progress. However, some of our students are so determined to become masters of English that since September they have achieved a phenomenal number of points!
Our leaderboard looks like this:
If you can make it into the top 10 Bedrockers by the last week of term, you will be invited to indulge in a luxury Christmas hot chocolate in the Library.
Last week, students from our school took part in a number of Remembrance events in the local area. The Head Girl and Deputy Head Girl, Olivia and Lola, laid wreaths at Penwortham War Memorial on behalf of the school on Armistice Day and on Remembrance Sunday. At the Remembrance Sunday service, they also read the names of those soldiers from the local area who lost their lives during the First World War. It was fantastic to see so many students from school at the event, whether they were representing other organisations such as the Scouts, or those who had come with their families. In school, the Year 7 charity council have raised money for the British Legion by selling poppies, and assemblies focussed on the local men who fought and died during the First World War. Students who belong to services and scouting groups wore their uniforms in school and at 11am on Armistice Day, a two-minute silence was observed by all in school. This was followed by a recital of the Reveille by Mrs Little on the trumpet.
‘Wrap Up Lancs’ is a charity that tackles homelessness in our local area. Homelessness in Lancashire is a large problem as 2,789 households in Lancashire are homeless. Due to the cost of living crisis, many more families/ people may be pushed over the edge as 157,319 of the total population of Lancashire are already income deprived. As inflation and energy prices continue to increase, this issue is becoming ever more present in Lancashire as thousands more people in are at risk of needing charities like Wrap up Lancs. 78,620 children in Lancashire experience this poverty and it is proved that this causes constant high levels of stress whilst living overcrowded or unsafe houses. These children also experience fear of crime and have poor concentration in school. The more homeless people there are, the higher the country’s poverty rate is, which could lead to a lower quality of life such as being unable to fund projects in infrastructure, education and health. As a high school, we are fortunate enough to be able to donate warm clothes to those who are less fortunate and these reasons support why Wrap Up Lancs make a giant difference to those deprived in our community.
We can’t thank all the families enough who have sent donations into school. You have truly made a great difference to the suffering within our local area.
Well done to our 2 badminton teams for competing in the South Ribble Schools U14s and U16s Badminton Tournament on Thursday last week. The U14s team were Hattie, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Naomi and Lowri. The player of the tournament goes to Elizabeth; she played fantastically, winning all her singles games.
The U16s team were Esha, Hanya, Savo, Jenna and Annabelle. The player of the tournament goes to Esha for superb performance in all her games.
Both teams performed brilliantly in the singles and the doubles matches.
The final results were 3rd place for the U14s team and 2nd place for the U16s team.
Year 10 students have learnt about dietary needs and have planned and prepared a vegetarian pizza, complete with pizza box to take home. Students are now looking into the science of making the pizza dough and bread by conducting a science investigation.
The pop up – popcorn club after school was a great success. Students made their own popcorn and then flavoured it with a variety of ingredients. A firm favourite were the marshmallows, sugar and cinnamon!
