Neston High School

Neston High School | SPRING 2018

...with you

• SCHOOLS DOT.ART 2017 • TRIP TO ANFIELD • SPELLING BEE • LIBRARY COUNCIL • BANK OF ENGLAND • CYBER GAMES • CHESTER ZOO • REVERSE ADVENT • ROBOTICS CLUB

………Headlines I am delighted to say that our students achieved brilliant results in the summer 2017 season and these are matched with our brand new state-of-the-art facilities.

Students, parents and teachers should rightly be proud of these results – the Government have raised the bar in terms of standards and our students have risen to this challenge.

We are proud of the achievements of all our young people and thank teachers for their dedication and commitment and parents for their support.

Neston High School’s new school building was ready to receive students back to school on Friday 8th September. Staff and students marked the opening of their brilliant new facilities with a ribbon cutting ceremony performed by the two youngest students and witnessed by the Mayor of Neston, Councillor Pat Kynasto.

Mr S Dool Headteacher

My congratulations go to all our fantastic students and staff for making the transition seamless and for their outstanding results during this time.

………Music and Art

Final Musical Performance for BTEC Music Students Year 13 provided their final musical performance as part of their BTEC course in a night of live music on the 20th April. They were supported by musicians in Year 8, 11 and 12. Year 13 also had the opportunity to work with colleagues from Christleton High School in a music technology workshop, focused on mixing tracks.

Schools Dot.Art 2017 This year the winner of the Schools Dot.Art competition was Susie Stockton in year 9.

She was selected for a place in the top three Neston High entries, by an expert panel of judges. The school community; staff, students, family and friends, all voted that her piece ‘Lepidoptera’ should be awarded first place.

Susie submitted a mixed media piece. She used ink to stain and prepare background papers. She made an accurate butterfly image using pencil, paint and fineliner. Her outcome was informed by the work of Turkish artist Ergin Inan.

Susie is continuing with her Art studies by taking Fine Art at GCSE level.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg1

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………Humanities

Geography GCSE Rural Fieldwork This year, Year 10 Geography students embarked on a two day fieldtrip to the Lake District. The purpose of this educational visit was to develop fieldwork techniques required to answer paper 2 in their GCSE exam. The aim of this fieldwork was to complete a rivers investigation looking at changes to the river channel from source to mouth and to investigate the rural challenges in the Lake District National Park.

During day one, the students focussed on the changes in channel characteristics from source to mouth across three sites at Easedale Beck. They used a variety of equipment to measure changes in channel depth, velocity and sediment size at three sites along the river. Students recorded this information and analysed this data during the evening sessions at the YHA centre in Hawkshead. During the afternoon the students conducted environmental quality surveys, bi polar analysis and questionnaires in Grasmere. The purpose of this was to examine whether there are pressures from tourists on the local towns and villages in the Lake District, and whether these were creating rural challenges and conflict.

One the second day, the students focussed primarily on human geography and collecting fieldwork data for rural pressures and challenges in Bowness as a comparison. Students were taken on a boat tour where they experienced the natural beauty of the national park. Students then attended a workshop at the National Park Headquaters in Bockhole lead by Ruth Suddaby (National Park Learning Coordinator). This focussed on the impact of tourism, water sports and second home ownership on the national park. The workshop also gave students key figures to use as evidence for the challenges posed by these pressures for their exam. Finally the students were taken on a Tree Trek adventure at the Brockhole centre. This was a 10m high climbing wall up in the canopy of the trees with a variety of challenges for students to encounter. The students then completed their Tree Trek challenge by flying down a 250meter zip wire, whilst taking in the spectacular views of the fells and Lake Windermere before heading back to Neston High School.

Geography Trip to Anfield The focus of the next half term’s work in geography is the influence of Sport in rebranding an area and focussing on fieldwork skills, a fundamental requirement for our geographers as is Neston High School’s commitment to learning outside the classroom.

On Wednesday 25th October through to Friday 27th October 2017 all our year 8 cohort, 305 students to Liverpool Football Club and the surrounding area.

