Weekly Newsletters

Three simple reasons to reflect and make a difference…

On Wednesday I was privileged to watch and learn from business people, through the UK skills service, who were coaching our Year 10 students through interview techniques. On the same day I witnessed a collaborative event with Stamford High Endowed School and some of our Year 8 students, designed to challenge and inspire them to study Physics in their future career.  What struck me was the following:

1. Take stock - It helps you learn from your mistakes. If we don’t reflect on our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them and that’s not very smart. However, if we reflect on those mistakes, figure out what went wrong and see how we can prevent them in the future, we can use our mistakes to get better. Mistakes are then, a valuable learning tool, instead of something to feel embarrassed or upset about. Reflection is an important way to do that.
2. Share great ideas.  The students from Year 8 and their counterparts from the Stamford Endowed School worked so well together and through this shared and collaborated to solve some very difficult physics puzzles.
3. Make sure you get a perspective. Often we are caught up in the troubles or busy-ness of our daily lives. A mistake, a block in concentration, or a barrier to understanding a topic can seem like it means all the world. It can overwhelm us at times. But if we take a minute to step back, reflect on these problems and how in the grand scheme of things they don’t mean all that much, it can calm us down and lower our stress levels. We gain perspective and that’s a good thing.

Please take time to read the reports from staff involved this week, as it a strong testimony to the careers advice and other events we are providing to our student through the support of our talented staff.

Molli Tilney – A future UK ice skating champion?

I am always keen to share publicly the talent which we have within our school.  Many of our students take part in a variety of sporting and leisure activities. Molli, in year 7, has just passed her grade 5 in ice skating, winning the Ladies Open Solo Ice Dance in Bradford.  Previously she was a silver medallist at the Lee Valley International last year.

Congratulations to Molli as her determination and focus (e.g. the pain of discipline) of frequent training before and after school  is paying off!

Best wishes

Bryan Erwin
Principal

Professionals from local businesses very kindly gave up their time to conduct these interviews and in preparation, students were encouraged to create a CV. This was a valuable opportunity to gain an insight into the interview process as well as identify their strengths and the skills they need to develop or improve.

The buzz around the whole event was so positive and it was incredibly satisfying to see the happy, smiling faces of our students afterwards. Understandably, many were nervous going into their interviews but the positive feedback they received has helped them feel more confident about themselves and what to expect in the future.

Comments from students afterwards included:

It made me more confident towards the interview process

It made me proud and will help me in the future

The experience has helped me improve and reflect on where I want to be in future years

Definitely will help me with interviews and has boosted my confidence way more

The interview helped me by knowing what a real interview is like and what I need to prepare for a real one


Comments from Nikki Moodie talking about one of the student's CV:  I was really impressed with the layout and the way they had linked interests to skill set, very simple but effective, The students personality also came through in the language used,

Comments from Colin Gregg:  I was extremely impressed with all of the students interviewed.  Varied, interesting and sometimes complex, they young students performed very well, many of whom were being interviewed for the first time.  Well done to them all.

The Careers Team: Mrs Patman, Mrs Gregg, Mrs Ayre & Miss Kingston

I would like to invite students again to join me for the remaining weeks of the year after school every Wednesday, 3:25pm until 4:15pm. From now on I will help students with any content and any questions they may have, so these are totally open, drop-in sessions. It would be helpful if I could have advance warning of the problem areas so that I can prepare resources in advance, if necessary. Students can do this by dropping me an email or seeing be briefly after normal Science lessons.

Mr Mantell is also running drop-in mentoring sessions, every Mondaymorning from 8:00am until 8:30am andTuesdays during break 2 until 2:00pm. Again, please use this time to address any problem areas you have, so arrive with particular questions in mind.

Two documents were attached to the newsletter last week to help students with revision at home, which included exam dates, exam content and revision tools. These have been attached again in case you missed them. There is also a document here which has already been made available to all Y11s; an excellent revision resource that covers all the topics and has links to videos.

I can't stress enough how essential it is that students use a variety of revision techniques and resources, and that they spend at least 30 minutes a day on Science. This is because Science has the largest amount of content to cover compared to other subjects and even compared to Science in previous years. It is going to be a challenge, but that extra bit of effort is going to make a huge difference to your final result. Whether you feel you need Science or not to progress to the next step in your education, employers will expect to see a Science qualification. Parents, we would very much appreciate your support by strongly encouraging your Y11 son or daughter to increase their Science revision hours to compensate for extra learning that they need to do. When it is all over in July they will not regret the extra time they spent, and you can all can look forward to results day in August! Thank you.

Mrs Young
Teacher of Science

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells, which means that they have no particular role to play and look 'normal'. They later develop themselves into specialised cells, which are cells that look or behave differently so that they are only suited to one role in the body. In mammals, stem cells can be either categorised as ‘embryonic’ or ‘adult’ stem cells. Embryonic cells are taken from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst (an early-stage embryo before it plants itself into the uterus wall). These special undifferentiated cells have the capacity to be any specialised cell found in the body. Adult stem cells can be found in bone marrow and tissues such as the brain, the blood, skeletal muscles, skin, and the liver. Unfortunately, they only have the ability to divide and generate the cell types for the organ from which they originated, but can self-renew or duplicate indefinitely.

These cells are very important for treating illnesses; they are transplanted routinely to treat blood and bone marrow diseases, blood cancers and immune disorders. But how does it work? Firstly the patient receives high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy tosuppress the immune system, and then a stem cell transplant. At this point the donor’s stem cells will transfuse into the patient’s blood flow which will eventually make their way to the patient’s bone marrow. Since this is the site at which your body creates new specialised cells to repair the body, the new cells will grow and provide a supply of the new cells needed in the body.

There are some drawbacks to the transplants though, like the fact that the person will have to be on immunosuppressant drugs from around six months to a year. This increases their chances of getting other diseases and illnesses. Another problem is that stem cells can form tumours which could be cancerous.

There are ethical reasons why we do not use embryonic stem cells, as some people see destroying a blastula for its cells as destroying an unborn baby. Others feel a blastula is not a formed child yet, because unless it is imbedded in the uterus wall, it will never have the chance to develop into a baby. Fertility clinics create many blastulas every year that are destroyed because they are not needed by the parents anymore. Supporters of the research agree that using cells left over from these clinics for research and developing medical treatments, which could save people’s lives, is much better than throwing them away.

However, in November of 2017, artificial embryonic stem cells were tested in people for the first time. Artificial embryonic stem cells are “virgin birth” stem cells; they come from unfertilised eggs, so no life is created or ended. This brings hope for the future to all those affected by the lack of stem cells currently available to them; soon we will be able to cure as many of these diseases as possible.

AS Biologists
Post 16

There is now an excellent revision booklet available (also on Connect) for all Year 11 to support English Language Revision at home.  

All students have also had a personal revision checklist this week in assembly which outlines all skills/topics they should revise for their exams.  If any students do not have this or need support with revision, please come along to revision sessions on Tuesday and Thursday mornings 8-8.30am in 1U12.

 

Mrs Willoughby
Head of Faculty: English

Aspire have managed to hang onto first place this week with the other Houses not far behind. Its a very busy time in school for all years and in particular for Year 11 who are about to embark on their final GCSE exams. This is what school is all about, getting the most out of lessons to be able to put your best into these exams. To get you to this stage we need to ensure your attendance is high.

Good luck to Year 11 and Post 16 for these exams.