July 2023 - Penwortham Girls' High School

Food Preparation and Nutrition

Posted on July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

Year 7

Year 7’s composite task this year was to plan, create and evaluate pizza toast for a children’s party. Students used cooking cutters to cut out the bread and used lots of different vegetables to make a nutritious snack.

Year 10

Year 10 completed their mock NEA2 this summer term. This is a challenging task for the students as they complete 3 dishes within 3 hours. It was a great success with may students realising their potential and now knowing they can push themselves further and complete more complex dishes next year in their GCSE exam. Well done Year 10! As you can see from the photographs, students were completely focused and hard at work to complete this task!

Year 11

Year 11 will be very much missed by Miss Scott. These are Miss Scott’s first GCSE class at Penwortham Girls’ High School. To celebrate their final practical lesson the students practiced exam question on cake making, and explaining why a cake may go wrong! They then made a cake in groups as a competition. Here you can see the winning cake!

Good Bye Year 11! As you can see they aren’t quite in their normal uniform as it was their last day.

3D Printing Workshop

Posted on July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

We are extremely fortunate to be one of 52 schools to be working with Create Education, to encourage and promote 3D printing in schools. We have kindly been provided with a top of the range 3D printer and scanner, which we hope to include into our Design & Technology curriculum over the next year.

As part of the programme, on Thursday 13th July, 60 year 8 students took part in a 3D printing workshop ran by Sonya and Caroline from Create education. Students were introduced to 3D modelling software, ‘OnShape’, whilst understanding how the 3D printer works. They were given lots of advice on the day, including possible careers and opportunities with 3D printing.

Mrs Freer

Curriculum Technology Co-ordinator

Values Party

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

On Tuesday 11th July, we ran the last Values Party of the year. A lot of the invited students came to participate and enjoyed a lunchtime spent eating and chatting in the Humanities Garden area.

We asked the students to try and identify something they had done related to each value through the school year on a postcard that we will be able to display.

There were some lovely conversations, with staff and students, and support of each other. Despite it being a bit breezy, a lovely time was had by everyone!

Mrs Cousins, Learning Support Department

Learning Support Department – Moving on to High School Sessions

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

Towards the end of the summer term, the Learning Support Department were joined by a number of Year 6 pupils who will be starting with us in the autumn term. They came to take part in our annual Moving On To High School sessions.

The M.O.T.H.S sessions are designed specifically for pupils with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities; they can also be helpful for pupils who struggle socially, or who find the prospect of High School a scary thought.

They have had three sessions which involved getting to know each other; practising social skills and most importantly, getting to know their way around school! The girls were supported by Mrs McGibbon the school’s SENDCO, Mrs Cattanach the Transition Manager and Mrs Aldred who’ll be supporting some of our Year 7 students when they arrive.

All the girls have found the sessions useful, and have made a super start to their Penwortham Girls’ High School journey. We look forward to seeing our new Year 7 students in September.

Mrs K McGibbon

SENDCo

Annual Picnic

Posted on July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

For the third year in a row, students supported by the Learning Support Department were treated to a picnic in the park on Thursday afternoon. This is a wonderful reward to celebrate the children’s hard work and resilience over the last academic year.

We didn’t let the threat of rain dampen our spirits and students and staff alike packed exciting treats, picnic blankets and donned trainers to walk to Hurst Grange Park for an afternoon of fresh air and play.

We were even joined by ex-pupils who fondly remember previous trips and couldn’t resist the call of the park and the chance to catch up with staff and friends.

Everybody loves to join in with the fun spirit of the afternoon; Mrs Embley could be seen whizzing down the tunnel slide and numerous members of staff were left out of breath after pushing the year 9s on the bucket swing!

Lots of fun was had by all; many thanks to the department for organising another wonderful event and well done to the students for yet another successful year!

Mrs McGibbon

SENDCo

Vintage Tea Party

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

On July 12th, the Learning Support Department hosted their annual ‘Vintage Tea Party’. Once again it was a department wide effort with everybody chipping in to make the afternoon a roaring success. Decorations were kindly donated and lovingly created by staff and friends, and there was a scrumptious array of cakes, crisps and biscuits on offer.

Guests included past and present pupils who have been supported by our department together with their parents. Ex staff members were also in attendance together with current staff members who couldn’t resist the call of tea and cake!

The atmosphere was provided by authentic 1920s music which was soon drowned out by the buzz of chatter as everybody got to sharing anecdotes in between slices of cake and sips of tea.

