Headteacher Update

Dear parents and carers,

We are very much looking forward to the upcoming School Show. Tickets for ‘Matilda’ are now available via ParentPay or can be purchased from main reception at break and lunchtimes or on the door at performances. If your child is part of the cast please be mindful as to whether they are part of Cast A or Cast B:

Tuesday 22 March, 7pm and Thursday 24 March, 7pm – CAST A
Wednesday 23 March, 4pm and Friday 25 March, 7pm – CAST B

Prices: Adult £5; Child/OAP £3; Family ticket £15.

Y11 Period 6
This is the time of year when teachers across school give up time after school to put on additional lessons for students and we are delighted that our staff are willing to do this. Take up for Year 13 Period 6 is already strong but I would encourage parents of Year 11 students to discuss attendance at these sessions with your children in the weeks to come. Numbers are currently lower than we would expect and attending these additional sessions can make a real difference. On Monday in form time, Year 11 students will also be given an intervention rewards booklet – this means when they attend a lunch time session or a P6 session, they will receive stamps that work towards a choice of rewards. Period 6 sessions are outlined below:

Year 11 Revision Skills
There will be more to come regarding this over the coming weeks, but we are really pleased that on Tuesday 5th April we will run a revision skills evening for parents and students from 5:00pm- 7:00pm.

The evening will include a range of stalls giving parents and students information on health and wellbeing, healthy eating, memory and retention tips, a range of subject areas, supporting more able students, plus a range of other stalls. There will then be some key presentations that parents can choose to attend about examinations in the core subjects and how to prepare for these.

Google Classrooms:
We know that students are working really hard at the moment to balance their revision and homework – this is just a reminder that the subject Google Classrooms contain a wealth of excellent revision resources for students to access from their teachers, if your child is struggling with what or how to revise, this is a great starting point.

Head of Year Awards

Head of Year Updates
Year 7 – Miss Kincell, Miss Powell and Miss Cooper
We have had another exciting week in Year 7 with bikeability beginning this week. Our students who have completed it this week have been fantastic and all received a medal and certificates. The instructors were very impressed with Year 7 and told us that they have been very polite and a credit to our School. Year 7 can check their emails or the notices in the morning to see when they will be completing bikeability.

This week in assembly we looked at the benefits and dangers of social media. Below is some advice that we shared with our students about safely using social media:

• If you are unhappy or angry think before you respond
• Take some time out from social media – go for a walk or do something different
• Think about the reason you are posting something
• Block people that don’t have a positive impact on you
• Don’t believe everything you see on social media

If you have any questions or concerns about safely using social media then please contact the Year 7 team.

Well done to our Students of the Week this week:
7ANn – David-Thomas Baker – For improving his punctuality this week. Well done!
7ASu – Leon Barlow – for having great organisation so far this term (even better than me!)
7Bl – Jules Clarke – engaging in discussion during form time and attending clubs.
7Cy – Scarlett Kitson – for always being so polite and kind to others
7Gr – Charlie Taylor – thoughtful contributions to PSHE and helping others in form time. Well Done!
7Hf – Ethan Oliver for being brave about his shoulder and for helping Daniel settle in to school.
7Hv – Ismay Ambler – Always helpful, polite and a delightful member of the form
7MLn – Alice Sunter – For excellent contributions during PSHE, well done!
7MPe – Charlie Roe – for being caring, kind and always looking out for others. Well Done!
7Mr – Malachy Bennett – for sharing his wonderful art work with the group
7SMf – Lily Goldsmith – For her hard-working and compassionate character! Also for fantastic contribution to the school production.

Well done to Our Head of Year Awards:
Finlay McIntyre – for being kind and generous to others and an excellent student. Well Done!
Dylan Kettlewell – For being kind and considerate to others. Well Done!

Library Newsletter:
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is: “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.” We spent the day making bookmarks using the image above to give to anyone who has inspired us in any way. Some with a personal message, others with a simple ‘Happy International Women’s Day.’

Opal Plumstead
Opal Plumstead by Jacqueline Wilson (Quiz 227508. Level 5.4. Colour Green) navigates us through key moments in history. We learn about the suffragette movement and how the roles of women changed during the war.

Fourteen-year-old Opal must start work at the Fairy Glen sweet factory to support her family. She struggles to get along with her other workers, who think she’s snobby and stuck up. But Opal idolises Mrs Roberts, the factory’s beautiful, dignified owner. The best thing about Mrs Roberts? She’s a suffragette!

Opal’s world is opened to Mrs Pankhurst, and the fight to give women the right to vote. However, the first world war is about to begin…

If you have read Opal Plumstead, or even if you haven’t, have a go at some of the worksheets in the link below. It’s mainly aimed at teachers, but you can skip down to the extracts and the worksheets.

https://www.worldbookday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Opal-Plumstead-TeachersResources.pdf

If you would like to read more, and see a photographic time line of women who have shaped our history, then open the link below.

