Thank you to the very many families who attended Wednesday's Spring Showcase. It was a fantastic event which included solo, ensemble, and Choir performances. Thank you to Mrs Swan and the music department for organising this and to you for supporting.

Today we welcome Dee Bleakley (https://www.deebleakley.com) into school. Dee is a motivational speaker and will be leading sessions with Year 10, 12 and for those Year 11 students not on today's GCSE Geography Field Trip. Dee’s sessions will focus on self-management, exam preparation as well as communication.

Year 9 options – an update from Mr Burrows, Assistant Headteacher

A reminder that the Options Form went ‘live’ last week and that the final deadline for submitting option choices is 4th April.

The link for the form has already bene emailed to you. Students also have a paper copy of the leaflet which also incudes the link to the options form.

Preparation for Exams – guidance from Mr Clark, Deputy Headteacher

Revision can be a tricky thing to master.  I’m sure many parents of Year 11 and 13 students are having discussions about revision at home at the moment, but many students, and indeed parents, don’t know the most effective ways to revise for exams.

Educational Scientists have studied this and have found the six most effective study strategies are: Spaced Practice, Interleaving, Concrete Examples, Dual Coding, Retrieval Practice and Elaboration.

• Spaced practice stresses the importance of spacing out your revision activities.
• Interleaving means breaking your study up into different sections and revising different topics in different orders, so that your brain is “kept on its toes” and doesn’t become fatigued with one topic.
• Creating concrete examples means that you can link abstract ideas to real world applications.  For example, when studying globalisation in geography, think about a company that has benefitted from globalisation.
• Dual coding means creating visuals to go along with your written work.  For example, cartoon strips, labelled diagrams, timelines.
• Retrieval practice is a method whereby students test themselves on topics repeatedly, then check their understanding after they have tested themselves.  These tests should focus, not only on recent learning but also on topics that they have not visited recently.
• Elaboration is about asking more probing questions on a topic you have studied, such as “why?”, “how?”, “how is this similar or different to..?”, “what happens next?”.

Many of these strategies could, and should, be combined.  For example, in your elaboration you could create a mind map and link to real world examples.

Here is a particularly useful video to explain these further.  This video is beneficial for students, but also for parents in supporting students.  As parents, you can support your young people to revise by helping them to elaborate on topics or quizzing them and then checking the answers as part of their retrieval practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPxSzxylRCI

Duke Of Edinburgh – an update from Miss Francis, Duke of Edinburgh Manager

It has been very pleasing to see the level of interest in Duke of Edinburgh this year. Students have been attending the weekly in-school sessions and this week we have confirmed the arrangements for both the practice and final expedition.

I will be writing to parents very soon with all the details.

Please watch this space!