Prudhoe Community High School

Autumn Newsletter 2

Contents

Grand opening

Guard of honour Twickenham

Under 15 girls Netball

Year 11 Drama

Senior Team Mathematics Challenge

Teach ‘An explosion of Ideas’

Hillsborough performance

Operation Elvis

Alice

Sports Leaders

Health & Social Care ‘Baby’ training

On-line payments

Becoming a writer

The Garden Project

The 2016 Northumberland Sports Leaders Conference

Clay Pigeon Shoot

Food Bank Collection

Save the Children ‘Christmas Jumper Day’

Social Media

PRUDHOE COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL Official Opening Ceremony

On Tuesday 22 November PCHS held an official opening ceremony for our new school which

opened to students in September this year. This was an opportunity to offer thanks to everyone involved in the project.

Amongst the invited guests were representatives from Northumberland County Council, the Education Funding Agency, Sport England, Sir Robert McAlpine, Prudhoe Partnership of Schools,

staff and students.

Students performed a short Drama piece and our student and staff choir gave their rendition of “Danny Boy”.

A commemorative plaque was unveiled by Mr Gary Marshall, the longest serving member of staff at Prudhoe Community High School to commemorate the opening.

Year 10 students form Guard of Honour at Twickenham

Congratulations to two Year 10 students Emily and Maisie who along with a group of Tynedale Panthers were Guard of Honour at the England v South Africa Rugby Game at Twickenham. It was an amazing day for them and great for girls’ rugby in the North East.

Under 15 girls’ netball

The U15 girls’ netball team had the pleasure of hosting their first home game of the season last week, playing the Northumberland Church of England Academy. The game was the first official match to be played in the PCHS brand new sports hall and the girls received a number of compliments about their new facilities. The girls played extremely well, winning their match by a number of points. The players from NCEA awarded ‘Woman of the Match’ to Hannah Beck for her movement around the court. We would like to award ‘Coaches’ Player’ to Eleanor Ferguson for stepping in at the last minute to help and support the team. Netball club will continue on a Wednesday night after school and we welcome new and existing players.

Year 11 Drama

Students in Drama explore a range of contemporary issues through devising and improvisation. Their starting points can include short stories, animation and web-based research. Here, Year 11 students are experimenting with abstract physical theatre and uplighting, to create original work.

Curtain up

The Drama Department are delighted with the fantastic new facilities in the new school and having a very busy year as usual. On Open Evening students performed a sequence from their set playscript “DNA” at least NINE times during the evening, always to a full room of audience who were most appreciative. We are looking forward to a performance workshop in the new studio led by visiting Theatre Royal practitioners, ahead of all of Year 10 going to the Theatre Royal to see the musical “Blood Brothers”. Students are participating in the Music and Drama London West End visit, and later in the year will see a performance of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”. Year 11 students had the opportunity to work with visiting novelist Chris Ord to discuss ideas about a dystopian world which will be their theme for the next examined GCSE improvisation and devising unit. There will also be a Christmas theatre trip for Year 10 to see “James and the Giant Peach” at Northern Stage.

Senior Team Mathematics Challenge On Thursday 17 November four intrepid Year 12 further mathematicians set off to try and win the regional round of the Senior Team Mathematics Challenge that took place at Northumbria University. This annual competition featured twenty teams from some of the region’s top schools – including the region’s high performing private schools. Our brave team of challengers had never experienced this kind of competition before and the atmosphere inside the room was electric. However, the buzz inside the Great Hall in Northumbria University failed to intimidate the Prudhoe team and they acquitted themselves superbly throughout the three rounds of intense competition. Not only were they great ambassadors for Prudhoe Community High School, they also demonstrated the Prudhoe Learning Apps so well – especially their resilience against some very challenging mathematics questions. The team’s maturity and talent was on show for all to see and they exceeded their own expectations as the final results were announced. A great afternoon was had by all (especially with the Kit Kats) and this was a valuable learning experience for all four mathematicians involved. Well done Sarah Kevan, George Muir, Gray Uy and Amy Robinson.

“Explosion of Ideas”

Teachers from across the North East gathered at Prudhoe Community High School on the 3 November to meet like minded professionals and external training agencies. With a theme of an 'Explosion of Ideas' staff brought along their best teaching and learning strategies to share, borrow and steal. Visitors were complimentary about our new school building, student helpers and the array of teaching and learning strategies on show. We look forward to repeating a similar event in the summer term with Highfield and Ovingham schools.