The day comprised of two parts, a fieldwork tour of the area which saw the students carry out a teacher led tour of the area surrounding LFC in Anfield looking at the redevelopment of the stadium, carrying out skills such as litter surveys, traffic surveys and environmental impact analysis, so that students were able to build up a profile of the positive and negative aspects of the stadium redevelopment and improve their geographical skills. They also got to see the improvements first hand to the stadium, with the new shop, fan zone and Avenue 96. The second part of the trip was a self- guided trip around the Anfield Stadium. The students got to tour round the main stand, visited the players dressing room, visit the press room, sit in the dug out in the main stand and visit the legendary Kop. This part of the trip also included a trip to the LFC museum where pupils were able to learn about the clubs history and past successes, as well as linking in work covered in History this term.

Back in school, the hard work will commence next term with the students devising their own enquiry questions to investigate the impact of the stadium regeneration on the club and surrounding area. Many thanks go to all the staff who have enabled this trip to happen.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg2

………English

Book Club with Ruta Sepetys Back in May our Book Club had the incredible opportunity to Skype with American Author Ruta Sepetys. As official Carnegie Medal shadowers, Book Club have been busy reading all of the shortlisted titles which include Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys.

We agreed to connect with the author at 3pm which was 9am for her in America. Students sat in the library with questions they had carefully discussed and written the week before. Mark our IT technician came to start our connection. At 3pm exactly excitement built and we were introduced to award winning author Ruta Sepetys.

Firstly, the author gave us a background to her life including a degree in finance, working with the music department for a games company that worked on the Halo games and her transition to life as an author. Then, our students each had the opportunity to ask their own question. Miss Pearson said, ‘this was an incredible experience to be part of. Our students asked insightful and interesting questions but we were still not prepared for such detailed, inspiring and unexpected answers.’

Ruta discussed her inspirations for Salt to the Sea after visiting five counties and speaking to survivors of the Wilhelm Gustloff disaster. The author shared that her own Grandfather had been a refugee and after hearing these survivors say that no one would care about their story she was heartbroken. Students also found out about the inspiration behind the title, the authors advice for aspiring writers (never stop reading) and some details about what she is currently working on.

Connor said, ‘meeting Ruta Sepetys was an honour, she answered my question with great enthusiasm. It was incredible’ Nyssa said, ‘the talk was amazing! She was so helpful on answering our questions and was inspirational.

Also, she answered our questions in so much detail. I loved asking a real author about writing a published book!’

Spelling Bee The calibre of spelling talent at Neston High School must be extraordinary if this the 2017 spelling bee is anything to go by. With students performing to such a high standard that harder words had to be added to the final round the audience and judges were very impressed.

Spelling bee competitions within lessons happened across the school two weeks before the final. Then the top three spellers from the classroom heats lined up outside the library to represent their classes in the final.

The first round challenged students to unscramble science anagrams. In the second round the teams were asked to the front for subject word spellings. Our teams were incredible. The teams then entered the more intense double points round. For the first time students had to spell alone at the front. Miss Pearson, school librarian, revealed the groups that were through and the groups that would need to go head to head for the last space in the final. After a valiant effort by all teams the top three groups emerged and the students moved forward to the group finals.

Now the group final could begin. The top class spellers emerged and now had to compete against each other for the title and trophy. Jack Stokes, Grace Prytherch and Daisy Marsh moved to the front to begin the final.

After an intense and incredible performance by all spellers, Daisy after a valiant effort was placed as 3rd. Daisy received her trophy and certificate before Max and Grace went head to head for 1st place. Here our top two really demonstrated their incredible spelling talents. Nine rounds had passed and both students were spelling perfectly, Miss Pearson had to add extra words from the National Spelling Bee books to try and challenge the students and finally a winner emerged. In round ten after a glorious run Grace was named as 2nd and Jack with a perfect run became the Neston High School Spelling Bee Champion of 2017. Jack and Grace both received their certificates and trophies to awe and applause from their competitors. Jack told us ‘I’m delighted to have won but my competitors were all great’.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg3

Librar y Council awarded Head’s Merit In World Book Week our incredible library council were each awarded a Head’s Certificate of Merit Award. The members came to attention for their impressive fundraising efforts for our new school library. So far the team have organised raffles, bingo nights, cake sales, sponsored swims, chores for family and friends, guess the sweets in the jar, book sales, the silver river scheme and sponsored litter picks. After all of this incredible work they have managed to exceed their target of £100 and have now hit a total of £700. But they are not stopping there.

