Aspire Michaelmas 2012

National Teaching Award Success

FIRST EDITION!

Curtis Jobling, Teenage Fantasy Author Visits

All Hallows are Top Performing College again!

e h t from

e m o c l e W A . . . r e h c a e t Head

Welcome to our new college magazine – ‘ASPIRE’ – which takes its name from our mission statement, ‘Aspire not to have more but to be more,’ words from Archbishop Romero. This magazine, together with our new website provides a fresh look onto our wonderfully vibrant Church college and speaks strongly of our strong sense of family and community. We aim to produce ‘ASPIRE’ six times a year – one for each of our terms, so look out for the Michaelmas, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Whitsun and Trinity Term editions!

Ideas for inclusion in the new magazine are welcome from everyone, with suggestions already coming in for future editions such as; a subject, year and house ‘round up’ of news, a ‘Good Read’, ‘spot light on sport’ and pages on student voice from the College Council. I hope you enjoy reading our first edition!

To welcome launch the first edition of ASPIRE – I am inviting all students to submit a saying which uses the letters of ASPIRE to produce a sentence which celebrates something important or special about our college. The challenge is on – and the prize is a free breakfast in the restaurant. Winning entries will be displayed on the website and published in the next magazine. Good luck!

Mr Billings — Headteacher 02

. . . . e u s s I is

h T In

On The Cover….

National Teaching Award Success...04 A Top Performing College Again...07 Children’s Author Curtis Jobling Visits...18

Also this in this issue...

Quality Mark Award for Geography…..08 Congratulations Natasha…..09 Big Dragons Clever Students…..10 Multi-Lingualism Poetry Competition Success…..12 Tom Launches own business at 18…..13 German Exchange and Internship Programme…..15 European Day of Languages…..16 Go Shop – In the Pod – In the Quad…..17 New arrivals of the human and furry kind…..20 Trip to Olympic Park…..22 Busy Bees, Honey Harvest 2012…..24 All Hallows Record Breaking Attempt…..26 Summer School Fun…..28 03

National Teaching Award Success All Hallows staff have been announced as the winner of The Award for Outstanding School Team of the Year in the North for the 2012 Pearson Teaching Awards.

They were shortlisted from a record number of nominations and will join the other winning teams from across England, Wales and Northern Ireland at the prestigious UK Ceremony which will be aired on BBC2 in the autumn.

To date the Pearson Teaching Awards has helped generate 100,000 nominations from pupils past and present parents and a plethora of celebrities supporting the Awards such as Emma Thompson, Al Murray, Gaby Logan, Rupert Penry Jones and Kate Thornton.

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This is what the judges and others had to say about the team…

Six years ago All Hallows Catholic College was in special measures, the current Headteacher, Tony Billings was appointed and there has been a dramatic turnaround in the intervening years, culminating in the school’s last Ofsted report describing it as “outstanding”. It is clear that, today, All Hallows is now recognised as a beacon of success and excellence in education within the local community.

It is a faith school that caters for children from across the whole of the Macclesfield area and therefore pupils come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. The school intake is also varied in that, although a Catholic School, it also caters for the needs of children from different faith backgrounds and children who have no faith links.

The parent who nominated the school for a Pearson Teaching Award said: “All Hallows has a completely unique approach from the moment it welcomes you.

It isn't purely focused on the few students who will academically achieve the highest grades; it truly values each student on their own merits. The Headteacher runs the school with true passion and enthusiasm that echoes throughout the whole school. It’s a place where he has ensured that caring for one another is still a top priority within the children.” [Continued….]

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Judges said of the school, “the success of All Hallows, in its every facet, could not be achieved without there being an incredibly strong team ethic. There is an enormous sense of pride, evident in every conversation, with adults and young people, in what the school has achieved and there is a commitment that the process will continue for the continuing benefit of the children.”

The college held a ‘Pay It Forward Thank You Day’ on 20 June in celebration of the award.

