ARETE July 2024

Welcome to our latest issue of Areté.

Our students have worked incredibly hard this academic year and that is reflected in the quality of the work produced. We pride ourselves on cultivating the idea that we all strive for excellence. Our broad curriculum and extra-curricular programme ensures that our students have numerous opportunities to showcase their passions.

Practice and failure form the backbone of excellence.

Respect for the process and developing resilience are therefore essential strands when it comes to character development.

Areté is all about celebrating excellence of any kind. We applaud the positive habits the students in this issue have demonstrated which has resulted in excellent work.

Mrs Betts Stephanie Eldred produced a excellent piece of artwork inspired by confectionary wrapper designs. She used colour and shading really well.

Excellence of any kind

Art

Some excellent research focused on skin tone. Students in art learn the importance of pre-production and exploring theory as part of the road the excellence.

Excellence of any kind

English Alana Prosser produced an demonstrated excellence in English.

During the Spring term year 9 students studied the play Small Island.

They learnt about the Windrush generation, their expectations, and the discrimation they faced when they moved to English.

This piece of extended writing wonderfully demonstrates excellent knowledge of the text and a growing sophistication in analysis.

Excellence of any kind

The wide margin is a modelling exercise whereby the students watch as I write a model paragraph. Rather than just copying down the model, students write a checklist in their wide margin which details any elements that make my model paragraph successful. Students then use this checklist of elements when they write their own answer to the same question.

Excellence of any kind

Science Lenses- Ray Diagram

By Meja Motiejunaite, Year 10 Student Meja in Year 10 mastered the ray diagram for converging lens, she illustrating the path of light from an object through a lens placed at various locations. The detail provided in the diagram shows the high level of knowldege in this topic of Physics.

Well done for excellent work Meja.

Excellence of any kind

Georgia Strimbu - Chemistry Georgia has shown clear excellence with knowledge and understanding of how to balance equations using reacting masses.

The details provided in her work shows Georgia’s high level of knowledge in this area of Chemistry.

Well done for excellent work Georgia.

Mrs Handa Science Team Leader

Excellence of any kind

Dolly Morgan - artwork completed in independent time.

Excellent detail and shading.

Dolly doesn’t study art but she has a passion for it so uses her spare time to produce various drawings from comic book characters to metaphical pieces.

Excellence of any kind

Some excellent examples of work from Design and Technology.

The wooden box was crafted

by Nicola Cripps. Nicola was meticulous when cutting and sanding which ensured the end product was of a high quality.

Milly Dale showed off her excellent technical skill when producing the light display with the carnation design.

Lacie Vincent had lots of fun making a model of a cat looking over a fence. Lacie created the model that the cat is attached to. The mechanism that moves the cat was put together by Lacie and it worked beautifully.

Excellence of any kind

Music Our Year 9 Music students have spent this half term working on Dance Music.

Zeba shows an excellent understanding of this - inputting chords, bass, drums and melody in her music.

Along with this, she has demonstrated a clear understanding of how to provide an effective structure in her music, with different parts building up to a ‘drop’. Later on in the piece, she develops some of her musical ideas by using different rhythms to provide further variation and interest in her work.

She has also started to experiment with using different effects in her work.

Well done Zeba!

Excellence of any kind

Our Year 10 students have been exploring different styles of music as part of their BTEC portfolios.

Bailey has completed some excellent work this term - making a remix, composition and video soundtrack.

His attention to detail in his work is excellent, and his written accounts give us a great understanding of his artistic intentions. As his music work is being evaluated across different styles and disciplines, Bailey has worked hard to apply himself to different methods of music-making.

Here are some short excerpts from his composition logs which show a methodical and diligent approach to his learning in the music classroom.

Excellence of any kind

Business and Enterprise

This is an example of excellent work by Mandy Ng (Year 10)- It is part of her Business and Enterprise coursework. Mandy was tasked with designing and icecream and then carrying out a self assessment on her designs.

Excellence of any kind

History Claudia Rodu During the spring term Claudia was working on understanding the structures of theatres during the Elizabethan times. This knowledge helps year 10 understand how Elizabethan society spent their leisure time. Theatres also help our students understand differences of class during the 1500s. For example, nobles would sit in the ‘galleries’ with seats and a view of the stage. Peasants would stand in the ‘pit’, in the open air for only a penny. Claduia’s work shows the high standards of excellence we expect to see in our humanities department.

Excellence of any kind

Spanish Paloma Pell, a year 10 student, produced some really outstanding work in Spanish. Paloma demonstrated fluency and accuracy and was rewarded with a grade 8. In these pictures we can see an amazing example of an extended writing from an assessment for a year 10 student. Paloma is working extremely hard to get incredible grades for her GCSE working on the success criteria shown in the picture. She could have minimum mistakes but we learn and correct them to get awesome results like her exemplary grade 8.

Miss Valverde

Excellence of any kind

Childcare Summer Clarke achieved a Level 2 Distinction for some excllent work in Childcare. Not only did she demonstrate really good subject knowledge, but she also showed a clear understanding of the success criteria for this component.

In my task I have been asked to talk about Tommy, a 9 month old baby. I will be talking about Tommy’s expected milestones, his growth and intellectual development and why it’s important to measure it, but also who has the roles and responsibilities to measure it.

Development is the process of developing.

Milestones are a significant stage in development.

Intellectual development is the growth of a child’s ability to think and reason.

The first milestone Tommy should be achieving at his age of 9 months would be looking in a mirror and recognizing himself. Recognition is identifying someone or something familiar. This is important for Tommy to achieve because he has to understand he is his own person. This will then start his development of how he fits into the world and that he also has his own name. It’s important for Tommy to know his name so that when people use his name he knows it’s him who’s being addressed.

The second milestone Tommy should be completing is looking for a dropped toy. This is important for Tommy to achieve this because it improves his memory. Memory is a part of the brain where information is encoded, stored and retrieved. Babies have good memory which is helpful for them to learn and remember all new information they encounter. A way that Tommy looking for a dropped toy would show he is reaching his development milestone would be object permanence. Object permanence is remembering you had an object even though it may not be visible to you. Tommy looking for his dropped toy would show his object permanence because he remembered he had the toy and is now looking to find the toy.

The third milestone Tommy should be achieving is enjoying peekaboo.

This is an important milestone as it helps reinforce object permanence.

Peekaboo helps Tommy with his object permanence because he will learn you’re still there even though he cannot see you. Another way peekaboo will help Tommys development is by improving his coordination. This is because while playing peekaboo with another person he will coordinate by laughing or smiling. This is Tommy showing he has positive feelings towards the game. Finally, I am going to mention how the game peekaboo helps Tommys social development. This is because by interacting with other people during the game it develops Tommy’s language, social and emotional skills.

Excellence of any kind

Colchester Academy Hawthorn Avenue Colchester Essex CO4 3JL

@colchesteracad

Tel: 01206 861217 Email: general@colchesteracademy.org.uk Web: www.colchesteracademy.org.uk Artwork by Saule Striaupyte

Resilience . Excellence . Respect