13/2/12 Half Term starts
17/2/12 Half Term ends
Music Department
We have been lucky enough to receive free tickets for 34 year 9 students to attend a music concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Theatre Royal on Tuesday 20th March. The BBC Concert Orchestra is a 60 piece orchestra and the concert will be presented by Blue Peter’s Helen Skelton. The concert will explore the ins and outs of orchestral music from traditional classical by Prokofiev and Stravinsky, to popular TV and film soundtracks. The repertoire is chosen specifically to engage and introduce younger listeners to the vast world of orchestral music.
Students wishing to attend the concert will need to commit after half term to attend a rehearsal every Thursday at lunch time (room 204) in the lead up to the concert. Part of the concert involves audience participation and those attending will need to learn a Stevie Wonder song ‘Sir Duke’ to perform in the concert.
This trip will be operated on a first come first served basis. If your son/daughter is interested in this trip I would be grateful if you could speak to me (Miss Rasmussen) in the Music Department.
Message from Mr Nixon
As you may remember, following the Ofsted report of May last year I asked the Local Authority if they would support us in a number of different ways. The aim was to use their breadth of experience to move us from ‘good’ onto ‘outstanding’ as is our ambition. Part of the support package we talked about was them coming in and judging how well we were doing against the Ofsted Action Plan that we put together. In a recent E-echo, I announced that they had contacted us on Monday and said they would be visiting us on Wednesday and as planned, a team of 3 arrived and spent the day in school on Wednesday. During this time they did a number of lesson observations, spoke to students, looked at work and also met various middle leaders and senior leaders and reported back to the Senior Leadership Team and the Chair of Governors. The report was a positive one; clearly we are still on a journey and have a great deal of work to do but nevertheless some key areas were highlighted where we are making good progress with the Ofsted Action Plan. Firstly there is consistency in lesson planning and the ‘CNS Lesson’ is having a real impact; secondly that as a school we worked well as a team; thirdly they saw very good behaviour throughout the day and finally there is accelerated improvement in teaching quality throughout the school. This is a very positive sign but as I have said to the staff today, it is not only about a good lesson, it is about good learning over a period of time. We will be looking at the detailed report when it is received from the Local Authority and putting it into our Action Plan and continuing with our hard work, dedication and training programmes to rapidly improve the school.