The hour and a half passed very quickly and the guests were very complimentary about the afternoon as well as the year round support that our department provides.

Once again, a huge thank you to all involved and a special thank you to Mrs Lucas who has done an excellent job of organising the event; we hope to see you all again next year!

Mrs McGibbon, SENCO

Life Skills Summer Term 2023

Posted on July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

As students complete their Life Skills course for the year, they are invited to take part in a student voice survey. This enables us to move forward with the subject and make sure that we are meeting the needs of students and responding to feedback.

The results, like last year, will be shared with students in the first Life Skills lesson in September, together with a response and feedback.

Once again, Life Skills has also hosted another competition. This time, for Year 8, who have been looking at LGBTQIA+ rights, gender identity, homophobia, trans and biphobia.

The competition took place to help celebrate Pride month in June and to also raise awareness that we do not tolerate any kind of discrimination or abuse towards students of different genders or sexualities.

Students had to design a T-shirt and the entries were superb.

1^st place – Sarah M

2^nd place – Uswa H

3^rdplace – Grace A

The winning entries will receive Love2shop vouchers and a certificate in the rewards assembly at the end of the academic year.

Mrs Cahill

Life Skills Co-ordinator

Year 7 Students Reach for the Stars as they Visit a Mobile Planetarium

Posted on July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

Following a postponement during the STEM festival in March, the year 7 students were finally able to experience the wonders of the universe in a full immersive experience. The girls learned about the composition of stars and how all of the elements that make up everything including themselves had originally formed in the centre of stars scattered across the universe. They were also treated to a detailed insight into the Artemis programme that will soon be taking astronauts back to the moon. Throughout the experience students became involved asking probing questions of the knowledgeable presenter, Dave.

Mr D Knee

Science Department

Safari Phil Animal Adventures visits Year 9 students

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

Safari Phil and Spikey Dave fascinated and terrified our year 9 students in equal measures when they brought their impressive collection of exotic animals to school. The students learned about the adaptations and their evolutionary history, linking in with the Genes 3 unit that all year 9 students are currently studying. The collection included a blue tongued skink, a royal python, a Mexican red knee tarantula, tortoises, a boa constrictor and African giant millipedes.

Governors News

Posted on July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michelle Murray

Summer Term 2023

This has been another eventful term for us all and an incredibly different year as we start to plan for a different future.

On behalf of governors, I very much enjoyed attending the arrival of the year 11s at their valedictory celebration at Ribby Hall. The weather kept dry for long enough to see the girls arrive in their finery and in an array of vehicles! They so much deserved to put all their hard work during and in the lead up to their exams behind them. We all wish them the success they deserve when we see them again in August!

The governors have been kept busy this term in all the usual ways but also in putting together the recruitment process for a new headteacher, who we hope to appoint in the autumn to start January 2024. It is a bittersweet process for all of us who appreciate how far the school has developed under Mrs Pomeroy’s tenure and how much she, herself, has been responsible for driving its journey over the past 12 years to the incredible position we are now in. Mrs Pomeroy knows the time is now right for her and, importantly, right for the school’s future. With the new building on the horizon, it will also be a time of excitement and further development and we relish these opportunities to grow.

Rest assured, none of us will lose impetus or focus over the next term! We have just shared an evening with the prospective year 7s and have also enjoyed a spectacular Commonwealth Celebration. As I write this, we still have all our end of year enrichment activities to come, so there is never any down time! Our enrichment calendar is something the school and governors are rightly proud of, and I recently had the opportunity to share this good practice with other Lancashire Chairs of Governors at our forum. All members of the Senior Leadership Team have responsibilities and we, as governors, appreciate the drive and enthusiasm of each one of them. Whilst acknowledging them all, I would especially like to thank Mrs Honeyman for all her work on our enrichment calendar this term and for Mrs Cattanach’s work to ease transition for our new year 7s and in preparing our Celebration Evening.

From myself and on behalf of all the governors, I want to thank all our hard-working staff (teaching and non-teaching) for their continued dedication this year. We may not find time to acknowledge you all by name, but we appreciate our good fortune in having such a highly skilled workforce. We never take you for granted.

To all our students and their families, we thank you for your support and hard work during the year; we hope the relationship with school continues to be a positive and fruitful one.

Have a lovely summer and be safe!

Lorimer Russell-Hayes

Chair of Governors