Performing Arts students perform:

‘Ninety Six’ the Hillsborough Disaster

We started teaching The Level 3 Cambridge Technical in Performing Arts here at Prudhoe in September 2015 and we still haven’t stopped for breath. The course is intensely practical and requires the students to perform work to a public audience on a regular basis – the old building certainly presented us with a challenge in terms of being a flexible performance venue, but now, with the new state of the art facilities, the students are functioning as a well-resourced and prolific theatre company. October saw the inaugural performance in the new build with the students presenting their self-devised piece on The Hillsborough Disaster. As part of a unit in Contemporary Performance Technique (which also involved

them presenting Shakespeare’s ‘Titus Andronicus’ in a paddling pool full of fake blood back in June), the students were required to choose a starting point and develop a completely original piece. It just so happened that, in those initial stages of the devising process, an inquest jury sitting at Warrington concluded that the 96 Liverpool FC supporters who lost their lives after a crush at Hillsborough were unlawfully killed. After a hearing spanning just over two years

the panel also ruled the fans played no role in causing the disaster. The original verdict of accidental death was quashed. The students were adamant that they should create a piece on this issue and, after months of heart-ache, research and devising the students performed their final piece – ‘Ninety Six’ in front of a public audience in the brand new hall.

An adaption of ‘Operation Elvis’

The Year 12’s have also been working incredibly hard on their first public performance: an adaptation of ‘Operation Elvis’ by CP Taylor. This heart-warming and uplifting piece will be presented in the Main Hall on the 6 December at 6:30 and will also include the Year 13’s presenting some of their work on Storytelling as Performance for children.

In addition, we have been working closely with Northern Stage on a series of workshops for a ground-breaking, ambitious and really exciting project… all will be revealed in Summer 2017.

ALICE

In other news… rehearsals for the next school production (an original musical adaptation of ‘Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass’) are well underway and we look forward to performing this pretty epic reconstruction of the contents of Lewis Carroll’s mind in March 2017.

If you’d like further information about any of above performances or queries about the work we do, please don’t hesitate to contact us here at the school.

Year 13 Leaders

This term the Year 13 leaders have been working with younger members of the school during lessons and in after school clubs, in order to widen their levels of skill and knowledge. This has been happening in a range of sports including: fitness, badminton, trampolining, cricket and football. The young leaders, Emily, Jess and Katie have been improving their ability within leadership along with a little tutor support. They have each gained experience by leading their preferred sporting activities. Furthermore, they have been given the opportunity to widen their understanding of leadership which they will take with them into the future.

The PE department would like to take this opportunity to thank them for all their hard work this term.

New Arrival @ PCHS

Playing with dolls took on a whole new meaning for PCHS students who recently participated in the RealCare Baby programme. After experiencing everything from sleep and social interruptions

to public stares and scrutiny, the students so far have come to one conclusion: they are not ready for parenthood. “I learned that taking care of a child might seem like a very exciting thing, but truly needs a lot of work and attention,” said year 11 student Lauren Pinchen. Moli Choudhary in year 12 commented “I have much more respect for my mum after doing the project because now I understand how difficult balancing child care with other tasks is.” The electronic babies cry throughout the day and night, and require regular changing, feeding, burping and rocking. The simulators also monitor various components of child care, such as how long

they sit unattended in car seats, and record data that is wirelessly tracked and used to generate caregiver reports. Temperature sensing

can measure ambient temperature around the baby throughout the simulation. A report is graphed to show if the model was left for long periods in a hot or cold environment. There also is a clothing detection system to give students practical experience in dressing infants for various environmental conditions, such as bedtime and cold weather days. So far baby Yoshi has been to the Metro Centre, visited the dentist and attended the Remembrance Day parade in Prudhoe.

Nadine Dickinson & Dora Szoke year 12 took him to meet Santa.

On-line payments – now available

We are pleased to report that the Schoolcomms on-line payments facility is now up and running successfully. This means that you can make on-line payments via the School Gateway smartphone app or website for school meals, school trips and music tuition.

As well as saving the school time and money, School Gateway also makes it easier for you to pay at any time and reduces the amount of cash being carried by students to school. We have had a great response to this so far and the feedback from parents is very positive so if you haven’t already used this facility please have a go.

What you need to do now Activate your School Gateway account. It’s quick and easy to do. All you need is the same email address and mobile telephone number that the school holds on record as the prime contact.

Download the app: If you have an Apple or Android supported smartphone, please download School Gateway from your app store (Apple App and Google Play). The app enables you to pay for school items PLUS you can view messages sent from school and send app messages to school for FREE. When installing the app, please ensure you say “Yes” to allow push notifications, otherwise you will not receive notification of any new messages. The payments are made by Instant Bank Transfer. To make a payment on the app via Instant Bank Transfer you must first fill in an Instant Bank Transfer mandate on the School Gateway website (www.schoolgateway.com).