The Library council met with Deputy Head Teacher, Mrs Hudson and memb ers of Neston High School governors to discuss their plans. Jack, Cameron, Luke, Katie, Amy, Madison, Libby and Niamh all talked about their plans to keep on fundra ising and to ensure that the new library will be a brilliant space and resource for studen ts. We would like to say a huge congratulations to our members for their efforts (including Ben and Nyssa who were unable to attend) and thank you for ensuring the library is the best that it can be before they have even stepped foot through the doors.

Library Council Visit Education Library Service Students in the library council have been very dedicated to ensuring their new library is an exciting reading community. Students had a tour of the Education Library service, usual open only to librarians, and were able to select from the vast titles. Our students were brilliant representatives for Neston High School and demonstrated their commitment to improving their library.

Miss Pearson said ‘it is vital that our library has a strong student voice to ensure it has a strong student appeal. The Library Council are a brilliant team who are helping to bring success to our library and school reading community.’

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg4

Education Library Service Book Awards Launch

Book club attended the Education Library Service Book Award s Launch night on Tuesday 7th November and met author Robin Steve ns.

Lots of schools gathered at the Winsford Education Library Servic e to celebrate the start of this years School Book Awards. Guest speaker and winner of Waterstone’s Childr en’s Book Prize for Younger Readers, Robin Stevens gave a talk before the big reveal. Robin spoke about her backg round and development as a reader. We heard her talk about how you cannot read the ‘wrong kind of books’. Robin also shared with us her journey to becoming a mystery writer and how lots of her books are drawn from settin gs of her past. Our students had the chance to ask questions about writing and to have books signed.

After lots of insights into the world of writing it was finally the shortlist annoucement. The Education Library Service Shortlist for 2018 is:

• Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson • A Story Like the Wind by Gill Lewis • A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard • The Explorer by Katherine Rundell • Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth by Frank Cottrell Boyce Student comments: • The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens ‘the best time ever’ • We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan ‘It was the best experience of my life!’

• Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls ‘She was inspiring’ ‘We learnt a lot about the sto • Cell 7 by Kelly Drewery ry behind the storyline of her books’ ‘Meeting Robin Stevens and • Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optomist by John Young. finding

Lucy McCann wins

the Library Summer Challenge Lucy McCann was awarded a Head’s Merit certificate and Linghams book vouchers on Friday 20th October for her superb entry to the Library Summer Challenge.

New students were asked to write about a book they read over the summer in any form they liked.

Lucy wrote a wonderful poem about Cookie by Jacqueline Wilson.

out which books made it into the 2018 book awards was amazi ng.

’

Reading Millionaires A huge congratulations is in order for our Reading Millionaires. Dan, Josh, Katie and Emma all met with Mr Smith, Miss Kirwan, Mr Pearson, Miss Pearson and Mrs Hudson to discuss their incredible achievements. These students have all been quizzing on Accelerated Reader since September based on books they have been reading. Accelerated Reader counts a student’s ‘words read’ total and Dan and Emma are now bronze millionaires with over a million points, Josh is now a silver millionaire with over two million words and Katie is now a gold millionaire with over three million words. Congratulations to all reading millionaires and keep reading!

Well done Lucy!

Back in March Mr Dool, Mr Pearson, Miss Kirwan, Mr Smith and Miss Pearson all met with our latest members of the Reading Millionaires. These students have all read 1 million words on Accelerated Reader. At the end of this term Madeline Barnes, Pippa Clegg, Megan Hayes and Lily Wakeling have achieved Bronze award at 1 million words. Isaac Harrison and Maude Schofield have achieved Silver award at 2 million words and Jessica Gardner has achieved Gold award at 3 million words. Our students discussed with staff some of their favourite authors and titles that have helped them on their way to this incredible award.

We would like to say a huge congratulations to all students receiving certificates and badges today.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg5

uting

p ………Business & Com

Games Britannia Sheffield Hallam

A level Business visit to bank of England, London

This month saw our fourth year running a learning outside the classroom trip to the Games Britannia event at Sheffield Hallam University. The school trip was for our year 10 GCSE Computer Science students of which 14 students attended. the students took part part in two workshops during the day. Programming a Playstation 4 rocket game using Sony's only education development centre in the world. Students were shown the importance of mathematics in computer game development. Where they had to calculate angles of the rocket using trigonometry or calculate the proximity of objects using Pythagoras. The second workshop involved motion capture animation, and students were given exposure to how Gollum character in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings/Hobbit was created. Students got into a motion capture suit covered in sensors which were then pickup up by 30+ camera's around the stage area. The animation software then turned our Neston students into cgi graphics such as The Hulk, DeadPool etc. Students behaved extremely well on the trip and were asking questions of the Sheffield Hallam University staff on what they would need to have to get onto such courses.

