HAPPY NEW YEAR BULLETIN!

Hello everyone, and welcome back! Hope you all had a fab break and are ready for the brand new year... and if you are the former but not the latter, one out of two ain't bad. It feels like we are about to set off down the ski jump towards the exam season again, with lift off for English Language GCSE a frighteningly early Monday 16th May.

So, to get us started:

Poetry Live!
We have currently got 20 students going on Poetry Live! on 8th February at the Kings Centre in Oxford, but have 30 tickets remaning. Can we please encourage year 11 Literature students to come on what is a really useful day. See Toni if you need more letters, but basically the cost is £17, and they need to bring money and a slip in to the school shop.

GCSE Mocks

Thanks to year 11 teachers for the effort that has gone into marking the year 11 mocks. Please follow guidance from JKy regarding formative approaches to feeding back on these mocks - the most important thing is that the students are working hard and engaging with the process, and that the work we put in is matched by the students!

Next steps for year 11 will be a work scrutiny of a variety of mock papers in order to analyse current performance a little more closely, so please don't let mock papers go home.

Progress Booklets KS3

Just a reminder to keep using these - well done Paul for spotting the second deliberate mistake, which is in the Poetry Unit of year 9. The Success Criteria are correct, but the 'We are learning to...' bit at the top identifies the wrong skills - please just go with the success criteria if tackling this unit. But other than that, please do ask students to have their documents out in lessons regularly and be filling in targets and spellings as we go. I'll also send round the lesson on encouraging effective reflection on learning again for use as units come to an end.

Sharing Practice

I hope you all received the Agile Teaching sharing practice doc - there is some really good stuff in here, gleaned from some very high quality observed lessons. Do have a look if you get a chance, and I'll be in touch regarding a round of observations for terms 3 and 4 in the near future.

Of Mice and Men

Found some fab resources on OMAM at the increasingly impressive TES site here:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6055716

Media GCSE

Some great resources for GCSE Media here: http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/media_studies/119/index.html . Jamie and Nicky, let me know if you are available for a planning meeting on Thurs - no worries if not as we can rearrange.

Have a great week, term and year!

Tom