THE CITY OF LONDON ACADEMY

SOUTHWARK

NEWSLETTER

Autumn

Term

2016

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WelcomeDear parents and pupils,

As we head toward Christmas and enter the festive season I would like to share with you some of the highlights from a very productive autumn term here at the City of London Academy - Southwark.

The term started with record breaking GCSE results and the school entering the top 10% of non-selective schools nationally for attainment as a result of the fantastic achievement of our students. At A level an unprecedented 98% of our Year 13 students achieved their personal dream of getting their first choice university place. Every one of our students applying to go to university achieved their goal. Several of these students were supported through our Oxbridge Medical Pathway bursaries, which have been provided by City Livery Companies and the Ipsos MORI Foundation.

Earlier in the term our students worked in partnership with the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. As part of the celebration, the City Livery Company hosted an exhibition of artwork created in collaboration with students.

Our Basketball Academy goes from strength to strength with our top students achieving, for the first time, schol- arships to study in the United States. Shaquille Walters, our standout player from last year joins Lee Academy, Maine, New England and England International; Ire Ozzy-Momodu is off to Robert Morris University.

Remembrance is the main focus of the second half of the autumn term with pupils and staff reflecting on the sacrifices made by others and observing the two minute silence on 11 November. This year was espe-cially poignant as pupils heard the story of Major Mike Stone’s first return to Normandy since D-Day, through his carer Ms Lloyd (Teacher of Science).

The Head girl and co-Head boys attended the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on 14 November. They enjoyed the opportunity to experience first-hand one of the high-lights of the City calendar, while networking with peers from the City of London family of schools. Further engagement with the City included a visit to City of London School where Year 9 pupils heard Julie Mayhew talk about her two recent novels. Members of our Sixth Form also relished the challenge of pitching at the an-nual Grocers’ Company Event. Their idea, “The Bolt,” for cheaply converting gym equipment to be able to generate electricity, brought them the runners up prize.

We hosted representatives from the Oxford Union on 8 November who introduced our gifted and talented Sixth Form students to the Oxford Parliamentary De-bating Competition. Our first round debate saw us pit our wits against previous winners Dulwich College.

We have continued our efforts to raise pupils’ aspirations and stretch their thinking through a range of projects. Through our London SE Maths Hub which we lead in partnership with our sister City of London School – Redriff, we have hosted “Maths Beyond the Syllabus” sessions for our Further Maths pupils in collaboration with author Julian Havil. We have also started our own Salter Lecture series, “Uni Topics Early” for our gifted and talented pupils.

Our new Sixth Form building at 399 Rotherhithe New Road is under construction and we are on course to open this for September 2017. Students and staff have been busy working with the design team to ensure we have a state of the art new facility for our community. At our main site in Lynton Road our new Year 7 play-ground was opened at the end of November and the students have been enjoying using all the extra space and facilities they helped design. This is real example of student voice work in action!

In December we have now shifted our focus to mock GCSE and A Level examinations, followed by the festiv-ities including our Senior Citizens’ Lunch and Christmas concert. We then offer our facilities to the charity Crisis as a centre for the homeless during the holiday.

Thank you for all your support this term and in helping make CoLA such an exceptional aspirational, inclusive learning community in the heart of Southwark and I wish you and your family a peaceful and relaxing festive holiday. We look forward to welcoming our students back to CoLA at the start of the new term.

Mr Richard Bannister, Principal

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Trips & VisitsHere at CoLA our students are extremely fortunate to have such a wealth of opportunities to engage in exciting, challenging and often unique trips and visits. We are grateful to all of the members of staff who have dedicated time and effort to making these trips and visits happen.

Russell Group University Fayre with ‘Making the Leap’Twenty Year 12 students were given the opportunity to attend a Russell Group university fair, where rep-resentatives from different institutions were able to showcase their universities and tell the students a little about what courses they offered. Students were able to gain an insight into which universities they may wish to apply for, and allowed them to network with student ambassadors.

Goldsmiths University Personal Statement ClinicsThroughout October we ran a number of personal state-ment clinics with students from Goldsmiths University, who came to CoLA to assist our Year 13s with their UCAS applications. This proved very useful for both our students and the representatives from Goldsmiths, who were able to give great advice about university life to our students and even advise the on which courses to choose for undergraduate study.

KPMG TripEight Year 13 students attended an insight day at KPMG, where they were involved in group activities with other London schools. The day gave them an insight into how assessment centres work for top firms like KPMG, and they were given the opportunity to present their ideas to the group of schools and in front of recruitment staff from the company.

Lord Mayor Show High Court Ceremony Five students attended the ceremony at the Royal Court of Justice. It was an opportunity for those students in-terested in a legal profession to witness the Lord Mayor swear allegiance to the Sovereign before the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and other senior judges.

