Newsletter 4

Appleton Academy Spring newsletter 4

Featuring: o Library update o Safer Internet Day o DofE tree planting o World Book Day challenge o iMedia event and trip

Together with our community, we can achieve extraordinary things.

Welcome Welcome to our fourth newsletter, highlighting the fabulous work taking place in secondary. Appleton has been its usual busy self with a wide array of trips, visits and activities taking place and students have been taking full advantage of our wider curriculum offer. In each newsletter we will share a flavour of what is happening in the academy, including insights into the fabulous work taking place in classrooms.

In this issue, we have a library update, an article on our Safer Internet day, where we looked at how students could keep safe from online harms, and much more.

If you have things you would like to see feature in the newsletter, please let us know.

Mrs Garlick Head of Secondary

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Library Update

By Mrs Parr. Creative Writing in the Library Our writer in residence, Nik Perring has worked with Year 10 students during this half term. The focus has been on ideas to help students with the creative writing element of the English Language paper.

After school creative writing club has continued on Thursdays and below is a piece written by Emily Green in Year 8.

Sketchbook Club with our artist in residence continues to be popular. This term students have looked at illustrating text:

Night and Day, Life and Death Emily Green

He was the sun; she was the moon. They were opposites. When one was asleep, the other was awake. When one cried, the other laughed. When one died, the other lived.

She wore robes, long and black with murals of the midnight sun. He wore armour, bulky and heavy with an amulet of a midday moon. She used magic, was an outcast and shunned whilst he used a sword and was welcomed as a hero. In every way they were opposites.

They saw each other at the end of every life, every dream, every possible timeline; if only for a second each time. The only thing that linked them was this.

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The 2024 edition of Safer Internet Day took place on Tuesday, 6th February 2024. This special celebration, which takes place in February of each year, aims to raise awareness of a safer and better internet for all, and especially for children and young people.

Thousands of schools and colleges in over 190 countries took part this year and at Appleton, as well as running assemblies and tutor time activities, we constructed a huge Instagram icon in the canteen from 350+ post-its with messages of positivity from students in all year groups, called ‘The Wall of Positivity’!

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What do you do during the John Muir award?

What we did during the John Muir Award was go around our school and help the surrounding area. We did this by planting some trees so that they could be grown and flourish for the future generations to enjoy.

But before all that we had to decide where we wanted to plant, we also had to prepare the ground to be able to plant the roots of the trees. We decided on a mixture of Rowan, Holly, Oak, Elder, Crab Apple and other species.

Then we had to create the holes ready for the planting, this involved taking a dinner plate size of grass off the ground which is called screefing. Even doing such a simple task like this was exciting for all the participants. This was because of the fact that we knew we were helping the area look prettier and more colourful.

After that we all grabbed a couple of tree roots each and worked together as a team to plant over 700 trees that day, which was a great achievement for us all!

Jayden Darvill, Year 9 Bronze

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Art at Appleton Each newsletter we feature amazing artwork created by our students. In this issue it’s the turn of our Year 9 students, who have been doing a project around underwater worlds.

This Term, Year 9 have been creating artwork for their theme ‘Underwater World’. Students have looked at different types of natural form plants and animals which live underwater and have created drawings and sculptures in clay to represent the different forms and textures. Here are a selection of different clay sculptures from different classes.

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English

By Mrs Barnes.

March 7th is World Book Day 2024!

There will be lots of activities and competitions to take part in on the day. The first competition is the extreme reading challenge: How to enter: • Take a picture of yourself reading in a different, or unusual location.

• Email your picture to sam.barnes@appletonacademy.co.uk • Make sure the subject of your email is 'extreme reading challenge’ • There will be prizes for the best staff and student entries

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Some of the game demos on show:

On January 10th Mr Firth’s Y5 class were tasked with testing out the 2D arcade games created by Y11 iMedia students for their coursework.

The primary class put the games to the test and gave the Y11 students valuable feedback for their testing and improvement section.

Some of the Y11s were shocked at how quickly the Y5s mastered their games and had to make them far trickier! As well as this a great time was had all round.

Mr Halston

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Y10 iMedia York Visit

By Mr Halston. In preparation for their Roman, medieval or Victorian- themed graphic design coursework, Y10 iMedia students visited York for the day on Wednesday 24th January. After snapping various location shots around the city centre, there was stil time to visit the National Railway Museum and to get to see some of the most famous trains from around the world.

Can you tell a Roman arch from a gothic one? Students split into teams to track down features they could use to create a game loading screen set in one of three famous periods.

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Student and parent support In each newsletter we will have a focus on a service or services that can support our students and/or their parents. These services may be something we offer through the school or something that an external provider can deliver. If you have any questions about these services, please contact the school.

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Looking to the future: Alumnae appeal At Appleton Academy we highly value our connections with former students. We like to celebrate their achievements and experiences with students, staff and the local community.

We would love to hear from former students and hope to be able to work with them, in the capacity of volunteer, mentor and/or inspirational speakers. If you are a former student and would like to be contacted about the possibility of working with us, please complete the form on the link below or alternatively contact info@appletonacademy.co.uk and state alumnae in the subject. https://forms.office.com/e/uxFvJNr54E

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