Parents/Carers Update

School closure: 19 September 2022

A reminder that Monday 19 September has been declared a bank holiday for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral.

Highfields School will be closed on this day to students and staff.

This will mark the last day of the period of national mourning. Students are expected to return to school as usual on Tuesday 20 September.

Show My Homework (SMHW)

We are aware that students are experiencing technical difficulties logging into SMHW. We have been in touch with Satchel One who manage the learning platform and they are performing various checks to ensure the system is fully operational as soon as possible.

We have been informed that a number of schools using Satchel One are experiencing the same problem. We will update you as soon as this is resolved.

Life Skills Award launch

The Life Skills Award is organised and run by the Youth Sport Trust. It is a one year qualification that all students in years 7 to 11 will take part in.

If students are successful, it will give them another award to add to their CV and talk about in interviews. It should also ensure they make more progress in lessons and have a more successful and enjoyable experience at school.

In order to pass the qualification, students must successfully complete four different sections of the award (see overleaf).

Life Skills Award:

Section 1 – Physical

Physical skills are all about being able to move efficiently, effectively and imaginatively in different activities leading to an active life.

During this part of the award, students will need to show how they can work with others to keep active during PE lessons and as part of the wider school community.

This means you will be expected to regularly attend a wider curriculum club as well as participating fully in PE lessons. The club does not need to be a sport based club and you can change throughout the year if you wish. No clubs will cost money to attend.

Section 2 – Social

Social skills are about understanding the behaviour of individuals and others. This will help you interact, connect and work collaboratively with other people in school and life.

Through the Life Skills Award you will be able to build social skills, including: Gratitude, Empathy, Respect and Communication.

We will cover these values in assemblies and form times. Students will then complete different activities during form time throughout the year to allow them to demonstrate these values.

You will get more information on each value at the start of each term. This term we will look at gratitude.

Section 3 – Emotional

Through the Life Skills Award students will be able to demonstrate and build their emotional skills. These will include: Resilience, Self-discipline, Responsibility and Self-motivation. These are key skills and important to future employers as well as at school.

Skill

Criteria

Resilience Attendance of 96% or more in 4 out of 6 terms. Self-discipline Reward points – consequence points = positive number and attendance at a club Responsibility Setting meaningful targets after each review and acting upon them. Completing social tasks maturely. Taking on extra roles. Self-motivation ATL score of 2.5 or better by the end of the year.

Section 4 – Cognitive

Again, we will look at four values (concentration, curiosity, resourcefulness and problem solving). This time we will use reward points to monitor students’ progress.

Students must collect 30 reward points for each value: • Participation • Questioning (curiosity) • Homework and independent study (resourcefulness) • Approaching challenge in lesson (problem solving)

Students and staff will monitor progress throughout the year.

After each profile students will spend time in registration reviewing their attendance, rewards, consequences, ATL, participation in wider curriculum clubs and PE.

This will hopefully give them the best chance of being successful and achieving the Life Skills Award at the end of the year.

It should also make students’ time at Highfields more enjoyable and rewarding.