HEADTEACHER’S HEADLINES

BLACKMINSTER BULLETIN

February 2011

Volume 1, Issue 3

For Parents, Students and friends of Blackminster Middle School

Welcome to this terms copy of the Blackminster Bulletin. Since the last edition, the School has continued to grow and flourish and the students have continued to demonstrate their ability to make a positive contribution to the community while maintaining their improvements in their work, academic attainment and progress towards targets. Highlights include: a range of successful sporting fixtures against local schools; further progress towards national honours for our table tennis team; fundraising events organised by students for the World Wildlife Fund and a local animal sanctuary; musical performances that impress our peripatetic teachers; poetry that impressed our visiting celebrity Birmingham Poet Laureate; a successful and positive visit by our School Improvement Partner Kevin O’Regan; Cheerleading success in Malvern; Year 6 District swimming champions; Blackminster staff visits to local First Schools in our bid to improve our links with our feeder schools; positive feedback from both student and parent questionnaires. One of the issues raised through the questionnaires was the lack of student lockers. As a result of this we have had companies in to measure and quote for each individual student to have their own locker. We hope to install these very soon after half-term. The results of the questionnaire are included later in the newsletter.

We want to know about and celebrate the many and varied talents and successes of our students. Please do contact the school if your child has achieved success in any field or endeavour – we want to know!

We extend a warm welcome to Mr. Matthew Anderson who has replaced Ms. Quinlan teaching primarily art and food technology. Mr. Anderson has already made a positive impact, leading cookery sessions with many classes. After the Easter holiday we will be joined by Ms. Linda McQuone. Her role will be Deputy Headteacher: Curriculum, learning and teaching. Ms. McQuone’s appointment completes the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). Other members of the SLT are: Mrs. Christine Nelson, Assistant Headteacher: Inclusion for Learning; Mr. Phil Nosworthy, Assistant Headteacher: Standards, Achievement and data and Mr. Neil Davies, Assistant Headteacher: Care, guidance and support. All members of SLT have been tasked to ensure that your child receives the very best education from the very best teachers.

An exciting development is the possible federation between Blackminster Middle and Pebworth First School. The Chair of Governors from both schools have met to begin negotiations to bring the schools closer together. The main implication of this federation is that the Blackminster Middle School Senior Leadership Team would take responsibility for the strategic and day to day running of Pebworth First School. There are many many positives to be taken from the federation and par-ents can rest assured that any decisions will be taken in the very best interests of the students. If you have any queries or concerns about this exciting venture please do contact me at the school or email head@blackminster.worcs.sch.uk The governors are also in the process of setting up a working party to explore the possibility of Blackminster Middle School becoming an academy. These are early days in the process and we are treading very carefully to ensure all options and avenues are explored. Again, if you have any questions please do contact me.

Potential budget cuts continue to exercise the minds of Headteachers around the country. On March 17th we will be told our budget for 2011 – 2012. We remain positive and, again, you should rest assured that any decisions on spending will be made with the interests of the students in the forefront of our minds. Priority will be given to learning and teaching and to providing the very best resources to make sure students discover and make the most of their skills and talents. Inevitably, there may have to be some cuts and this might be in the upkeep of the school buildings. As a consequence we will be looking for sponsors or kind donations of work to ensure our wonderful facilities continue to provide a positive and welcoming learning environment.

In March, work will start on ensuring Blackminster Middle meets access requirements for people with disabilities. This work has been planned for some time and is using funding that was delegated in the last financial year.

In these times of change and uncertainty it is vital that we keep open the lines of communication between home and school. I do encourage all parents, carers, governors and friends of the school to access our website at www.blackminster.org.uk or to contact the school if there are any concerns, worries or, of course, reasons for celebration! There are many positive and exciting opportunities ahead and we very much continue to look forward with ambition.