All students and staff focused on saying thank you and random acts of kindness and a surprise student-led celebration at the end in which students gave their teachers celebration balloons and thank you cards.

Margaret Lund, Teaching Award Judge presented the special plaque to the Headteacher and on behalf of the staff; Mr Billings said ‘It is a real honour to receive this award for ‘Outstanding Team of the Year’ in the Golden Jubilee year of All Hallows. The commitment of the staff to the well-being and progress of all our students has made All Hallows an excitingly different learning community where everyone is known and valued.’

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A Top Performing College Again!

We are delighted to announce that once again we are a top performing College with the student classes of 2012 setting new records. Year 11 notched up 70% 5+A*-C including English and Maths, the highest in Macclesfield and an overall 95% 5+A*-C in all their GCSEs. A whopping average point score of 587 was reached, with 72% gaining 5+ higher grades (A*-B). Similarly at A Level we are delighted with a 100% pass rate, 56% at A*-B, and a doubling of A* grades at a time when there has been a reduction of A* grades nationally. Superb results which reflect the hard work and commitment of our students, teachers and supportive families.

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Geography Quality Mark Award 2012 In recognition of excellence in teaching and learning in geography The Geographical Association is delighted to announce that All Hallows is one of 45 school which were awarded the Secondary Geography Quality Mark (SGQM) in September 2012.

All Hallows underwent a rigorous moderation process, and the team of assessors were hugely impressed by the manner in which the college is embracing the new opportunities afforded by the curriculum changes at KS3.

The SGQM, now into its fifth year, reflects the National standard for the teaching of quality Geography. It aims to promote effective subject leadership and management so helping subject leaders raise the standards of Geography in their schools. Head of Geography, Tony Ebbrell stated “It was a difficult process but very rewarding for the school and the students involved deserved a lot of praise.”

David Lambert Chief Executive of the Geographical Association says: In the early years of the twenty-first century, there is no more relevant subject in the curriculum than Geography, helping young people to understand the world and their place in it. The Secondary Geography Quality Mark provides a ‘must have’ form of professional recognition for Geography teams in secondary schools nationally. It is a professional development tool which supports ‘living Geography’ in schools and at the same time helps to prepare the Self Evaluation Form for Ofsted.

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Headteacher, Tony Billings said: 'I am delighted that our Geography Department has received this well-deserved award. Geography is a very vibrant subject here which inspires our students, the teaching is excellent and the subject makes a dynamic contribution to our students learning experiences.'

Congratulations Natasha!

Natasha Jayadev has been selected to be in the England Gymnastics Squad.

She had her first squad training at the beginning of October held at Aldershot.

We are all extremely pleased for her. It is indeed a great reward for all the hours she has put into this sport.

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Mini-enterprises and Young Co-operatives Y7 Enterprise Students and Y8 BITE students have already begun forming mini-enterprises and Young Co-operatives as part of their KS3 curriculum working towards the ASDAN ‘Key Steps’ and ‘Enterprise’ Awards. Y7 mini-enterprise Penguin Pals will be producing cards and friendship bracelets whilst others are planning to produce a range of healthy food products and treats, some are customising sweet production and others combining treats with other product ideas eg 'sweet' jewellery. They are all looking forward to the launch of Go Shop in the new O-Pod. This will provide a retail base from which to sell their products that is accessible to all students at break times.