Cyber Games Cyber Games

On the 28th March Mrs Anson, Mrs Pritchard and Mr Wentworth accompanied Year 12 and 13 Business A Level students on a visit to London. The purpose of the visit was to hear a talk at the Bank of England on how they keep the economy on an even keel using a variety of strategies such as altering interest rates.

The group then visited Wimbledon Tennis club to learn about their operations management and marketing strategies. The group heard about Wimbledon manage to organise such a large scale event and manage to turn a profit despite only actively operating for two weeks a year. We learnt about the significant role that sponsorship plays in the event. This was the department's second residential visit to London this year. Student feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

On Wednesday 17th May, 8 Year 9 students took part in the North West CyberGames at Edge Hill University.Accompanied by Miss Birkett, the team competed against schools from across the North West, some of which were teams of GCSE students or Sixth Form students.

Some of the activities the team competed in included identifying false email communications, finding passwords within a web page, examining evidence to solve a cybercrime, identifying breaches of the Computer Misuse Act, setting up server and client side security rules and cracking a variety of data representation codes (e.g. Binary, Hexadecimal and ASCII).

The students performed brilliantly under timed and competitive conditions in every challenge presented to them. The activities were led by a variety of cybercrime organisations or higher education establishments. The skills the students got to experience were representative of real world scenarios and a range of career specialities. These will set them off to a great start with their GCSE Computer Science course in September where they will be studying topics such as Data Representation, Programming and Logic Gates, and problem solving skills will be required on a regular basis.

Some quotes from the students “I really enjoyed the activities.

They were all to do with using clues to solve problems, every time we got one we were made up!

Like winning a game over and over.”

“My favourite activity was “I’d like to get into finding the passwords, this sort of stuff I never knew there were when I’m older, like so many ways to hide cyber security or passwords or secret messages maybe cybercrime.” inside a webpage.”

Unfortunately we did not walk away as CyberGame champions, but everyone involved had an enjoyable and fascinating day out.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH

| SPRING 2018 | pg6

Human Resources Business GSCE visit to

On Monday 19th June Miss Anson, Mr Reilly, Andrea Steeples and Lauren Edwards accompanied two GSCE Business studies groups to Chester Zoo for an educational visit. The purpose of the trip was to develop student understanding of Human Resources. Whilst at the zoo the students met and spoke with staff to ask about the skills required to fulfil the position.

They learnt about the application process and how training is provided to staff. The students have just completed the Human Resources unit of the GCSE course and the visit allowed them to see how HR functions in the real world.

Togetherbeen

A sixth form team have the final successful in reaching organised n of a business competitio s by the financial service sed in Cheadle. company ‘Together’ ba thetically decide They have had to hypo ent how to use an investm gain the opportunity, in order to largest return.

on The final takes place r Monday 4th Decembe sh wi and we them well.

Make it Manufacturing Competition

On May 18th Mrs Pritchard accompanied a small group of year nine students to Liverpool Football Club to take part in an Enterprise Day. This fantastic event was hosted by Survitec, who are market leaders in the manufacture of safety and rescue equipment. Part of the motivation behind the day was to increase student awareness of the career opportunities in manufacturing industries and give them practical experience of what they need to work in businesses of this type. The students developed their skills in problem-solving, working in teams, presentations and public speaking.

All the students thoroughly enjoyed the day and set a very high standard in the competitive element of the event.

STARLIGHTS at DRAGONS DEN FINAL Last Monday was the final of the Manchester Airport Dragons’ Den competition, held at The Holiday Inn in Manchester. Our team was represented by Josh Leadbitter, Matthew Garside, Jess Humphries, Mollie Jones and Abi Berrington of the year 11 BTEC Business course.

The team entered the Den once more to be grilled by the fierce dragons. True to form, they took it very much in their stride and responded very well to some extremely tough questions.

Without even the slightest sign of nerves, our students packed a real punch. The dragons complimented the team for their superb product, business acumen, wit and ability to think on their feet. Starlights, received high praise for their recycled bottle light product which the Dragons remembered being very impressed with way back in October when our team made their pitch for investment. Credit was also given for the obvious commitment given to the enterprise by all team members.

