Adiós y gracias

This week marks the end of a three week stay of twenty Mexican students and their staff .  It has been a wonderful learning experience for them, but also for our school as we have learnt so much about each other. What was obvious is that education and opportunities like this make us all better people.

In Mexico, the students start the day very early to travel to school.  Some travel from 4.30 am to get to their first lesson between 6.30 and 7.00 am!  They have nine 50 minute lessons and the majority then stay until 5pm.  The common theme, is the respect of education changing their lives.  This is the same many thousands of miles from their home.  The thirst for learning is global!

I wish to pay my thanks and respect to the buddies that have helped our visitors integrate and return to their homeland with a wonderful, life changing experience that I expect will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

I am not advocating the Mexican school day, but as we move towards preparing for the development of the new school build and other internal improvements, we will need to consider how one of the break times is managed, to ensure that we have enough social space to allow everyone to feel comfortable whilst the proposed build is in process.  I will be sharing more details in due course  so you are kept fully informed.

In the meantime, please enjoy the video of the traditional Mexican Dance presented by our visitors

Disfruta de las vacaciones bancarias!

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Best wishes

Bryan Erwin
Principal

Nine secondary schools entered the competitions, with categories for including all ages and abilities.


It was a wonderful opportunity to see a number of our students performing and as a result, Ken Stimpson managed to secure a Silver in the Elite category which was a fine achievement. Well done.

Mr Hughes
Head of Faculty: PE

A group of us, all people I had not met before, arrived in Nantes, and worked from Monday to Friday. This was very challenging as we had to navigate the city independently, use our linguistic skills to communicate at the workplace, and use our work ethic skills in order to actually get the job done. I worked in a hotel restaurant, and as part of the job I had to set the tables, take orders from customers, serve food and clear the tables. While this sounds simple, it in fact was not as the people at my workplace spoke little to no English. I was constantly thinking and using my French skills which improved massively over the week. It was also difficult when asked questions by French customers and having to really think on your feet in order to provide them with a good response. Overall, I loved the experience. I found an amazing town, gained some amazing language skills, made some new friends and got the opportunity to explore the new town I was in. I would definitely recommend this trip to anyone once they start studying a language at A Level. If you are interested, the company is called ‘Halsbury Work Experience’ and they do experience trips to France, Italy, Germany and Spain. You do have to pay, but it is completely worth it and the experience, language skills and memories you gain from it will last a lifetime.

Bruce Taylor
Year 12

Luca Scialla-Cooper of Year 8 performed a monologue from Oliver Twist to secure the third place spot competing against 14 other students from across three different counties. It was the KS3 Drama Club that secured the top position for their rendition of ‘A Christmas Carol’, this time performed with an ensemble approach. This was duly praised by the adjudicator as “well staged, well controlled highly imaginative piece of theatre” earning a distinction alongside our other first place in its own category for KS4. Students from the Creative and Performing Arts course performed ‘Our Day Out’ by Willy Russell and were commended for their “convincing and artistic” performance.

On the final day of term Year 7 also took part in an in-school Drama Competition called the ‘Wild West Showdown’. This was an opportunity for the whole year group to showcase their work in their fortnightly Drama lessons. Two students were selected from each class as the best performers by Mr O’Neill. The overall winners were 7B1 – congratulations to them for their excellent ‘Saloon Bar’ scene.

If more students would like to get involved in the Drama Club then please see Mr Fisk for details. Sessions are run in the Drama Studio on a Monday after school and a Thursday lunchtime. We currently have a large following, but are always happy to see new talent.

Mr Fisk
Subject Lead: Drama

There will be a range of activities during the week that students will be able to participate in.  A calm room will be available between 8am and 8.30am that will allow students to listen to soothing music and take a few minutes of mindfulness before the start of the day, we hope that this will especially be useful for those sitting exams.  We will be running a competition throughout the week giving students the opportunity to get creative and design a school well-being logo. A group of students will be making energy balls and flapjack bars that will be on sale during breaktimes.

Mrs Patman and Mrs Gregg
Pupil Premium Admin/Vocational Studies

Y9 and Y10 recently had end of year exams which have been used to re-set the groups and give a definitive measure of their progress. Y7 and Y8 will be undergoing the same process later this term, on the 28th and 26th June respectively. To aid them in their revision, Miss Farrell has added revision resources to the Student Workgroups folder. Students can access this remotely at home as well as at homework club after school. Each Y7 and Y8 class will be shown this in lesson time and will have the resources explained to them. KS3 revision guides are still available so students, if you wish to purchase one, please see your Science teacher. Every bit of revision counts!

STEM Article

If the universe is so big, where are all the aliens?

Think about how big the universe is… are you struggling? That’s because the observable universe is currently 90 billion (90,000,000,000) light years in diameter. There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100-1,000 billion stars. With the use of the Kepler Space Observatory, we have discovered that planets are very common too, meaning that there are trillions and trillions of inhabitable planets. With the trillions and trillions of planets out there it means there is plenty opportunity for life to develop. In that case, where are the aliens or technologically advanced life forms? This is the Fermi Paradox. “If the universe is so big, where are all the aliens?” This is probably one of the weirdest questions in science. But it only gets really interesting when we look at the reality and numbers of it. So let’s take a look, shall we?