York Book Awards
A small group of students have been invited to the York Book Awards. Unfortunately, we can’t take everyone who read the books. However, if you have a question or a comment that you would like to address any of the authors, please let me, Miss Murphy know. We can send in those questions/comments beforehand and the author will give us their answer on the day. It’s very exciting to be part of this. One question we will be asking Tom Palmer is,

“We read that every scene in the book is based on real events told to you by the survivors. Out of all the stories you heard, how did you choose which to put in the book?”

You can watch the trailer for the book, and read the first chapter by clicking in the following link

I dropped off all of your artwork and reviews to St Peters School on Monday, so hopefully some of it will be used to decorate the room. All of it will eventually be presented to the authors.

Anyone A Budding Poet?
I have been sent a free 30-day poetry prompt which I would like to share with you. You can download a poetry journal using the link below. You will be given ideas, prompts and tips to write poetry. Some poems are ‘free writing’ including a drabble and a memory poem, others are more complicated. You can learn how to write ‘form’ poetry from a humble haiku to a strenuous sestina!

I thought I might have a go at writing 30 poems in 30 days, until I saw some of the more complicated forms. However, I will defiantly download the journal and have a go at them all but this task will take me longer than a month to complete. Why don’t you open the link and have a go at a couple? I’d be really interested in reading what you come up with.

https://www.localgemspoetrypress.com/uploads/1/1/6/6/11665847/a_30_day_poetry_prompt_journal.pdf

Book Returns
I’m sending out another plea for overdue library books. We are just short of 500 on the late return list. This number does not include those still within their loan period. Please have a look at home if you suspect you might have one of these books, especially if it is part of a series that other students are waiting to read

Year 8 – Mrs Avey, Mrs Mennell and Mr Handley
The second week of this half term has been a successful one for Year 8 and they have settled well into this fourth half term of the Year. Attendance in Year 8 has again been the strongest in the main school (this is a regular occurrence). We are really grateful for the support we receive from parents and carers in terms of attendance and that the importance of this is also emphasized at home. We’d also like to correct the record and confirm that 8Ob did actually manage an attendance of 100% in the first week which was an excellent achievement – well done.

The focus of both Collective Worship in forms and as a Year group this week was centered around International Women’s Day. Our whole group assembly focused on how women were given the right to vote in 1918. This is historically and culturally significant and links to the work students do in History on women’s suffrage.

In Form time students focused more on societal bias with regards to health and fitness. Students were talked through some real-life examples of teenagers and women who had faced prejudice based on their gender when taking part in sport and other activities. In the forms I was able to observe students were showing an excellent awareness of the issues being raised and make smart links between these issues and our own school values of justice and compassion. This also links in with our half termly focus on the wider British value of Personal Liberty. The session also gave extracts from a book called ‘Stronger: Changing Everything I Knew About Women’s Strength’ by Poorna Bell.

This week also saw this half term’s form time PHSCE session. For Year 8 this was about Careers and Aspirations. Hopefully this has given students a good opportunity to contemplate what options they may have when they leave school and what early steps they may need to take. It is also important to acknowledge that there is no expectation for any Year 8 student to know what their future aspirations may be. Through their Journey at AHS all students will be offered support on making decisions for their future. This will start in Year 9 when students make their first big step in picking their GCSE choices.

As with last week we have had more students representing our school in Sport. This week the Boys cricket team took part in an indoor tournament in Northallerton. They performed very well and represented the school admirably.

Again, we’d like to add, if your child has any achievements you’d like us to know about please do get in touch. We love to hear about what our students get up to out of school.

Finally, we also wanted to point parents in the direction of the school Newsletter. This week the Year Group section is Year 8. There is plenty more in there about the Year group including shout-outs from teachers, key updates and advice on dealing with difficult news (like Ukraine news stories).

As ever, thank you for your continued support. If you have any issues regarding your child in Year 8, please do contact school reception to get in touch with Mrs Avey (Head of Year 8), Mr Handley (Assistant Head of Year 8) or Mrs Mennell (Year 8 Pastoral Support Worker).

Year 9 – Mr Arthur, Mr Deamer and Mrs Deacon
We are now a third of the way into the half term and it has been a pleasure to see how well Year 9 are continuing to focus on the fundamentals in school. It is lovely now we are having longer days and students are arriving and leaving in the light and slightly warmer weather!