A message from Miss Harris and the Earth House staff and students: This has been another very busy half- term for Earth House with lots to report. Our major House successes at the end of last half-term were our contribution to the Xmas market with Earth House students working hard to raise over £300 pounds on stalls such as Xmas beauty hampers/cakes and games/games and jewellery/ pluck a duck games . Our other major sporting successes were winning the Inter House Swimming Gala thanks to: Andrew Bowles, James Morrow, Will Jones, Jasmine Lymn, Holly Bilsborrow, AmyKeen, Lydia Loxston, SamKedward-Cox, Adam Stanley, Lewis Woodford, Harry Hughes, Emily Knight, Leanne Greenwood, Cullan Walker, Alex Hillier, Chris Palmer, James Brinson, Amber Osborne, Georgina Bragg, Poppy Walton. We have already won our two Inter House Rugby matches against Fire and Water thanks to: Ben Jones, James Brinson, Cullan Walker, Kyle Thornton, Eliot Hope, Zak Perkins, Alex Hillier, Chris Ballard. Well done to all students involved and particular thanks to our Sports Captains Ben Jones and Amber Osborne for their encouragement and inspiration to all competitors. Other individual successes and achievements include the following students from Earth House: Students in Earth House who received end of half-term Subject awards; Year 8 Achievement awards to; Sam Insley – MATHS, Georgia Davis – MUSIC, Amber Osborne PSHEE Year 8 Effort awards to; Amber Osborne – ENGLISH, Georgina Bragg – GEOGRAPHY, Georgina Bragg - PE Year 7 Achievement awards to; Lauren Welland - HISTORY Year 7 Effort awards to; Leanne Greenwood – GEOGRAPHY, Tilly Johnson – MUSIC, Evie Coltman - PSHEE Year 6 Achievement awards to; James Morrow – ENGLISH, Danielle Cowley – MATHS, Sophie Evans – FRENCH, Jasmine Lymn – ICT, Louise Porter - PSHEE Year 6 Effort awards to; Leah Jennings – MATHS, Will Jones – CITIZENSHIP, Joe Tyrell – FRENCH, Faye Stanton – GEOGRAPHY, Matilda Beech – PSHEE, Anna Icke - RE House and Sports Captains leading assembly

Students who lost no bonus merits for the whole 2nd Autumn half-term: ELR: Daniel Thomas, Amy Keen, Anna Icke, Holly Bilsborrow EKS: Louise Porter, Sam Insley, Chloe Witheford, Kyle Thornton, Emily Knight, Jasmine Lymn, Sam Barlow Georgia Davis, Amber Osborne, Lacey Smith Ben Gregson, Faye Stanton EAF: Leanne Greenwood, Rebecca Wright, Sophie Evans, Lydia Loxston, ECH: Ellen Day, Evie Coltman, Bethany Williams, Krystal Smith, Tilly Johnson Students who have achieved 100% attendance since September: Andrew Bowles, Danielle Cowley, Georgia Davis, Zinzan Hancox, Alex Hillier,Sam Insley, Abigail James, Will Jones, Grace Kelly, Lydia Loxston, Chris Palmer, Harvey Tydeman, Bethany Williams Other individual success include: Chris Ballard for winning the merit prize draw and Anna Garner and Evie Coltman who organised a successful cake sale to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. Becky Nevin and Ellie Macauley are also planning to organise their own event to support our House Charity – the Air Ambulance so we will keep everyone posted with that. Our House and Sports Captains, Georgia Davis, Sam Insley, Ben Jones and Amber Osborne led an active assembly on the theme of not judging a book (nor a packet of crisps) by it’s cover. Students were chosen as participants in a crisp tasting competition where they had to guess the different flavours of crisps whilst being blind-folded. We will be asking more students to lead assemblies over the next term and will be looking forward to some inspirational ideas from them… Several students have been taking part in auditions for the latest Blackminster Talent Show – Blackminster’s Got Talent. All are making our judges job extremely difficult as we have to choose 3 finalists Lets hope we have good news to report next Newsletter and we have a winner in Earth House. All students have completed Target postcards for this term which they have returned to their Form Tutors. We will be hoping that all students are focusing on their targets for the term and, this time, there will be a section included where parents will be asked to comment on targets achieved. Well done everyone for your hard work and enjoy the rest of the term.

