ENGLISH AND HUMANITIES

Year 7 and 8 students have started the year off positively, with some great achievements, and each of them receiving the honour of becoming a house captain! They are also making an effort and achieving some great results in each of their subjects.

Oral presentations in English were based around their own stories, and what makes them who they are. They presented a ‘Who Am I?’ box to the class, which contained items that were important to them, and this session taught them valuable skills in public speaking. We learnt lots of new things about each other during this task.

In Health, the students are learning about Mental Health and Stereotypes, while in PE the students are attending Taekwondo lessons. Last week, several students were even able to break a wooden board with a kick! Zac and Mohammed were first to achieve this, while Nooran was given a medal for the person who was best able to control her Nun chucks! The instructor said he had never seen anybody pick it up as quickly as she did.

We have tried a few new things in class to encourage students’ learning. This involves a lot of moving around in the classroom to ensure that students’ brains are well oxygenated and they are focused on the topic. Students are generally able to concentrate on the one thing for as many minutes as is their age, plus a few extra minutes - for example, a 13 year old student can concentrate for around 15 minutes before needing a break. This also applies at home, so please parents keep this in mind when your teenager is not staying on task. For this reason, I have been breaking lessons up into short ‘bites’ of information. In Humanities, this has worked well. We are studying the topic of Vikings in Scandinavia, so after reading some information, I have been asking the students to get up and move around. A good way to do this, while still staying on task, is a game of ‘Quiz, Quiz, Trade’. This means students must quiz each other using pre-printed cards, then trade the cards and ask somebody else the question. The students have shown real improvement through this method. We have also introduced mini-books into the classroom, for students to write revision work into. They seem to have really enjoyed this activity, and most students should now have a collection of mini-books.

MyEd is an important part of their classwork. Students should be logging on to MyEd regularly and completing the short tasks in order to revise any information which they have learnt in class. Doing this on the same day that they have learnt it is the best way to retain the information. This will form part of their final grade each term, and is important that it is completed.

Kind regards,