"Groups of Y10 Business students came under the scrutiny of a very distinguished panel of dragons in a Dragons' Den Activity. The students presented their pitches based on developing a new fruit drink to Andrew Donaldson, partner with BiG Storage, Tony Emerson Jones, Managing Director of Orbit Developments and Clare Hayward, Investor Director of Cirrus. All the students impressed the Dragons with their creative ideas, professional presentations and enthusiasm. Andrew said “BiG Dragons, clever students, great sales pitches, excellent facilities made for a fantastic morning for all of us!” Clare added “we were very impressed with the level of creativity and team work demonstrated by all the teams – some of the teams also demonstrated that they had great business acumen – “I’m out” – was a difficult call.” The winning team called Simple Smoothies (Seb Day, Isobel Skidmore, Rebecca Williams and Orla Haigh) won a prize with 'Grove-creative' who offered to package their fruit drink container professionally using their own

“Big Dr C 10

ragons, Clever Students” logo and design. Ethan Beaumont from another team particularly impressed The Dragons. He said ‘It was a really enjoyable morning. I really appreciated the help The Dragons gave us about how to progress our business ideas as well as pointing out solutions to our problems.

Also, pitching our idea professionally gave us a feeling of what it would be like to go into business. All students who participated also received badges to celebrate The College's Golden Jubilee.’

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Multi-Lingualism Poetry Competition Success Last year All Hallows entered a selection of students into a poetry competition run by Manchester Metropolitan University. The theme was multi-lingualism.

The English Department worked with MFL and we had a fantastic response from the students.

The College is really proud to announce that two poems were selected as winning entries and will feature in a national publication, an anthology 'AllWrite'.

Congratulations to Year 9 students, James Musgrave and Aoife Ronan whose poems were chosen from over 350 entries from over 74 schools!

They have also received invitations to an exciting presentation event later on this term which will congratulate all the winning poets.

Aoife says she can barely remember writing the poem because 'Year 8 seems ages ago!�; but she was clearly surprised and delighted to win the accolade.

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Business Incubation Pod at All Hallows Congratulations to Tom Agar - our first ex-student to occupy our business incubation pod! Tom is running a successful business and undertaking a degree in business studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. The article below appeared in the MEN newspaper.

Tom launches events firm at 18 A teenager who has been organising entertainment events since he was 12 has now gone professional.

Tom Agar, 18, launched MS Events in May and has already organised several high profile events including the Loominus Festival and The Celebrate Christian Conference in Macclesfield.

MS Events, which employs up to 25 casual staff for larger events, provides a full events management package, from sound and lighting technicians to caterers for both indoor and outdoor events.

He said: “With University fees going up, I decided as soon as I finished my A levels to officially launch my business and concentrate on growing it.

“It’s always been a dream to do this full time rather than just at weekends and evenings while I was at school and now I’m getting involved in some interesting up and coming events”.

Tom, who lives in Macclesfield and is based at his old school, All Hallows Catholic College, also in the town, always had an interest in sound and lighting technology. [Continued….]

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He helped to organise a school musical event aged 12 when the music teacher fell ill. “I ended up calling the suppliers to deliver the equipment and got involved in the technical side of it,” he said. “The event went ahead and was successful and after that I found myself helping to organise the majority of the school events. By the time I left school I had organised around 60 events, from school proms to disco nights. The school also has conferencing facilities, so I ended up helping to organise conferences that took place. It gave me a good grounding for what I’m doing now”.

“The conference facilities at the school are excellent, so when I launched the business, I asked the school if I could be based in an office there and in return I organise workshops in sound and lighting for the students”.

Tom is currently at the early stages of organising next year’s Make It Happen festival, a community led event which will take place in Macclesfield town centre.

He has also started a part-time degree in Business Management with The University of Manchester to help him learn new skills. He said; The business is new and I’m still learning and I felt a degree would help me with growing the business and make me better prepared for the future”.

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German Exchange & Internship programme at All Hallows

On Monday 17 September 2012, 12 German students plus Herr Spicko and Frau Neumann braved the British autumn weather for the UK leg of the German exchange (AHCC students visited their partners in Germany at the end of May when the weather was considerably different!)

The students began their time in the UK by accompanying their host partners to their lessons and the German pupils were extremely impressed with the amount of technology that we have in College!

