A big thank you to Mrs Luing-Holmes and our Creative and Performing Arts staff and students for leading our Christmas events this week including our Carol Service at St Andrew’s Church and the Christmas Concert at Stoke Damerel Church.
We also staged performances at Paignton Zoo and supported the wider community at a variety of events including the St Luke’s Hospice Light a Life Services, and the Shekinah Mission Christmas fundraising campaign.
Well done to all involved.
Christmas Celebration Assemblies
On Friday morning our Heads of Year delivered our termly celebration assemblies. This was an opportunity to recognise and celebrate outstanding behaviour, commitment and attendance.
Each class also had a student of the term, who were all given a prize to recognise their efforts. There was a wonderful atmosphere and it was great to see so many smiling faces.
Mr Manley
Christmas Card
Continuing the festive theme, many congratulations to Ashton Delve 7N who designed our school Christmas Card this year.
The competition attracted many brilliant images and I’m sure you will agree Ashton’s design is a worthy winner.
Christmas Collections
Thank you to all of our generous families and friends for supporting the Christmas Food Bank collections last week. Our House Captains were busy all week collecting sweets, treats and groceries from tutor bases. We were staggered by how much was donated and we were very pleased to make deliveries this week to Oasis (Plymouth Food Bank) and Provide Devon.
The Food Banks have been hit particularly hard by the cost of living crisis and have seen donations this year decrease as users of the food bank have increased. We were incredibly humbled by the hard work and dedication of the staff and would like to continue supporting these causes all year round. Look out for more details about this in 2024.
Miss Cunningham
Excellent Work - Christmas Cakes
Miss Hunns said it's been very busy in Food Technology this week. Here are some of the completed Christmas Cakes.
Yule logs by Year 10 students
Christmas cakes by Year 9 students
First placed winning design
Runner up
Runner up
School Development Plan
As this term draws to a close I’d like to share with you the progress we’ve made towards the school development priorities.
Please take a moment to read through our update at this link.
Excellent Work
As part of the Oracy and Etymology day during Curriculum Challenge Week, Year 7 students learnt about alphabets of the world and wrote their names in a variety of modern and ancient scripts.
Here are some examples shared by Mr Riggs.
Primary Scholars
This Monday saw the final session of the first block of Primary Scholars. We reached out to the primary schools in our community and invited Year 5 students to DHSB to be mentored through a series of 11+ support materials.
We have been overwhelmed with offers from our students wishing to become mentors, from Year 7 through to Year 12. Each mentor was paired with a Primary Scholar who they worked with each week. This block saw students work on Maths, English and even an opportunity to work on their colour wheels in Art.
We have had lots of positive feedback from students and parents and hope to run this again later in the year.
Miss Cunningham
Eureka! Science Club
This club has continued with exciting activities each week. Recently students have adapted a basic catapult design for range and precision targeting while exploring energy stores using levers and fulcrums.
The last week club before Christmas involved hot chocolate! Sadly not drinking it but investigating the effect of marshmallows on the temperature of hot chocolate over time.
Students had to plan a fair test, carry out it and collect data to support or disprove their hypotheses.The students have really enjoyed the club and a huge thanks to Dr Chapman-Greig and Mr Weymouth for leading this opportunity.
More planned for next term!
Ms Davarian
Sports Update
Student News
Congratulations to Sam Lord 11N who has been offered a two year apprenticeship at Plymouth Argyle.
Well done to Sixth Form student Maia for great diving and a silver medal at the ESSA Diving championships in Manchester last weekend. Maia was competing for the South West Division and representing DHSB.
Well done!
Football
Well done to the Year 7 team who won 3 - 0 in the first round of the Plymouth Cup.
The Year 8 football team beat Tiverton High School 3 - 2 in round two of the Devon Cup on Monday.
Mr Strang said, "Well done to the whole squad for making it through this tight cup game".
Unfortunately, although the Year 10 team played well, they lost to a side from Coombe Dean on Tuesday (3 - 0).
Well done to the Year 11 football team who beat Redruth in a good, close, competitive game yesterday and are now into the last 32 of the national cup.
Best of luck to Redruth for the rest of their season.
Rugby
Mr Orkney says the U16 rugby team played really well but lost 15 - 10 to Mount Kelly.
Basketball
A team from Year 7 took part in Plymouth's first ever Schools Festival this week. They won every game apart from the last one, losing this to St Boniface by one score.
Mr Anderson said the end result was agonisingly close when the Year 10/11 Basketball team led all through their game but lost by one basket to Coombe Dean.
He added, “I’m super proud of a fantastic team effort. A win is coming....”
Mr Orkney said, “Well done to the U18 basketball team who beat Notre Dame on Wednesday 70 - 26 in what was a good game”.