FIRE HOUSE - MRS P WATSON

As always, the students and staff in Fire have been working and playing hard and we have been extremely consistent in our achievements so far this year! In nearly all of the inter-house challenges so far, we have gained 2nd position! This is true of the Swimming Gala, Merit Totals for Autumn Term, Overall Attendance and currently our Year 8 Rugby Squad are vying for second place in that competition too!!! The margins between 1st and 2nd are very slight in both merit and attendance totals and to all students in Fire House…be here…keep your bonus merits…earn extra ones and let’s see if we can get the cup back!! We are extremely proud that we show, as a House, good effort and achievement across the board. This was reflected in the special “subject attainment and recognition of effort” awards at the end of December. Congratulations to the following students for attainment: Y8 Chris Ashwin (Science) Emily Brush (Art) Emily Styles (Citizenship) Faye Bostock (DT) Alice Clements (French and RE) Y7 Adam Mitchell ( Art) Olivia Stokes (Citizenship) Jay Harris (French) Georgina Simpson (Geography) Natalie Kyle (ICT and PSHEE) Y6 Owen Leeks (Citizenship and Geography) Katie Biddle (RE) Well done to the following students for continuing to make excellent effort: Y8 Luke Beckley (Science) Cody White (Art) Y7 George Temby (English) Katie Witheford (Maths and RE) Jodie Bryan (Art) Tyrone Parry (History) Y6 Hope Rochell (English) Charlie Smith (ICT) Jack Ricketts (Music) From the analysis of data recorded in the Pupil Profiles for the end of the Autumn Term, it is very encouraging to report that 19.5% of students in Fire House achieved EXCEPTIONAL levels on their reports for effort and behaviour and have been rewarded with compliment slips. This represents a rise from 6 to 18 students in only half a term! Well done to all of you. We are also very impressed by the number of students who (up to Friday 28th January) have achieved 100% attendance so far this year. Congratulations to Luke Beckley, Nicholas Brinson, Lydia Castle, Zak Edwards, Chloe Johns, Louise Knight, Owen Leeks, Jack Tyler, Kate Unwin, Matthew Waite, Sam Webb, Craig Witheford, Katrina Witheford and Lewis Wride. Our local charity fundraising has made great headway. We are at present trying to arrange a visit to The Acorns Hospice in Worcester primarily to present two cheques-one for £332.80 raised through the whole school run/cycle/walk event and the other for £81.54 collected by Fire Students through raffling hampers at Christmas. We will also take along the collecting box and bring back a fresh one. I am sure this tremendous donation will be very gratefully received and well spent. Thank you to all parents and friends of the school who have supported the students and made these donations possible.

Forthcoming Dates: February 28 Professional Development Day (PDD)

March

1 Beginning of Term

14 Full Governor’s meeting

23 Governor’s Finance Meeting

30 Year 6 Student/Parent/Teacher/Consultation Evening

April 5 Year 8 Natural History Museum Oxford

8 Ski Visit to Switzerland—depart

8 End of Term

16 Ski Visit returns

HOLLY BILSBORROW Congratulations to Holly Bilsborrow who has been selected for the Worcestershire U11 Table Tennis team. She will compete in the National Individual Championships on Saturday 16th April in Doncaster. Holly is 26th in the Country at U13 level. We wish her well! Holly recently competed in a competition in Wednesbury and won the U11 and U12 competitions. She also came 3rd in the U14s - clearly a talented player who promises much for the future and one to watch for future Olympic games.

Free Support for Parents with their Child’s Reading Visit www.oxfordowl.co.uk which includes FREE online ebooks

Air House News

The vision of the Air house is to create a house for the students and involve them in all decisions that directly affect them. The students in our house are not expected to win everything, but to unite together in one large, happy family. This half term the Air House Congress has been formed. Every Wednesday morning before school the congress meet and discuss how the Air House could be improved. Who is in the air house congress?

Mr. Jacob (Head of house), Mrs. Bell (ASB tutor), Mrs. Nelson (assistant head), Mrs Chape (ACN covering tutor), Miss Heeley (ASJ covering tutor), Miss Burton (AHB tutor), Finn Vallely (house cap-tain), Phillippa Costall (house captain), Annabel Ellis (sports captain), Nathan Bolland (deputy sports captain), Rob Wallace (sports captain), Edward Whittaker (representing year 6), Rose Hartell (representing year 7) and Liam Deacon (representing year 8).

The congress has to regularly vote on if proposals made by the four tutor groups should be granted or not. As there are more students in the congress than teachers, this really helps to create a house that the students want.

