It has been a very exciting week as we welcomed visitors from Switzerland, celebrated student successes, and learnt lots of new skills.
An uphill battle
Elsie, Year 13, completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks Cyclocross challenge at the weekend.
The race covered Ingleborough, Whernside, and Pen Y Ghent – a gruelling route on foot, never mind a bike!
Cyclocross is a form of bicycle racing, consisting of different terrains and obstacles, requiring the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike while navigating the obstruction and remount.
Elsie did incredibly well, coming first in the Junior Girls division. Well done!
Learning to relax
This week, Year 11 Health and Social Care students have been learning about various types of therapies: sensory, physical, and cognitive.
They tried out yoga, tai chi, and meditation, and also learnt about reflexology.
Reflexology can promote physical and mental health and wellbeing as pressure points in the foot correspond with different organs and parts of the body.
Skills for the future
Mrs Hewitt’s Year 7 IT class have been learning how to build a website this week.
They built a mock webpage featuring content ‘all about me’ and filled the site with text boxes and pictures of their interests.
Digital skills are increasingly in demand, so lessons such as this are key to success!
New friends from across the way
On Wednesday, we welcomed visitors from Switzerland to perform alongside our brass band and Haslingden Primary School’s brass band.
Some of our Year 11 GCSE German students had the chance to give a warm welcome to our visitors to our school.
They practised asking questions and surprised themselves at how much they were able to understand and say.
Imogen said, “The group I was speaking to and I exchanged phone numbers and we’ve been messaging, finding common interests and speaking German and English back to one another.“
MFL Faculty Prefect Jenica said, “Many of us gained confidence from speaking with people from Switzerland.”
We are now hoping to maintain this link with our new friends from Basel, Switzerland!
Poetry slams
7R have been studying Roald Dahl’s poem “My teacher wasn’t half as nice as…” in English, which is about the speaker remembering their old history teacher, Mr Unsworth, who was very strict and scary.
Using this as inspiration, students in 7R created some amazing poems and then performed them in a “slam poetry” performance for the class.
Mrs Verpoorten and Mrs Graham were blown away by the students’ talent, creativity and bravery!
“My teacher wasn’t half as fun as yours used to be.
His name was Mr. Grumbleton and he taught us history.
And when you forgot a date or mixed up the years
He’d stamp his foot and twirl his pen in fear.
He’d grumble, mumble, shuffle and snore
While you sat there quiet, bored to the core.
He’d tap the chalk, groan, and wag his finger more and more
Until at last the chalkboard fell with a mighty roar.
Our class was full of sleepy, droopy-eyed chaps. I’m certain there were ten
Who’d dozed, doodled, or napped over and over again.
So let us now cheer for teachers lively and bright
And yours in particular is a sheer delight.”
Coding is key
Year 13 students have been learning to write programs in Assembly Language, using the Little Man Computer (LMC).
The LMC is a simplified model of a computer that helps students understand how machines actually process instructions at a very low level. By working with Assembly Language, they’re gaining insight into the kind of step-by-step commands that sit beneath the high-level programming languages we use every day.
Through this work, students are exploring concepts such as input and output, branching, loops, and memory management. It’s challenging but also really rewarding and prepares them for further study in computer science, engineering, or related fields.
