This half term has flown by quickly.
It has been a challenging time with regard to Covid-19 rates in our local community but I would like to thank all of our staff and students for working extremely hard and focusing on continuing both our academic and extracurricular activities since we returned in January.
Thank you also to you as parents and carers for your continued support for your child and the school.
Storm Eunice
Unfortunately, due to an increase in travel disruption from across a wide area, other school closures and the severe weather warning, we made the decision to close the school site on Friday 18 February to ensure the safety of students and staff.
Remote learning took place with students using Google Classroom to follow their normal timetable and we look forward to welcoming our community back to school on Monday 28 February.
Whole School Assembly
On Wednesday Ms Wilkinson delivered this week's assembly on acceptance.
The assembly explored a number of topics, including gender, identity and diversity. The aim of the assembly was to promote and celebrate difference, diversity and acceptance, and it finished with a message that at DHSB we have a culture of no outsiders because everyone is part of the school community.
Maths Ambassadors
This week saw the first of the Year 12 support sessions for the Level 2 Certificate in Further Maths.
Ms Cunningham said, “A few of our Ambassadors have given time to lead and support the sessions for Year 11 students. They are tackling topics within the specification that don't have a natural crossover with standard GCSE topics. This week they covered Matrix Fundamentals, led by Lucy Stoneman. The next session will be on Tuesday 1 March at 1:40pm in B08 led by Tom Dobby and will cover Matrix Transformations. Additional students involved are Lottie Nordmann, Orlando Wooding and Rufus Sadler”.
Well done to all involved in this initiative.
Excellent Work
Our examples of Excellent Work this week are from Miss Hunns and her Year 9 Food Class.
She said, “These are excellent examples of making profiteroles. The students were all focused and produced fantastic outcomes”.
The final image is of Caleb Caleshu’s work. Caleb produced uniform profiteroles with a glossy ganache.
Student News
This week our chess teams finished in silver medal place in the U13 and U18 categories in matches played against Torquay Boys Grammar School.
Mr Anderson said our students conducted themselves brilliantly. Well done!
PSHEE Activities
PSHEE lessons today were delivered via Google Classroom following the school site closure.
This is Ms Moreton's summary of the planned activities.
Well we've made it through another half term. Hopefully Spring will be well and truly arriving by the time we reach Easter but meanwhile there are lots of tutorial lessons and several special events to come after the break.
Year 7 students finished the half term with a catch up lesson, so all were doing the different activities they had missed when they had their First Aid online seminar with the Red Cross. After half term they will be starting the Emotional Logic lessons I mentioned a few weeks ago.
The Year 8 lesson was all about buying online including the advantages; disadvantages and some of the perils and pitfalls. They also looked at some consumer guidance sites such as price comparisons and the Martin Lewis site MoneySavingExpert.com
Year 9 students followed up Children's Mental Health Week last week with a choice of activities including The Worry Tree showing ideas for dealing with anxiety and online stress and FOMO around the culture of not wanting to miss out on anything ALL your friends are doing.
Year 10 students also had a mental health focus looking at body image in a digital world or the more prosaic but genuine cause for concern for many; exam stress.
Year 11 students were due to listen to their final talk from Mr Martin on the subject of perseverance, a topic many of us could probably do with understanding/improving in this particular year (this will be rearranged).
After half term we will be celebrating National Careers Week, mainly on 11 March which is also Red Nose Day.
Best wishes to all for a half term week that allows us to reset and prepare for the long build up to exams for most and hopefully for some much better weather!
Ms Moreton
Sports Update
Badminton
Congratulations to our U14 badminton team who finished as runners up in the Plymouth school central venue competition this week.
Football
Mr Manley said its another fantastic win for the Year 10 team - through to the Devon Cup quarter-final following a match on Thursday in Tiverton.
Also, another positive result for the first XI this week when they beat the Plymouth University team 5 - 3.
Basketball
Yesterday the Year 10 team played a friendly match against Plympton Academy.
Mr Anderson said the team took a loss but there was some great play and the students were still smiling at the end.