Also this term, the air house can proudly announce that Annabel Ellis and Glen Harvey have made it through to the second round of this year’s Blackminster’s got Talent contest. I am sure that they will do the house proud if they are selected to per-form in front of a live audience in the final. I am sure you will support the three Air house acts, when the date for the final has been finalised, by coming along and cheering for them. Go Air!

The air house has been spoilt this half term by hav-ing some outstanding assemblies delivered by Mrs. Chape and the sports captains. The house was thoughtful when Mrs. Chape spoke about bullying and was reflective when Annabel Ellis and Nathan Bolland spoke about this year’s sports day. The Air House will start training for the competition a lot earlier this year and will make sure that the best athletes are selected for the specific track and field events.

A huge well done to Ellie Simpson and Darren Wil-son Wilde who fought valiantly and heroically in this year’s swimming gala. They did the house proud.

Well done to Rebecca Beech ACN, Emily Burrows AHB, Oliver Godfrey AHB, Glen Harvey ASB, James Martin ASJ, Molly Ricketts ASJ, Jack Smith ASJ and Will Wilkinson ACN who achieved one hundred per-cent attendance last half term.

Finally, this half term the Air House cup, which is in the form of a brown monkey, was presented to the tutor group that had improved the most last half term. This was based on the learning profile data that was reported to parents last half term. ASJ were the most improved form and collected the trophy in our achieve-ments assembly last week. The brown monkey now proudly sits in ASJ’s form room and they have grown quite attached to him. I wonder which classroom he will be found in next half term?

The 5 most improved students last half term were: Eloise Hamer +6 AHB Emily Cuss +5 ACN Jordan Porter +4 AHB Jordan Shone Andrews +4 ASJ Ellie Simpson +4 ASJ

Teaching group Average improvement

ASJ +1.2

AHB +0.8

ASB +0.7

ACN +0.5

THE BIG QUESTION

Throughout all curriculum areas our students are en-couraged to develop their personal learning and think-ing skills. These skills include being an effective self-manager, a reflective learner, a good team worker, an effective participator, a creative thinker and being an independent enquirer. In order to encourage our students to develop these skills we put a question to them. The question was “ What would happen if the earth’s rotation changed to the opposite direction?” Some of the answers included suggestions that we would go back in time, that we might not be alive, the sun and moon would set on the opposite side, the sea-sons would go backwards and the world would be up-side down! Mr Jacob and I are going to consider all the answers and award small prizes for the best ones. Thank you to everyone who entered. Mrs Nelson

Water House There have been some changes in Water House since Christmas. Ms Quinlan has left Blackminster to work at a primary school in Liverpool near to her home; she says that she is settling in well at her new school but misses us! We are delighted to welcome Mr Anderson to the Art and Technology Department. He is already impressed by the enthusiasm of the students and by how well they have responded to practical food lessons. Students in the house continue to make good progress. In school we have introduced a system of colour-coding the learning profiles students are given in their half-termly reports, which indicate their attitude and effort in lessons. The number of students rated purple (ie with at least four subjects rated at 5, the highest rating) has doubled in the last half term from 10 to 20 students. Similarly, those rated red (ie with two or more subjects rated 1 or 2) has halved from 6 students to 3. Congratulations to all these students! We were also surprised but delighted to hear that Water House had won the Merit Cup at the end of the autumn term and also the Attendance Shield for having the best attendance figures of the four houses. Major contributors to that award must be those students in the house who have not had a day off school since the beginning of the scholastic year which, in this season of coughs, colds and pernicious flu bugs, is quite an achievement! They are: Luke Beacham, Chris Canning, Laura Dyson, Jessica Jagger, Joseph Keyte, Peter Lamb, Natasha Martin, Martha Morrey, Mollie Ponting, Julie Richmond, Joe Thacker, Reece Walker and Holly Walton. Well done to them and could they please share their health secrets with the rest of us? Thank you to all the staff and students in Water House.

Ms Easton

Attendance Recently your child has brought home an attendance leaflet. The importance of attendance at all ages and stages of compulsory education is clear to see, for parents and students alike, through the illustrations and content of the Attendance leaflet. Embedding reliable patterns of attendance from First School onwards is a life skill which will give our students the best chance in the world of work at the other end of the education spectrum. If you would like further information please contact us at Blackminster.

