We are delighted to hear the news of the lifting of the recent Covid-19 restrictions
I would like to sincerely thank all of our students and families for their resilience, determination and high levels of commitment to remote learning.
We are really looking forward to welcoming everyone back to school in the foreseeable future.
Around the World Update
Monday 22 Feb was day 40 of our around the world challenge and our current total is 19.611 miles.
We feel that it would be a shame however not to complete the task and therefore we shall continue our journey home and extend the deadline date until Sunday 7 March. This should give us sufficient time to travel the remaining 5,200 miles.
Please continue to get out and exercise and continue to log your distance in the link below.
Today we have reached the Republic of Panama which is a transcontinental country in Central America and South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west and Colombia to the southeast. The Caribbean Sea is to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. We have reached its capital city, Panama City which has a population of 4 million.
Well done everyone!
The PE Department
Student News
Very well done to Rick de Wilde 10S who completed the bronze level online course for Careers in STEM during half term as was suggested by Ms Moreton in the tutorial Google classroom.
Rick has been awarded with the Bonze certificate and in offering her congratulations, Ms Moreton said, “Extra-curricular achievements are often what can make a UCAS or job application stand out, as well as helping to develop work related employability skills”.
I’ve enjoyed hearing from students about what they’ve been doing during this lockdown. Archie Wisdom 9E has been painting warhammer 40k figures.
If you have any achievements or hobbies to tell us about then please complete this Google Form.
Excellent Work
Dr Stears has shared these excellent presentations from her Year 9 Class Civ classes.
She said, “These students went above and beyond doing lots of quality research and creating great slides”.
The first was given on one of the Labours of Herakles by Henry Howell and Reuben Hellings 9S.
The second piece of Excellent Work is by is Reuben Barnes and Alexander Stevens 9N and is on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
Excellent Work
Mr Jenkins says he set a piece of work recently to his Year 11 Business group regarding motivation and was genuinely blown away with their engagement and efforts in completing a review of a Harvard Review article.
The task set was to Read the Harvard Business Review on Motivation and complete two paragraphs covering the following:
a) why do employees lose motivation?
b) how could you as a manager better motivate your team of employees/subordinates?
This example of Excellent Work is by James Morley 11C.
Why Do People Lose Motivation?
Many employees lose motivation somewhere in their job career but also as a general everyday people do not want to do something which can set in the feeling of boredom which is the start of losing motivation. In the work environment in most cases the manager or leader of your field of work will most likely try to keep you motivated throughout your phase of low motivation as from a business perspective having low motivation would lead to low productivity which may affect: sales, how the business is run, and the inspiration and creativity that comes with the motivation or enjoyment to do a job. If someone is motivated they will want to do the job and this would increase how well/ quickly they get the job done. This is why it is important for managers/ leaders to keep motivation high to get the best out of their employees.
PSEEE Activities
Welcome back everyone after a well earned half term break which I hope was restful write Ms Moreton. The tutorial lessons released to google classrooms this morning are as follows for the different year groups. As usual, please discuss with your sons if at all possible.
Year 7 students were considering work related learning, initially deciding what is meant by this term and going on to allocate ideas under the headings learning about work; from work and for work. You may well be surprised about some of the work-related skills you can develop with seemingly unrelated tasks.
In connection with this, but not just for Year 7, I am asking as many parents as possible to talk to their child about their previous jobs - please see details below.
Year 8 students were learning about adversity and resilience by watching a series of videos by the popular "Action Jackson" who normally tours around UK schools delivering talks and workshops on a wide variety of subjects. Try your hand at some bounce-back-ability!
The Year 9 lesson would normally have been in the form of a debate on fighting prejudice and the pros and cons of immigration, an always contentious subject particularly in light of Brexit. Instead they were asked to consider all parts of the argument, and to practice writing in support of both sides of the debate, especially the one which they don't personally agree with. A useful skill to develop especially for any would-be barristers...
Year 10 students thought about the broad subject of resolving conflict (again potentially useful at the moment!). They identified different forms of conflict and were asked to consider that there are often three sides to a story – my view; your view; and the truth!
Year 11 students were given the option of a supportive session on apprenticeship application and knowledge with our careers adviser, Jenny Wall from CSW group, or some timely tips and tricks for improving time management, with thanks to Mr Gomez.
Ms Moreton
National Careers Week
Next week is National Careers Week and it would be great to get every family talking about jobs and skills. Using this template if it would be helpful, please talk to your child about all the jobs you have had, including unpaid voluntary work, and say which skills you think you developed during the course of the work. Grandparents or older siblings can be encouraged to join in too.
I'd love to hear about any particularly unusual jobs or skills - we did this last year as a staff exercise to encourage discussion and the range was amazing!
Please contact me at sue.moreton@dhsb.org
Ms Moreton
eSafety Advice
This week sees South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) joining forces with Internet Matters to launch a campaign that addresses the impact of remote learning throughout the lockdown period.
If you head over to instagram you will see that they have a series of posts that look at the coping strategies of young people aged between 13 - 18 years old and how they have managed their various stresses throughout remote learning. Internet Matters have also run a survey to parents throughout the UK to look at the positive and negative impact of remote learning and what effect it has had on their children and have published a series of videos to help parents in their support. - Instagram Campaign
Internet Matters have also explored how live lessons actually feel from a student's perspective; asking questions around how confident they feel in class with a video on. Interestingly a majority of parents agreed that live lessons were good as their child could stay ‘visibly connected’ to the class, but also noted that they found it difficult to speak up in class and were actually more anxious in these situations. For some videos around this, please see the following link to support you in how you can help manage their anxiety around this -
Ms Buckler