LEAD LEARNER UPDATE

Next term, we plan to run a leadership training day for any C10 learners who would like to see what our roles involve, in the hope they will make an application to be lead learners for 2023! to find out what hobbies and talents they have. We want to encourage learners to join current clubs in school and give staff new ideas for clubs which many would be interested in. If this is successful we hope to expand this into other years groups as well.

We are also developing an initiative for primary school learners. This includes visits to primary schools with some of our prefects to give year 5/6 learners an insight into learning at Honywood. We plan to execute these in the spring term closer to when they apply to our school to become our new cohort 7s.

In the new year we will be sending out a form to our Cohort 7 learners to learn all about them. The form will contain questions about their interests are in school and outside of school, We really enjoy having this responsibility in the school and hope to leave a mark in the school for when we leave Honywood next year!

After giving cohort 7 some time to settle in, we sent out a Google form to all learners asking about what new things they would like to see around the school. It was very successful, we had almost 200 responses, which gave us a good idea of what we want to do next. Some of the changes suggested have already been made, such as a second queue in the lunch hall for people just buying snacks which has been very effective in reducing queuing times. We have also been meeting every week as the development team to work towards more changes. early in the new year. We are also working on putting benches around the edge of the school field, but we plan to do this a little later in the year.

Something that came up a lot was making the gym better, so we have started working on getting some new gym equipment. We have already worked out what is needed (and wanted) in the gym and are now working on raising the funds and investigating external grants so we can start our plans. This should all be completed Development team: Lead Learner - Theo Wilson Senior Prefect - Anish Mistry Prefects - Niamh Cunnane, Eddie Lockwood, Finley Petts, Jasmine Rigby, Olivia Wilson

Everybody is different. Everybody is impacted differently. Everybody improves differently. It’s a difficult concept and it is one we certainly struggled with at first. However, together we decided to work with what has already been set in place here at Honywood: the peer mentoring programme. Firstly, we had a meeting with those peer mentors who were supporting a Cohort 9 mentee about exam stress. We explored the signs of exam stress, how to deal with the impacts of exam stress and tips to give your mentee when it comes to exams/ revising. More recently - with the help of Mr Saunders - we delivered a guide called the, ‘Mental Health Champions Kickstarter’ to the Cohort 10 mentors about the stages of mental health and how it can fluctuate. We also discussed how they can pass this information onto their mentees and also other learners around school. Finally, as we head into our last few months as the Lead Learners we would like to focus on the wellbeing of our teachers and how we can improve that.

As the Lead Learner and senior Prefect for Culture, our goal is to improve the school’s culture in terms of how we interact, engage, support and work with each other as students, how we further improve relationships and respect between students and staff, and how we embed Honywood’s culture within the wider community.

From this, in the first term we have looked at ways to refine Honywood’s culture such as: reestablishing Learning Group Captains across all years, as well as strengthening the house system throughout the school. Additionally, we have been looking at making reading a part of our culture. To do this we have held poetry competitions and (along with the development team) assisted in rebuilding the library - scanning, cataloguing and ordering around 2500 books! looking to host a coffee morning for Coggeshall’s elderly population, embedding our culture within the wider community. We are also looking into new clubs and opportunities for learners in the new year. Furthermore, the culture team has really enjoyed this term and hope to make even more progress in the new year.