Firstly I just want to take the opportunity to remind parents about attendance and Year 9 have certainly been improving which is great to see. Recent studies have shown that absence from school has a significant impact on the success of students, and can have a long-term impact through to their GCSEs. In one of these studies, it has shown that of those students that have 100% attendance, 79% of them achieve 5+ good GCSEs. At 95%, this figure falls to 69%. At 90%, this falls even further to 53%, and by 85% attendance, this figure for success becomes 36%. When considering that 5% attendance is around 7 days absence, it really is crucial that students are in school every single day. To put this into further context, if your child has lower than 95% attendance, this means that they are attending school less than the average child across the country. We greatly appreciate support from families with attendance, thank you. Please contact the Year team if you’d like any support with attendance.

This week in our Act of Collective Worship it was held on International Women’s Day and it was a pleasure as a woman to host this Act of Collective Worship, we discussed all the positive changes that have happened in the UK such as the right for women to vote as well as examples of challenges that women still face in the UK and across the world. Our British Value focus for this half term is Individual Liberty and we discussed that it is important for all genders to be able to express who they are as individuals and as a community we celebrate each other and our differences.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind families about the school’s production of Matilda, as a year team we are extremely proud of the students in Year 9 who are in the production and I cannot wait to see it myself! Tickets are on sale via reception or ParentPay and the show is on from Tuesday 22nd March – Friday 25th March.

We are also looking forward to taking our Geography students in Year 9 out on fieldwork in Leeds at the end of this month classes will be going on either the 28th or 29th March, letters will be given out this week in Geography lessons. The aim of this trip is for students to gain a better understanding of the ‘Urban Issues and Challenges’ unit of work, putting theory into practice in a real-life context and to prepare them for their third GSCE paper ‘Geographical Applications’. Students will be taking part in a number of data collection techniques such as land use surveys, environmental surveys and field sketches.

Thank you for taking the time to read this parent bulletin. If you have any issues regarding your child in Year 9, then please do get in touch by emailing aarthur@ahs.pmat.academy (Head of Year), mdeacon@ahs.pmat.academy (Assistant Head of Year) and/or rdeamer@ahs.pmat.academy (Pastoral Support Worker); or alternatively, you can call Main School Reception and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you – Miss Deacon.

Year 10 – Mr Avery, Miss Johstone and Miss Montagu
Well done Yr 10 for hitting the ground running this week and making lots of progress. We are all enjoying the lighter mornings, being outside and the warm weather.

Askham Bryan College – At this week’s assembly students listened to guest speakers from Askham Bryan College and learnt about the apprenticeships which the College offers. There is a wealth of opportunities!

Apprenticeships are available in: Agriculture, Environmental Conservation, Equine Studies, Game and Wildlife Management, Horticulture (Sports Turf, Golf Greenkeeper, Landscape), Land-Based Service Engineering, Plant Maintenance, Arboriculture and Veterinary Nursing.

All apprenticeships are run from the York site and lead to valuable, nationally recognised qualifications with a range of levels. Students are supported by a Course Manager. Assessment is carried out through ‘on-the job’ observation and questioning and students produce a portfolio of evidence to demonstrate their competence.

We would strongly encourage students who are interested in these areas to find out more. Visit https://www.askham-bryan.ac.uk/apprenticeships/

We are also very excited to welcome the Speaker’s Trust which will be visiting to provide a workshop, focussed on oracy skills, on Monday 14th March. It will be led by an expert communications skills trainer who will guide a group of students through a range of activities designed to improve their communication skills. They will be returning at a later date to carry out another workshop.

The Speaker’s Trust is an impressive organisation that has worked with over 600 schools around the country to help improve young people’s confidence to speak in public, ability to work under pressure, and to hone skills that will help them in the next phase of their lives – whether that be work based training or further education.

HoY awards – Congratulations to Hannah Commings and Lukas Ford for making the most of the opportunities given to them at school. Well done!

Should you have any concerns please feel free to contact the Yr 10 team.

Year 11 – Miss Turvey, Miss Reeder and Miss Chambers
Another week has passed and our students continue to make incremental and meaningful steps in their lessons and around school.

Students should now have received their English, Maths and Science mock results from their teachers in lessons and there is certainly lots to celebrate in these results. Parents will receive a new set of report data in the coming weeks which will include behaviour, effort & homework scores as well as teacher predicted grades for ALL subjects. The English, Maths and Science mock grades will be included separately on these too. This will be a full report so it will also include a detailed written comment from your child’s Form Tutor. Parents Evening taking place on March 30th will provide an opportunity to discuss your child’s report with their teachers.

Period 6 is taking place in earnest across the school and we are encouraging strong attendance across the board. Period 6 will always be our first port of recommendation for students wishing to seek extra support in a particular subject area; the opportunity for an extra hour in a taught session with a specialist cannot be understated. To reward students for their commitment to Period 6, we have put the following in place:

• Attending 3x P6 or lunchtimes per week will be rewarded with 50 merits towards a free prom ticket.
• Attending 2x P6 or lunchtimes per week will be rewarded with 20 merits towards a free prom ticket.
• Attending 2x P6 or lunchtimes per week will be rewarded with free pizza lunch on Thursday 7th April.
• Attending 2x P6 or lunchtime sessions in total before Easter will be rewarded with a free stationary pack for upcoming exams. We feel that all students can achieve this one.