Even if there is alien life outside our galaxy we would never know of or reach them. Everything outside our direct “galactic neighbourhood” or Local Group is completely unreachable. Our Local Group is 10 million light years across but this only takes up 0.00000000001% of the observable universe. That is how relatively small our Local Group is. Within our Local Group there are more than fifty dwarf galaxies, the Andromeda galaxy and our home the Milky Way. In-between all the local groups within the universe there is nothing or Dark Matter. To put it shortly, because the universe is expanding (due to Dark Matter (probably best to look it up yourself, it’s very interesting)) we would never reach any other Local Groups. The Universe is expanding at a rate we can’t keep up with. If we were to invent space craft that could take us across the universe and ventured into the nothingness between spaces we would never reach anything because it would be constantly moving away from us.

In that case it is probably best that we focus on our Local Group. But don’t worry, within the Milky Way alone there are 400 billion stars, of that there are 20 billion ‘Sun like stars’ (stars that resemble our sun). It is estimated that one fifth of these ‘Sun like stars’ have an Earth sized planet in the ‘Goldie locks’ zone/habitable zone. Consequently if ONLY 0.1% of these planets had life, there would be 1 million planets with life in just the Milky Way. Our galaxy is also very old (13 billion years old), life sustaining planets would have been able to form when the Milky Way was about 1 to 2 billion years old. That is a long time and therefore trillions of chances for alien life to develop. But what would our galactic neighbours be like?

In 1964 the scientist Nikolai Kardashev created the Kardashev Scale. This scale is a way to measure a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy they are able to use. A type 1 civilisation would be able to harness all of the energy on their home planet. This means the resources available, renewable energy, nature/wind/volcanoes and fusion energy. A type 2 civilisation is a civilisation that is capable of harnessing the entire energy of their home star. A type 3 civilisation would be a civilisation that controls its entire galaxy and its energy. Fun fact, Physicist and futurist Michio Kaku suggested that humans may attain Type I status in 100–200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in 100,000 to a million years.

In that case (bringing it back to the main question), where are all the aliens? Scientists do have some theories but it is all speculation as we have no solid proof that aliens exist. What do you think? Where are they to you? Do they even exist or are they already here?

AS Biologists.

Mrs Young
Teacher of Science

On Thursday 26th April, a group of 12 Year 7 students visited the University of Cambridge as part of the University’s pre-16 programme, Insight Discover which nominated students at the school are enrolled in. The programme starts from Year 7 and finishes in Year 8, with the aim to support with academic attainment and to raise aspirations, through various modes of engagement, including e-mentoring, and events in Peterborough and at two highly selective universities.

During the visit, students engaged in a range of activities with the aim of exposing them to new ideas, with a focus on Higher Education. Students had the opportunity to meet current University students, explore the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, tour a University College, as well as meet their mentors who will be supporting them through an e-mentoring project. The end result of this project will see students get creative and decorate a shoebox that reflects their interests, personality and what’s important to them. These shoeboxes will then be collected and delivered to Peterborough Museum for a Shoebox Exhibition evening held on Monday 25 June.

Miss Harvey
Teacher of Maths

Everybody revises differently but leaving things to the last minute and cramming may cause students to become anxious and stressed. Revising SMART (topics students struggle with) is the key to improving their grades from the previous PPEs.  As well as the countdown please find attached a PowerPoint about how to do a Maths exam, a lot of this could also apply to other subjects as well!

A great way of doing this is through the free PiXL Maths App which is available for download on all smartphones and can be accessed on laptops, desktop computers and Ipads. We have been busy uploading students recent marks from their Maths PPEs onto the app and students can now work directly on their own individual areas of weakness. The app has excellent videos and PowerPoints to help students relearn topics with lots of questions to practice too! If students have forgotten how to access the App or their login details they will need to see their class teacher.

Every week I have been sending out resources students can start using at home called the final countdown. There are only 12 teaching days to the first Maths exam on the 24th of May and revising gradually is much more effective then trying to cram in lots of information at the last minute. I am pleased to attach week 11 of the countdown in this edition of the newsletter. This is a set of resources of questions students can do at home with parental support (markschemes have also been added as well as examiners reports). Furthermore there is a PLC students can use to track their progress which can also be used alongside HegartyMaths (www.hegartymaths.com) and/or the PiXL Maths App.

Please do feel free to email me personally for advice and more resources to help Year 11s revise at l.donnelly@kscs.org.uk. Together we can ensure our students are successful in the exams ahead. Depending on year halves and exam commitments there is only one lesson between maths papers so the revision sessions offered during May half term and the Saturday the 9th of June will be vital for students revision from predicted papers.

After school revision classes are ongoing with maths teachers available Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Mr Donnelly
Maths

Ford & Slater are running an Apprenticeship Open Evening on the 10th of May for all those in Year 9 & above. For more information, please see the leaflet in the "Letters home" section.

Mrs Ayre
Careers

Congratulations to Aspire who are currently still in first place. The other Houses are not far behind. You can help your house in attendance simply by coming into school daily on time. Try to make those medical appointments outside of school time. This all helps the statistics and also ensure you are making the most of your lesson time

Good luck to Year 11 and Post 16 for their revision for the important exams which are fast approaching.