Mrs Nelson

The Enterprise Cup Last term, as part of a home learning project, all students were asked to invent something. The response to this independent activity was overwhelming with students spending hours planning, designing and marketing their ideas at home. This year the Enterprise cup will be won by the student who has come up with the most realistic, creative, original and mouth wateringly brilliant idea. The best twenty five students have already made it through to the next stage, where they will have to pitch their ideas to Mr. Jacob, Mr. Humphries and Mr. Jones after half term. The top nine inventions selected will then make it through to the live final, where they will have to pitch their ideas in front of a live audience of parents and supporters and try to impress a panel of businessmen and women from the local business park. This judging panel will decide on the creative idea that they think is the best and then award the winning student with the Enterprise Cup.

Lee Nisbett’s Gowash, Jacob Hancox’s Easy ladder, Caitlin Lunk’s Key phone 010, Danielle Cowley’s Golf finder, Nathan Basford’s Permapeg, Harry Bamforth’s Lane minder, Courtney Venter’s Wristease, Ryan Smith’s Easy de-freeze system, Megan Hoskin’s Auto purse and Matthew Newman’s Aqua buds were the ten year six inventions that made it through to the next stage.

Only three of the five year 7 teaching groups were given this home learning assignment, so only five students have made it through to the next stage. Tara Canning’s Easy peel, Olivia Stokes’ time spirit, Adam Mitchell’s Ultimate referee kit, Glen Harvey’s original bath solution and Tilly Johnson’s funky sauce pen were the inventions that made it through.

Emily Cuss’s sensor ball, Scott Newman’s Satnav torch, Beth Collins’ Feedassist cutlery, Alex Hillier’s FSBS, Liam Deacon’s Power plug turbine, Tom Benfield’s voice activated alarm clock, Danielle Salter’s Sam and Sally Signalot, James Brinson’s Ping pad, Anna Garner’s fluffy chin rest and Emma Pollard’s tune turner were the ten year eight inventions that made it through to the next stage.

I look forward to listening to their pitches in the near fu-ture.

Good luck!

Mr. Jacob

Spoz’s Visit Spoz is of an Italian background poet who does poetry slams for children in schools. Also he writes his own books based on poetry, which are all very good and funny.

Spoz came over to give the year 7’s a poetry slam. Firstly, he gave us some tips on how to write a good poem. Then Spoz introduced the kind of poems he does, by reading some of them out of his amazing, funny book of poetry, called ‘When the World Grew Hair’.

Finally, our task was to write a poem based on the environment. We each had to make our own verse, which was made up of at least one rhyming couplet. We also had to make a chorus which had to start the poem off, and finish it.

Once we had made our poem, we had to stand up and perform it. We were voted on by some teachers including the Head of English, Miss Swindells.

The winning team was called the ‘Comma Cameleons’, which included James Thompson, James Bubb, Joe Keyte, Harry Dudfield, George Temby and Sebastian Speciale-Lees. The ‘Comma Cameleons’ get to go to the poetry slam final at the Astrix Theatre in Bromsgrove, on the evening of Wednesday 30th March.

Overall, Spoz was a very entertaining poet.

Written by, James Thompson, Joe Keyte and James Bubb.

Facebook Legally and sensibly to go on Facebook, you have to be 13 years old. Facebook is a social network where people give information about themselves. This can be extremely DANGEROUS! The information you put on Facebook, is open to everybody, so you should never put personal details on there.

Facebook can be dangerous because all sorts of people go on it who you don’t know, and who could hurt you. NEVER agree to meet up with people who you have only met on Facebook, as they could be anyone who could do anything to you. Basically you should always check who you are talking to on Facebook, and it is sensible to wait until you are the legal age, as people have been seriously hurt, or worse, by someone they have met on Facebook.

Zoe Insley, Year 7.

ICT SWIPE On January 27th three of us in Year 8 worked with three Year 7 students (Chloe Witheford, Ethan Edwards and Zoe Insley) helping to create part of a virtual learning network for Blackminster. We worked with Colin Green who reminded us what we had done earlier in the year and then set us a project for the day which was to create a transition area to help Year 5 students feel comfortable about transferring to Blackminster in September. As Year 8 students we have been trained as champions and can control, edit and modify this part of the website. During the day we worked on developing a Year5/6 area to introduce our school, an area for each subject, an area for each of the four houses to show results and events. We will continue to work on it in the coming weeks. Mr Green is going to work with the First school so that they can access out VLE. Hopefully it will help Year 5 students put their minds at rest about coming to Blackminster. Year 8 students - Rebecca Anderson, Finn Vallely and Libby Banner

The Winner is… Mrs Roach has been running a competition out of

Room 10 linked to her Year 8 Math lessons on Measure.

