- Feb 2, 2018

2 February 2018

It’s been another busy week here at DHSB.

Among the events and activities on offer was the Maths and English information evening for Year 9 and Year 10 families, led by Mr Adams, Mr Guy, Mrs Downes and Mr Briars.

The presentation covered curriculum and assessment reform and highlighted the main features of the new GCSE specifications and exams.

If you didn’t manage to attend the evening or wish to read through the information again then the presentation is available at this link and also in the Year 9 and Year 10 document folders on our website.

Mr Guy talks about the new GCSE Maths specification

DHSB Challenge

A couple of weeks ago Mr Martin and Ms Moreton completed the judging of the Year 7 Transition Challenge and presented the awards and certificates in a special assembly.

The photo below shows four of the class winners, Daniel Percy 7E, Zion d’Silva-Williams 7P, Milo Bedford 7S and Kody Doyle 7W. Ewan Dix 7N also received an award but is not pictured.

Milo was also awarded the overall best project prize.

7C were absent from the presentations (due to first aid training) and received their awards this week from their House Captains in a student-led house assembly.

Mr Huq said, “Noah, Arthur and Bede were first, second and third in the transition tasks for Campbell and received their awards from House Captains Tahmid and Sam”.

If you would like to see examples of the challenges completed by our new Year 7 students then please follow this link.

House Captains

Campbell was not the only house to have a student-led assembly this week as House Captains led all our assemblies on the theme of lifestyle choices.

Harry Bryan, School Captain, said, “Students from every year group benefited from the talks. They heard about the dangers of bad lifestyle choices and were also encouraged to be aware of the impact bad choices can make. The House Captains were confident and spoke well and had spent a lot of time rehearsing and preparing the presentation. I could see that their confidence whilst speaking to large audiences has definitely grown since the last time they spoke to their houses”.

Excellent Work

Our examples of excellent work this week come from the Year 10 Spanish mock exam and were completed under exam conditions.

Ms Gilbey said, “Samarth’s task was a letter to his Spanish friend talking about a recent holiday, including what he did in Spain, the differences between life in Spain and the UK, where he will spend his holidays this year and why holidays are important. His work was excellent, as it was extremely accurate, included a range of tenses and vocabulary, with lots of opinions and reasons”.

She added, “Josh’s task was to write an article about holidays, including a disastrous holiday and how he felt about it and what his ideal holiday would be. This was a challenging task, and Josh coped well with this. His work was fairly accurate; he included a wide variety of structures and tenses, and gave a range of opinions and comparisons”.

UK Youth Parliament

Students are currently voting for their new member of the UK Youth Parliament. This short video features all of the local candidates including DHSB student Sam Cade.

Ms Moreton said, “This process is an important aspect of promoting Democracy and British Values”.

Youth Parliament Plymouth 2018 Candidates from Fotonow CIC on Vimeo.

Alumni News

Congratulations to David King who received a highly commended award at the Plymouth Herald Sports Awards.

Dave was shortlisted in the Bill Richards Amateur Sports Personality of the Year category.

And finally

Why not join our PTFA on their popular shopping trip to Bath on Saturday 28 April. Contact Michaela Armstrong at the school for more details and to book seats.

Sports Update

Ultimate National Championships

Congratulations to all who competed at the Ultimate National Championships last weekend and thank you to Mr McConnell for this summary of the competition.

30 players, 31 matches, 17 wins, 2 draws, one medal

30 players went up to the Ultimate Frisbee Indoor National Championships in Wolverhampton on 27 and 28 January. The U14A team dominated early on with a couple of 15 – 0 victories but unfortunately lost an extremely tight semi-final by one point. They did however win their final match 5 – 4 to secure third place.

U14A

The surprise package of the tournament was the U14C team which consisted of all Year 7 students playing their first competitive matches. They started well with a draw against the number two seeds in their first match but a few losses against more experienced teams put them in the bottom half of the draw for the second day. However they won all their matches on Sunday to secure ninth place and win the Plate for being top of the bottom half.

U14C

The U14C team even managed to finish above our more experienced U14B team who finished in a very commendable eleventh place.

U14B

Our U17 team which consisted of students from Years 9 and 10 were always going to find it tough when playing against some Year 11 teams with bigger, more physical players. However they performed admirably, worked hard as a team and secured some important victories to finish in eleventh place (out of 23 teams). This was a good result and in the top half.

U17A

Cricket

It was a tricky day for the U15 indoor cricket team at the Devon Finals earlier this week and Mr Bunney said this was sometimes through our own silly mistakes as well as good opposition.

The team finished fifth out of eight teams and had two wins (Tavistock and St Peters) and two defeats (Paignton and Bideford).