Bulletin 8th June

Hi all,

Sorry for late posting this week!

Year 10 Coursework / Exam Grades: Thanks to all those who have emailed me the coursework grades for their Year 10 English classes. The deadline for this is Friday.

Mentoring: the tutor time mentoring of Year 11 was quite successful, so can I ask Year 10 teachers to send me the names of any students who are significantly underperforming and who would benefit from tutor - time intervention. I'm looking for students who are reasonably motivated and will turn up, and who are aiming for C grades. I'll do this for a few weeks, then perhaps switch to A into A*s, but start with C/D ers please.

Freed-up time: please see the emailed document for details of the ways in which we are using time made free by the departure of Year 11 and 13. In particular, please make a note of the dates for the classroom visits and let me know of any problems.

First Story: I learnt last week that our place on the First Write programme is confirmed, which means that we'll have a professional writer available to work with students on a long-term creative writing project from September. All we need now is students from Year 11 (ie curent year 10), 12 or 13 to take part. We are looking for students who are motivated and have some ability as writers, who will be willing to commit to attending fortnightly sessions. Could I therefore ask that you email me the names of any suitable candidates ASAP, and I will then approach the students about the project. Further details can be found here: http://firststory.co.uk/default.htm

YouTube: just a reminder that YouTube is available to support learning from now on - if it says it is blocked, just refresh and it will unblock! This is a really amazing resource, which gives us access to: film clips from just about any film, any song that you need, GCSE revision materials, funny videos, persuasive speeches from film or fact, charity ads, documentaries, poets reading their work, speaking and listening tips and examples, stage plays, every epsiode of Room 101, ... more or less anything that you can think of will be on there in some form (globally, there is 7 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute!). See me if you want a quick guide.
Thanks everyone!
Tom