Bulletin- 26th Jan

Thanks to everyone for your hard work on Thursday's Enrichment Day!

This week:
1) Meeting on Tuesday
C26
3.15-4.15
Agenda:

• PTo / GSn / TBo / JKy / AW - Year 12 Coursework standardisation (please see email from PTo about this)



• All other staff- working on KS3 SoW, with focus on assessment.

2) WELCOME

Further to Liz's email, a very warm welcome to our Interns Tony and Hannah, who will be with us until June.

3) RFL:

Further to SOK's email from a few days ago, student behaviour seems to be slipping at the moment after an improved start to the year. For our part, please try to stick to the RFL policy as far as possible, particularly concerning uniform and in class behaviour. So:

- Please try to give Achievement Points to reward good performance in class. I know that SERCO has been difficult to access recently, but if we can try to get back into the habit that will be helpful. Further to this, there are new praise postcards available for us to use (provided by the Art department) so feel free to send these. Any other ideas for ways in which we can celebrate student success gratefully received!

- Students should be in full uniform and if they aren't, should be sent to ASc to get a report. Tina will then monitor them from this point on, and will follow everything up. We don't have to send a TA with them for this (good job, as we have virtually none available!), but if a student is wearing jeans, white trainers etc, please send them along.

-Please ask students to remove scarves and coats in lessons.

- Give a formal warning for behaviour which is preventing the student or other students from learning, then move if appropriate, then send to DS. Send student accompanied whenever possible. Please don't send students directly to ASc.

Have a good week everyone- ps- the first 'name the poet' competition begins today- the first person to correctly name the poet in the picture at the top of this post, through comment or email, wins a fantastic and as-yet- undecided on prize!

Tom

Bulletin- 19th Jan

Hi all,



I've selected this image as it reminded me of my daughter's attitude at this afternoon's birthday party when another toddler walked off with her bit of cake. You'll be pleased to hear that I survived the occasion with only mild post-traumatic stress disorder and would like to make the following points about the coming week!

Year 11: I have emailed to you the current English attainment data for year 11, which will show you exactly how your students are progressing alongside their predictions. The students are colour coded, with red showing below prediction and green showing above prediction. No colour means they are on-prediction and the darker the colour, the more they are under or over prediction.

Mock exam feedback documents will be with you shortly- you are free to feedback to the students whenever you want; if you'd like me to run the feedback session I am more than happy to (I only say this as I've done the lesson a few times before and have got my head around all the graphs and things).


Meeting feedback: I've put the research that we looked at in Tuesday's meeting on the teacher's page of the VLE.

Enrichment Day: This is on Thursday. I will pass on any info about staffing for this as soon as I get it- at the moment EWa and JKy are confirmed for the All Saints trip, but that's as much as I know.

Poetry competition: a reminder that Brookes' most recent poetry competition details are available here: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/about/news/loveandjustice - closing date is the end of the month, so please push with students.

Have a good week everyone,


Tom

Term 2 Week 2 Bulletin

Hello all,

Well done to everyone for surviving the first week back, and particular thanks to Year 12 teachers who had the extra demands of the PCE on Thurs.

Department Meeting on Tues:

C26

3.15-4.15

Agenda:

- Enrichment Day (TBo)

- KS3 Curriculum (TBo / EWa)

- Reading and Writing Non-Fiction at KS4 (PHa)

AOB

Year 11 Parents Evening on Thurs: keep pestering the students about this please! I tried to make appointments on Friday and only about 5 were able to commit to a time, but hopefully they will shape up a bit this week. Could we make the following high profile on the night:

- using the VLE for revision and homework- there is an independent revision programme on there for all year 11s to use, so please make this high profile.

- getting a copy of OMAM for the Lit exam (and reading it, obviously!)

- I'll aim to make sure that you get copies of their mock feedback sheet in time for this- perhaps a parents' version- for discussion of their strengths and weaknesses in the exam.

Enrichment Day: you may be interested in the VLE page for this- this link will take you there: http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=585446 . David has sorted out some amazing activities- should be a good one! Whilst I'm on the subject, I've updated the Year 9 Poetry page in the English section so that it has homeworks for 6 weeks of the WW1 poetry unit (which hopefully we are all started on or beginning in the near future)- this can be reached on: http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=439691

Have a good week everyone,

Tom

Welcome Back and Happy New Year!

Hello all,

Welcome back to school everyone, and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas break. I'd like to try replacing the bulletin system with a blog this year- this gives us all the opportunity to comment, give suggestions or put our own posts on. We'll also use this to link to the the teachers' area on the VLE- anyway, we'll see how things work out.

This Term:
Loads on in the next few weeks, not least the impending new arrival in the Boulter household (due on 23rd Feb! YIKES!).

This Week:

• Deadline for inputting data onto SERCO is now Thurs am. Data required is for all KS4 classes, with the mock exam results for year 11.
• Year 12 PCE: Thurs.
• Mocks: please don't tell Year 11 what mark they've got in their mocks- this will be given to them next Thurs. If you can get your marks back to me as soon as you can, that would be great.
• Poetry Live! Please publicise this with Year 11 Lit students- the letter is on the VLE if they need another one. Money to the School Shop ASAP.
• VLE: a reminder for anyone starting new KS3 units that a homework for each of the units is available on the VLE if you'd like to use them. With year 9 Parents evening coming up, it may be a good time to start with this.

Have a great week everyone!

Tom