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Oxford Union Debate Skills WorkshopOskar & Christine from The Oxford Union ran a debat-ing workshop and led the students (including around 12 of our own Sixth Formers) into a formal parliamentary style debate. The workshop was open to other schools in the area and was well attended by Wilson School, Coloma Convent Girls’ School & Kingsbury High School.

Bethlem MuseumThe Year 13 Psychologists went on a school trip to Bethlem Museum of the Mind to view art installations and learn about the 800 year history of the hospital where the term ‘Bedlam’ comes from. Students had the brilliant opportunity to view real patient notes of teenagers who had been patients there hundreds of years ago. They enjoyed viewing beautiful pieces of art created by patients currently staying at the hospital.

Year 7 Trip to Cine Lumière Year 7 students had a hugely enjoyable and rewarding day out at the Institut Français where, amongst other things, they watched the funny and touching French animation, Zarafa.

Year 9 French trip to LilleYear 9 students are gearing themselves up to celebrate the end of the first term of their FCSE course with a trip to Lille this December. Final items are being added to our Christmas shopping lists ready for our visit to the world-famous Christmas markets. We will tell you all about it in the next newsletter!

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Further Maths Oxford University VisitTwo, four, and five are sums of two square numbers (12+12, 22+02, 22+12), but three and six and seven are not. What’s the rule here? What’s the pattern?Year 12 and 13 Further Maths students dug into this problem - which turns out to be decided by the shape of the factorisation of each number into prime numbers - with Dr Vicky Neale from Oxford University when Vicky came to CoLA on 3 October to give a talk about prime numbers and guide the students through some investigations. Alex On noticed that no number which has remainder 3, 6, or 7 when divided by 8 is a sum of two squares. Genie Louis de Canonville, that if a num-

ber isn’t a sum of two squares, then twice that number isn’t either; if it is a sum of two squares, then twice it is too. Pieces of the jigsaw which fits together to give the whole answer.Students and teachers from the City of London Academy Hackney joined us for Vicky’s session, and for a further “Maths Beyond the Syllabus” session on 20 October, when Julian Havil, former Head of maths at Winchester College and author of many books on maths, helped students learn about some of the many cases where careful mathematical reasoning startles, surprises, and shocks.

Year 8 ‘Feminista’ and ‘Great Men’ WorkshopsThe girls all took part in a workshop led by Ms Moran (Assistant Principal) about what it means to be a woman in today’s society. There was lots of exciting discussion about how women are perceived in the media, the position women are put in easily in their life and the inequality they suffer as adults. The students then had to lead their own presentations on how they want to be represented. Thank you to Ms Gray (Head of Year 8), Ms Owens (Head of Year 9), Ms Issa, Ms Gallego and Ms Withers for supporting.

Year 7 Kingswood ResidentialThis November, 107 Year 7 students and 12 staff, travelled to the Grosvenor Hall Kingswood centre in Ashford, Kent for our annual residential Year 7 trip.

Students were able to develop their independence, team work skills and problem solving skills through a programme of outdoor activities; ranging from abseiling to laser tag to fencing. All of the students thoroughly enjoyed the wide range of activities the centre had to offer – we were even treated to a disco, where stu-dents and staff were given the opportunity to glam-up and dance to the latest hits!

Even though it was bitterly cold, all of the students (and the staff), participated eagerly in activities and thoroughly enjoyed learning new skills and trying new activities. Students also had the opportunity to bond with their peers and their teachers. All in all, it was an amazing trip!

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Clubs & Extra SupportThere are an enormous range of extracurricular activities and clubs on offer at CoLA. Here are a few that have been taking place this term. A massive well done to the students who have attended and of course a big thank you to the staff who have given up their time to make these clubs happen.

Year 10 Women in MathematicsA group of Year 10 pupils have been working after school each Wednesday at Maths problems and researching famous Female Mathematicians. The outcome so far has been this amazing display that can be seen on the second floor. The Year 10 girls have excelled themselves so come and have a read of who these women were and why you should study Maths.

Further Maths ClubAt CoLA we also run voluntary extra maths sessions for further maths students on Thursday mornings before regular lessons, mostly on topics on the edge of the syl-labus. They are also, usually, linked with the fortnightly maths prize puzzles.In the first half of this term we focused on background topics for Vicky Neale’s and Julian Havil’s sessions. Thursday 3 November was planned as a break while we considered the schedule for the second half of term; but the students turned up anyway, and we found how to get a formula for the area of a triangle from the three side-lengths (without knowing the height), and to get it without calculation or trigonometry, just by thinking about what shape the formula must be.For the coming weeks, we plan sessions on the use of symmetry and simple special cases in problem solving, uses of factorisation, difference equations, and more.This helps give the students more perspective on the regular A level problems and equip them for STEP, the half-term test for Further Pure Maths. 1 deliberately included some questions requiring more ingenuity and understanding than regular A level problems, and some students did well on them.