OR

Visit the Website. www.schoolgateway.com and click on ‘New User’. You’ll receive a text message with a PIN number. Use this Pin to log in to School Gateway. We will notify you by text or email when new items are available for payment.

We hope that you have found or will find this facility to be a fast and easy way to pay for school items. If you need any further information or clarification please contact the Finance Office who will be happy to help with any queries.

You will need to make sure that the email address and mobile telephone number you use are the same as those held on your child’s school record. If not please contact the main office on 01661 832486 and we will update them for you.

Thank you for your continued support.

Parents/Carers

If your child is going to be absent, coming in late or will need to leave school during the school day, please let us know by leaving a message on the Absence Line: 832486 Option 1 (report a student absence) or email or text us via Schoolcomms (no phone queues or telephone options to go through and free if you have the App)

Becoming A Writer

On the morning of Friday, 2 December, the English and Drama departments

welcomed local author Chris Ord, who worked in a range of different ways with students from Year 10 through to Year 13. Chris grew up in Newbiggin, Northumberland. After graduating in the early 90s, he became an English language teacher, going on to live, work and travel in a range of countries, including Turkey, Portugal and India. His background also includes an MA in International Politics and working at Warwick University, before moving into policy research and implementation. His diverse interests include playing solo horn and running in half marathons and 10ks. After such a varied career, Chris decided to take voluntary redundancy from his role in educational policy so that he could fulfil his dream to write a

novel. Becoming, a dystopian novel set on Lindisfarne, is his debut publication and has proven a hit with readers, with reviewers commenting, ‘If you liked The Hunger Games, you’ll love this!’ and ‘You know when you read something and you weep, it’s so good? That.’ He is already writing the sequel and is busy editing a mystery set in mid-nineteenth century Northumberland, which he hopes to publish next year. Year 10 very much enjoyed Chris’s author talk, whilst Year 12 English Language students benefited from his practical help in a writing workshop. Having written a dystopian novel himself, Year 12 and 13 English Literature students found his insights into that genre really helpful, as did Year 11 Drama students who have to devise their own piece on the topic of ‘Tomorrow’s World.’ We would very much like to thank Chris for finding the time to come and work with us and wish him every success with his latest career!

The Garden Project

On Friday 21 October we invited 2 artists into PCHS who are based at the Baltic Art Gallery, to do workshops with Year 10 and Year 11 (Gifted and Talented) Art students in school. The theme was to

create ideas in preparation for the 'Garden Project' for our new school which will be used by pupils, staff and the local community. Students were engaged in a range of activities including mind mapping, discussions, drama studies and model making workshops.

The event was organised by Mrs Black who is very keen to have a walled garden which will be a working and learning space and which will also be linked to the National Pollination Initiative.

The 2016 Northumberland Sports Leaders Conference.

On Friday 2 December a number of PCHS students travelled to Concordia Leisure Centre in Cramlington to be a part of the Youth Sports Trust Young Leaders Conference. The event invited a number of schools from across the county to bring their best sports leaders together. The students spent the day doing a mixture of theory and practical activities which would support them in becoming inspiring coaches. As part of the day the students focused on how to adapt activities to suit athletes with different disabilities, looking at various differentiation techniques. The day was a great success and the students all came away excited to start coaching in the new year. .

Clay Pigeon Shoot

A big thank you to Rachael Buchanan for organising a fantastic day out for some of the teaching staff on Saturday 3 Dec. We spent the morning up in Northumberland, Clay Pigeon Shooting. The shooting coach Alan was very good and we all managed to hit a few! We all had a great day out and there are already discussions for organising another trip in the new year.

Food Bank Collection. From Monday 5 December to Friday 16th December 11RPM will be collecting food for West Northumberland food bank. Over 262 families in the area rely on donations and the students of 11RPM wish to make a donation to help families over the Christmas period. All students are welcome to help the form group, donations can be dropped off with Miss McDonald or any member of the class.

Merry Christmas.

Save the Children Christmas Jumper day

16 December 2016

The students and staff will be signing up to the ‘Save the Children Christmas jumper appeal’ on the 16 of December. So on the final day of term we’ll all be cosy in our Christmassy knits in the hope of raising a lot of money for the appeal. We are sure the school will have a very merry atmosphere and there will be a kaleidoscope of colour everywhere you turn. Look out for the article in our next issue of the newsletter to see our photos.

Prudhoe Community High School Moor Road

Prudhoe Northumberland

NE42 5LJ Tel: 01661 832486

Email: enquiries@pchs.org.uk Web: www.pchs.org.uk