The team raised the total amount of £655 profit, which has been donated to Hope House Hospice. Although Starlights worked so hard to generate this amount for charity, unfortunately it was not enough to win the competition. The winning team managed to raise the phenomenal amount of £6000 by selling Manchester Bee Xmas Tree decorations. However, Mrs Pritchard is extremely proud of the team and would like to thank everyone who purchased a Starlight or drank wine in order to supply us with empty glass bottles.

Manchester Airport generously provided a lovely lunch for all schools taking part in the final event, We would like to thank them and their business partners for organising and hosting the competition.

Starlights would also like to extend their gratitude to Hannah Penny of Hope House Hospice and our business mentor Jonathan Jackson of Manchester Airport Enterprise Car Hire.

Our Starlights team (left to right) of Abi Berrington, Jess Humphries, Josh Leadbitter, Mollie Adams and Matthew Garside Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg7

re

l Ca ………Health & Socia

Health and Social Care students discuss paths in nursing with two ex-pupils On Monday 19th June staff invited two ex-pupils Sarah Bladon and Nicci Hunter to discuss their chosen career paths in nursing to help our Year 13 Health and Social Care students with their portfolio on Practitioner Roles. They gave an in depth account of their job roles which inspired the students to seek out more information and helped to secure work placements.

………Humanities

History at Neston High School

Year 7 History at Neston High School began in a flamboyant fashion this year, all stemming from when students were asked to articulate their ideas on a simple question; “What is History?” Many ideas were expressed, and although all were correct and relevant one idea in particular stole the show. An individual Year 7 student suggested, quite rightly so that “History is the study of the accolades and mistakes of man.” This eloquent turn of phrase would go on to epitomise the whole first term at Neston.

Over the course of the first term in History at Neston High School, students in Year 7 have been learning about the Norman Conquest and the different contenders to the throne in 1066. As a reward for revising for and completing their Year 7 History Baseline, students were given the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of one interpretation of events (the Bayeux Tapestry) through the medium of drama – freeze frames to be precise. Students were very excited at the prospect of completing this task, especially given that they were permitted to bring in replica medieval weapons to bring their scenes to life!

One student unfortunately missed the ‘replica’ part of the brief and brought in an actual military flail that turned out to be a family heirloom. The students took great enjoyment in showing each other their scenes and using the variety of replica (plastic) swords, shields, axes and armour to recreate their respective freeze frames from the battle.

Some of the most convincing students were those on horseback (chairs turned around the wrong way) and those who had fallen on the field of “battle”. In the end this culminated in a full class Mannequin Challenge style freeze frame set to the song Black Beatles. This was very popular is 2015/16 and there has certainly been a revival in the History department at Neston High School this year too. Examples of the recorded scenes can be found on the Humanities local area.

As well as this, students had already been looking into the historical skill of interpretation. Even though this is a high level, challenging concept, students were able to grapple with the ideas of what an interpretation is, and how interpretations are skewed and biased. This roused the question from many students – is the Bayeux Tapestry a fair interpretation for the Anglo Saxons? As a class we decided it was not, and so set about the task of creating our own Anglicised Bayeux Tapestry that included the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and the Anglo Saxons’ heroic last stand at the bottom of Senlac Hill. There was an excellent turn out for this piece of Homework and the scenery of the Bayeux Tapestry flowed extremely well.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg8

Reverse advent

During the month of November, 6th Form students took part in a ‘reverse advent’ where by each student donated a food item to be collected and taken to the local food bank. Recent statistics from the Trussell Trust show that there has been a 30% increase with the use of food banks. Students were encouraged to think about the food items that we take for granted, and to give something back (however small) to the local community.

Shoebox Appeal For the 10th Year in a row Neston High School has participated in a shoe box appeal, seeking to play a part in efforts to provide Christmas gifts to children around the world facing a difficulties due to poverty, hardship and/or conflict. This year, as with last, we chose to work with the Wirral Rotary Association, liaising with their key coordinators Manojit Lodh and Shaun Fanning. Facing a tight deadline of two weeks to get our shoeboxes ready for dispatch, it was through the sterling efforts of Neston High School tutors that our appeal passed off successfully again this year. Students were shown a presentation and encouraged to bring in gift items for children of their own age. This led to some students creating their own boxes, while others collaborated to produce tutor group boxes.