The other activities on their programme included the Victorian School Room experience at the Heritage Centre in Macclesfield, a day in Liverpool with a tour on the amphibious “Yellow Duck” (a highlight of the trip by all accounts!), the Manchester United stadium tour, a day at Alton Towers with their English partners, a day in Chester and a day at Chatsworth House!

This year also saw the pilot of an “internship” programme with two German students experiencing a taste of the various different employment roles within the College.

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European Day of Languages On Wednesday 26 September all students and teachers celebrated the European Day of Languages.

Students showed their creativity and language skills, creating fantastic menus in other languages for the food served in Cafe Bernard for the occasion. We had prayers in different languages, students faced the challenge of a quiz about languages, enjoyed International pop music and were "hunting" words in different languages around the College.

A Level language students had some social time in the dining hall sharing international food and speaking in the languages they are learning. Sixth form students also shared their language skills with one of the local primary schools.

It was a fantastic day, thank you very much!

Gracias! Merci! Gratias ago! Danke! Xie Xie 谢谢 All Hallows Catholic College Sixth Open Evening Thursday 1st November 2012 – 7pm Join one of the country’s top performing Sixth Forms 16

Go Shop In the Pod In the Quad All Hallows has a new building to house The College Shop! Located in an O-Pod in The Quad.

Entrepreneurs, Aidan Quinn and Gemma Roe, first pitched the revision to their eco-hab (the O-Pod) on the TV programme 'The Dragons' Den' in September 2011. The O-Pwill soon become the hub for business and social enterprise activity in The College.

Students across all key stages are being asked to come up with innovative and creative ideas for the design, branding and future development of The Pod. Parents are also invited to contribute ideas, expertise, fittings and fixtures or even to volunteer some time to Go Shop in The Pod. Have a look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ydfgXEz7M.

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“We’ve met a legend” - AHCC Students

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Wereworld creator Curtis Jobling Inspires students Students and staff declared their love for reading on an ‘I Love Reading’ theme day.

The day was marked by a visit from Children’s author, Curtis Jobling, who is described by Jacob Smith in Year 9 as ‘a inspiring legend as a writer and illustrator’.

Curtis is best known for his popular teenage fantasy fiction ‘Wereworld’ and animations such as Bob the Builder, and Frankenstein's Cat. Students in Year 7 and Year 8 learned about his career and were treated to a series of creative writing workshops.

The famous author amazed the students by doing live drawings of his well-known characters.

Thomas Nickson, also in Year 9, said ‘He is a greatly talented man with a brimming personality and his books will remain popular through the generations!' 19

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New Arrivals of the human and furry kind at All Hallows In addition to welcoming over two hundred new students into Year 7, students and staff All Hallows also welcomed some new creatures of the furry kind onto their thriving farm! Two Shetland Ponies (Noah and Bayley) two pigs (who will not be named) and four rare breed sheep have joined a resident Llama (Vinny), other pigs, chickens, and rabbits.

The college boasts one of the most developed school farms in the country.

All Hallows ran a ‘Farm and Forest School’ over the summer holiday with twenty primary school children aged 8-11, who had a fun time learning traditional skills such a den building, alongside learning how to care for different types of animals.

Word is spreading and bookings are already being taken for next summer!

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Trip to the Olympic Park

A group of staff and students had special access to the Olympic trip of a lifetime before the start of the new term Y11 student, Greg Bishop said 'The Olympic Trip was amazing.

The atmosphere around Wembley Stadium and Horse Guards Parade was electric. I especially liked how there was entertainment on between each point at the beach volleyball and that Team GB won in the football.'

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Mr. B Mercer, PE teacher said 'The Olympic Trip really was a once in a lifetime experience.

We were able to see some unbelievable sporting performances in both the football and beach volleyball.

Hopefully it will inspire those students who attended the trip to either take up one of the sports, or challenge themselves to be the best they can be at another sport.’

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Busy Bees, Honey Harvest 2012

The second week of the new college term, signalled the time to prepare the hive for the honey harvest.