Advanced Art ClubArt is delighted to have Brogan Brown working on Wednesdays supporting Stretch and Challenge with GCSE and A level classes. Brogan is one of our former exceptional students who already has experience in working alongside able artists and photographers last year. She is currently studying Foundation level Art at Camberwell, with an eye on illustration as future career path.

Year 7 Art ClubStudents have been learning about chickens and our connection to them from times when they were rarely eaten and seen as spiritual birds to today where you’re never far away from a host of chicken and chip shops. Students were surprised to learn that chickens are the closest descendants of dinosaurs; even closer than reptiles and have been examining chicken bones in close detail by repairing the bones of the huge Chicken- osaurus that students built two years ago. The Natural History Museum in Oxford has invited CoLA students to display the sculpture next to its T-REX and take part in a range of activities in January. Students have also been making their own chicken collages and using these to make T-shirts.

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Mandarin ClubCoLA’s Mandarin club, in liaison with the Confucius Institute, has got off to a flying start this term. A visiting lecturer from Queen Mary University, who is delivering weekly lessons every Monday, has been very impressed by the enthusiasm of our students.

Business InterventionThe VCERT Business test was in October. The ma-jority of students attended two interventions a week in the run up to the actual test. Mr Rickwood and Mr Safo-Antwi ran them together and attendance was fantastic (with students raving about how good the ses-sions were). Mr Rickwood has since been given teacher of the month - no doubt due to these sessions and how engaging they were! Well done Business!

Creative Writing ClubMr Huxley-Smith and Mr Holdstock have been run-ning Creative Writing Club since October half term. Students have the opportunity to work on their own personal writing with the aim of entering competitions and taking part in writing events. Attendance has been strong so far, but we’d love to see more of you!

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EventsAt CoLA we celebrate and honour all cultural events. This term there has been plenty to commemorate!

Black History MonthTo celebrate BHM this year students created a won-derful display in the atrium and Ms Brown (Director of Humanities) delivered an inspirational assembly to all year groups.

Remembrance DayAll staff and students held a respectful two minutes silence to honour those who gave their lives in the wars of the past and present. We also paid a special tribute to Major Michael Stone, a relative of a CoLA staff member, who served in World War II.

Book FairThe amazing Library team have been hosting a ‘Book Fair’ for the past few weeks, offering over 200 titles from only £1.50! It’s been a roaring success and the stu-dents have loved getting their hands on bargain books.

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The Salter LecturesThis term our expert staff have been delivering challenging, university style lectures to students in a series called ‘The Salter Lectures’ (after the eponymous Alfred Salter). The series kicked off with Ms Feaver (Director of English) lecturing on her specialist subject: Postmodernism. Students grappled with the hyper real, simulacrum and intertextuality all through a Bruno Mars case study!

Year 7 Gothic ExhibitionYear 7 have been hard at work reading and writing their own Gothic horror stories in English lessons this half term. Their terrifying work is currently on display in the atrium. Shocking!

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Congratulations!We are exceptionally proud of how hard our students work at CoLA and how much effort they put into everything they do. No matter what your talent or skill, there is always something for us to celebrate about you. Here are just a few of the things you’ve done to make us proud!

Grocers’ AwardSixth form students, Daniel, William, Daria, Rashi and Alex took part in the annual Grocer’s Award with their inspiring invention ‘The Bolt’, designed to make gym equipment more energy efficient. We wish to give a huge congratulations to the team for coming an incred-ible second place, narrowly missing out on the much coveted first place to Mossbourne Academy.

Year 7 LinguistsYear 7 students have made an excellent start to their languages studies, showing themselves to be excellent budding linguists. They’ve impressed their teachers with the commitment and flare they’ve shown so far since the start of the year. Particular congratulations to students who received this term’s Teacher Awards.

KS3 (Years 7 & 8) MathsThe following students have achieved a perfect aver-age in their home learning for the first half term of the school year! Well done!Shania OdumosuJake BrunnenDominion IshiekweneJesse NgizwenayoFatiat KareemThienkim NguyenHesham SaediTemilade SegunAbdulrahman Awelkheir

Year 9 FCSE examsA fantastic 47 students achieved Distinction (the highest grade possible!) in the first unit of their MFL FCSE exams this term. Many congratulations to them and to all Year 9 students who’ve made such a positive start to the FCSE course.

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Notices & RemindersPlease be advised that as of January the school dinner standard price will increase from £2.00 to £2.20.

Home Learning planners are an essential part of your child’s school equipment. Please support your child to use their planner correctly as this will enable them to keep on top of home learning set. Please see the example for exemplary planner use:

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas from all at

City of London Academy Southwark!

The City of London Academy (Southwark)240 Lynton Road, London SE1 5LAPrincipal: Richard BannisterTel: 020 7394 5100Fax: 020 7394 5101e-mail: info@cityacademy.co.uk

@CoLA_Southwark