Registers are taken by staff during Period 6 to verify attendance and students will collect staff signatures in a booklet we have provided for them to exchange for rewards in Form times.

We recognise that, for some students who live further away and are dependent on catching a bus at the end of the school day, attending after school Period 6 sessions may not be a possibility. As such, students will also be able to qualify for the Rewards by attending lunch sessions as well as after school. Students may attend for part of their lunch before or after getting something to eat, as with a lunch club. The following spaces are now open for Y11 students at lunchtime as designated ‘quiet spaces’ for private work and reflection until the end of the year:

This week, our year group Assembly was taken by an external speaker representing York College, who spoke to students about the courses and opportunities available for students who choose to study there next year. Next week, Assembly will be taken by Mrs De Lashley, our Head of Sixth Form to talk about Sixth form option blocks with students. It is important to stress that Sixth Form subject choices made by students prior to Christmas are not set in stone and your child should let their Form Tutor know if they have since reconsidered and wish to make changes.

Students who have exceeded 300 merits and kept their attendance above 90% have begun to receive their Free Prom Tickets – a fantastic achievement which hopefully awaits many other students who are *almost* there with this. Our student prom committee is also continuing to plan fundraising events to help to cover these costs: there will be a Staff vs. Student Netball match taking place on Monday 28th March straight after school with refreshments for spectators to purchase. All donations will go towards the prom. We will also be running a ‘Teacher Discomfort’ Assembly for the whole year group on Friday 1st April for which Form tutors have very bravely volunteered to engage in. Students will be invited to make small donations up to a pound to sponsor staff to take part in Karaoke, Leg Waxing, Pie in the Face and Eating Challenges. This will also be a great opportunity for a fun and light-hearted final assembly of the half term (the following Friday 8th prior to Easter will be a Staff Training Day). A huge thank you to Mrs Reeder for coordinating these events.

Thank you for your support in returning Hoodie and Yearbook slips and payments. Please contact school reception if you have missed this but your child still wishes to be included. Orders are being placed imminently so we will require this information as soon as possible.

Thank you for your continued support. If you have any issues regarding your child in Year 11, please contact school reception to speak to a member of the Year 11 Team: (Miss Turvey, HofY), Miss Chambers (Assistant HofY), Mrs Reeder (PSW) and Miss Short (Y11 SLT).

Post 16 – Mrs De Lashley, Mrs Walton, Miss Balmer and Mr Charlton
The Y13 carrot – Since we are weeks away from stand-down we have a series of challenges to encourage the best of habits in the lead up to the exam season

• We are offering a prize for any student with 100% attendance between now and Easter
• We are offering a prize for any student with 100% attendance to P6 between now and Easter
• We are considering a range of awards for the leavers ceremony to celebrate successes, big and small

Y13 Mock Next Steps – Students will receive results over the next two weeks in class. These will inform us as to best next steps for intervention. If your son/daughter missed a mock they will be expected to complete them on their immediate return.

Reminder: BTEC Winter Exam Results – Results for the external examination will be available to students on Thursday 24th March. We will provide more details shortly regarding where they will be issued. Each student will have a 1-2-1 meeting with a member of the Sixth Form Team on Thursday 24th March to discuss current position, resits and stand-down dates.

Reminder: Y12 Parent’s Evening – Y12 Parent’s Evening will be taking place on Wednesday 16th March in school. Appointments will be made this week. If you are unable to attend, please contact Mrs Walton swalton1@ahs.pmat.academy or Mrs Balmer cbalmer@ahs.pmat.academy

Shoutouts
A special shoutout to those that have 100% attendance in Y12 and Y13. Not easy in the current climate – a massive commitment that we recognise and admire.

Collective Worship
This week the theme of our Form Tutor Collective Worship is connected to Ukraine, we are reflecting on and praying for peace there. It has been created by one of our 6th form students. We are pausing the Way Maker series. There is a creative element with the form making paper chains for peace.

Quotes

Monday: “Peace begins with a smile. – Mother Teresa; 20th C. Roman Catholic nun and missionary
Tuesday: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear.” – The Bible, Psalm 46: 1
Wednesday: “Peace is more than just the absence of war. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom. And true peace dictates the recognition of human rights.” – Ronald Reagan; 40th US president – 20th C.
Thursday: “The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” – The Bible, Psalm 9:9-10
Friday: “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.” – George Washington; 1st US president – 18th C.

The Wellbeing Newsletter Issue 46