Stage one involves removing all of the bees from the 'super' boxes where the honey has been stored by them and this takes about 24 hours.

The second stage took place on the Wednesday of week 2. Year 9 students and bee harvest regulars Maddie O'Connor and Grace Murtagh, where on hand to share their experiences from last year with younger Plan Bee members Shania Slater, Jack Stockton and Sarah Swindells, all from year 8.

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The harvesting involved removing capping wax lids from the honeycomb cells and then using a rotary spinner to force the 'liquid gold' out of the cells using a little brute force! About 2 hours later and after several spills of emerging honey, the process was complete and about 15lbs of honey had been collected.

Later that same week, the filtered honey was jarred, with the Year 8 students in attendance, and we then offered it for raffle, to raise college farm funds. The raffle raised ÂŁ79 in total. Thanks to the students for their time and effort, and staff and college friends for their support with the raffle.

Mr Aspinall 25

All Hallows Record Breaking Attempt 15 October 2012, All Hallows took part on the record breaking attempt for the largest simultaneous hand hygiene lesson which also coincides with Global Hand Washing Day. This will see All Hallows join other students across the country in a challenge designed by e-bug (a part of the Health Protection Agency HPA) and school councils UK. e-bug aim to teach children about bugs and the importance of hand hygiene in a fun and easy to understand way.

Students will take part in the lesson which will show students the best way to wash their hands, and uses a “snot runway” to show how far a sneeze can travel.

To be awarded the world record all the teachers taking part must hold a simultaneous lesson on hand hygiene to explain and demonstrate how bugs are spread and to discuss why it is important to prevent germs spreading.

Dr Cliodna McNulty, Head of the Primary Care Unit where e-Bug was developed said, “Bugs spread rapidly within schools and respiratory and gastrointestinal infections are a major cause of illness leading to students being absent. One of the reasons for this is that school children tend not to be so scrupulous in their hygiene when coughing and sneezing and after the toilet.

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What we have seen is that school hygiene campaigns do make a difference in reducing rates of infection in school children, staff and their families. They are a fun way to remind children about the importance of keeping their hands clean to stop them and their families and friends becoming unwell.

We are really excited that All Hallows has chosen to support us with this hand hygiene challenge. I hope we set the record as that would be really wonderful but the main object of the day is to get these important messages across about how simple measures really make a difference�.

Donna Stratford Science Technician said, “We were really excited about taking part in the world record attempt and we hope that the challenge will help our students to understand how bugs are spread around and what they can do to stop it. Armed with that information it is easy to see how infections are spread by touching things and how had washing really makes a difference.

The e-Bug pack is filled with great teaching devices which communicate in an easy to understand way about how germs are spread. We will definitely be using the resources and the children particularly liked seeing the snot runway in action�.

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Summer School Fun

Our first Fun Summer School programme was a great success and provided experiences for children aged 8-11 in Olympic Sports, Music Making, Farm Learning and Pop up Paper Technology.

Parents of younger children, look out for next year’s programme on our website which will come out later in the year.

“I liked everything this week, especially the treasure hunt.”

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Modern business environment to meet your every requirement.

Two conference rooms – seating up to 90 delegates.

Boardroom – for smaller meetings, business lunches and interviews.

Cybercafé – for delegates to relax in before the conference for tea and coffee.

Wireless internet connections.

Delicious hospitality menu from Innovate.

Friendly staff to meet and greet your delegates.

Free reserved parking for your delegates.

Water and mints provided on the tables.

Friendly staff to guide you through your booking.

The centre is based privately away from the college.

Air conditioning.

Prices depend on half or full day bookings, savings on multiple bookings.

Contact Us: n.simms@allhallows.org.uk or 01625 426 138 ETX 1 30

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All Are Welcome at All Hallows Catholic College Come in and Visit our wonderful Church School

All Hallows Catholic College Brooklands Avenue Macclesfield Cheshire SK11 8LB www.allhallows.org.uk 32