The challenge was to

estimate the weight of a jar of sweets!

Anyone that entered Room 10 was allowed to enter.

The closest to the exact weight of 740g was

Chelsea Meats AHB Come and collect your sweets Chelsea.

Gifted and Talented Maths week 7th – 11th March 2011

This year we are running a Gifted and Talented Maths week from the 7th – 11th March. The week is designed to enable our Gifted and Talented students to engage and support other students to develop their mathemati-cal skills. During the week Alan Catley, who has established a reputation for enthusiastically delivering maths whilst making the most out of technology, will be in school for a day and will be delivering five sessions to our stu-dents. We will also have students from Evesham High School who will also be coming in to work alongside our students and also visiting for a day will be Nick Wynne, who is an advanced skills teacher and the Head of Maths Faculty at North Bromsgrove High School. Throughout the week our non-core subject teachers will be delivering cross curricular lessons which will have a maths focus to the lesson. We hope that this week will develop students’ enthusiasm and learning in Maths and that our gifted and talented students will enjoy the challenge.

SPORT AT BLACKMINSTER

New clubs which have been run this half-term: Fencing (two Year 8 students Glenn Hardiman and Cody White have completed the young leader fencing

training and are now assisting in the running of this club) Dodgeball competition (takes place on Friday lunchtimes and has been set up and run by the sports

council, its great to see every form group entering 1 and in some cases 2 teams into the competition, lets see by Easter which form is crowned as champions!)

Street dance (takes place on a Tuesday after school as is run by an organisation called ‘Dancefest’, to-gether with the students attending they are producing some excellent work. Thank you to Mrs Chape who is overseeing the running of the club)

Badminton (takes place on a Thursday lunchtime, places are limited to 6 students this half-term but we are hoping to open it up to another group of students next half-term)

All have been very well attended and enjoyed by all the students taking part. Year 6 cross-country county finals:

Harry Bamforth came 35th Lydia Castle came 36th Lydia Loxston came 38th

South Worcestershire team which our 3 students were part of finished runners up in the county. An excellent performance, well done! District swimming gala – held once again at Evesham Leisure Centre this year.

Year 6 team came 1st Year 7 team came 7th Year 8 team came 4th

Bouldering wall finished – our new bouldering wall has been completed and most of the students in years 7 and 8 have been given the opportunity to use it this half-term in PE. It is hoped next half-term, that the weather will improve further and we can begin a lunchtime club. More details to follow after half-term. Cheerleading festival (Thurs 20th Jan) – 24 students from across the 3 years groups represented Blackmin-ster in the south and west Worcestershire cheerleading festival held at Malvern St James. They had worked with Miss Kay for weeks at lunchtimes composing the routine to perform on the day and all their hard work paid off with an excellent performance. Gifted & Talented trip to a lecture by the University of Worcester titled ‘What is Skill?’ – We were this year invited to attend a New Year’s Lecture by the University of Worcester. The interactive and stimulating lec-ture was aimed at students in year 7 and 8 who have been selected as Gifted and Talented in PE/sport. 14 Blackminster students attended the lecture and explored the topic of skill, specifically looking at balance and how this affects sportsmen/women. Other sports results: Year 6 boys football fixture v Bredon Hill (lost 3-2, scorers were Charlie Smith and Edward Whittaker) Year 7 and 8 girls hockey v Chipping Campden (lost) Year 7 district girls hockey tournament (finished 3rd) Coming up next half-term:

District netball tournaments for years 6, 7 and 8 Year 6 boys football fixtures v St Nicholas (Wed 2nd March) v Abbey Park (Thurs 3rd March) v St Barnabas (Tues 8th March) - District boys rugby tournaments for years 7 and 8 - Year 8 sports leadership festival (Fri 25th March)

Plus some other fixtures hopefully to be arranged soon.