The response from individual students and tutor groups was excellent, with students also managing to provide £2 per box for transportation costs. Some Year 11 groups, who were busy focussing on sitting their Pre Public Exams at the time, concentrated their efforts on providing extra money to go towards transportation costs; a great response in the circumstances.

All of the above meant that on Thursday 23rd November, Neston High School sent 114 boxes off with our friends from the Rotary Association, with these boxes destined for families facing difficulties in Ukraine. This is particularly appropriate as it was a video of last year’s efforts in Ukraine that tutors used to show the impact of the excellent work done by the Rotary Association with this appeal. Manojit and Shaun from the Rotary Association accompanied the van on collection day and said they were really impressed and pleased with the efforts of our students. In return, we have set the target of providing 200 boxes for next year’s appeal. To help achieve this target, next year’s appeal with commence two weeks earlier than this year’s, allowing four weeks for boxes to be completed and brought in for collection.

All in all then, this has been a great effort and another successful shoebox appeal, thanks to the hard work of Neston’s tutor teams and the generosity of the Neston High School community, both staff and students. Well done and a really big thank you to all who helped with this very worthy appeal.

Neston High School was pleased to host friends from the Gideons Association Once again, Neston High School was pleased to host our friends from the Gideons association as they delivered their annual Gideons Bible Assembly to the current crop of Year 7 students, on 6th October 2017. This was the first of such assemblies to be held in our new school, with Bushell Hall proving to be a fitting environment for this important occasion, as Stewart Hall had in earlier times. Our guest speaker, Alan McGraa, gave a presentation that outlined the work done by the Gideons Association, the story of its foundation and the possible benefits of having access to a text such as the New Testament in difficult times, such as those faced by soldiers on the front line and public servants working in roles such as the police and first service. The students were again invited to consider how the key ethos of the New Testament can be seen reflected in the values held as important by Neston High School and more widely in the United Kingdom in general. They were also reminded of how this ethos accords closely to wider ideas surrounding human rights and attitudes of tolerance and harmony, valued around the world by those of different faiths and no faith. The students behaved impeccably, as is usual with this event, and responded with some interesting answers to questions asked. Each student was issued with a new Gideons New Testament, some actually being given the camouflage edition received by our armed forces. These were a popular addition to the presentation and were given to students involved in local organisations like the Scouts, guides and Air Cadets, as well as to students with family in the armed forces. We hope to continue this new development in future assemblies. The presentation was, as always, received in a respectful manner, with Year Seven suitably respectful in focus and response. We look forward to seeing our friends from the Gideons again next year and continuing our long standing association with this organisation. We also look forward to hearing from Alan in RE lessons, when he returns from his missionary work in Uganda. Our GCSE students consider the work of missionaries and the meaning and reasons behind these efforts, so to hear from an actual missionary will be a real boon to their studies.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg9

What a harvest!

What a harvest! Our first Harvest Festival in the new school building did nothing to dampen the generosity of students and staff alike when donating foods and toiletries to this year’s collection. The Harvest celebration was held on Friday 10th November, and this was just as big a success as the donations we received this year.

As is our tradition, the Year 7 students sang the school harvest song with great gusto, led as always by Head of Music Mr Griffith.

Our entrance hall had tables lined up and overflowing with food, so much that a good amount had to be moved into storage in order to keep space available! Needless to say, a smashing effort was made by all involved! The food will be distributed to our regular recipients, Forum Housing and the Chester & Ellesmere Port Food Bank, who will use the food to provide emergency rations for vulnerable young people, adults and families in our area. In a time where food poverty is a very real issue in the UK, it remains an honour for the Neston High School community to support these two very worthy charities, who expressed deep gratitude for all the effort made by the cohort.

So a huge thank you to all the students and families who donated to this very important cause, and well done to Year 7 for your enthusiastic participation in the celebration. This generosity and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated and makes a real difference.

………Clubs

Business and Computing September saw the launch of the first Neston High Code Club. Code Club is a UK wide organisation promoting programming with children in and out of school time. Our first term saw students programming various activities in Python. The image below shows some of our code club students celebrating after completing the Python unit.

At the end of November some students entered the Code Club Christmas competition creating an interactive Christmas Card using HTML and CSS. We will hear if any of our students are winners next month.

In the next term Code Club will move on to programming activities in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

European Astro Pi Competition – Round One Mr Wentworth is hosting a lunchtime club for the Astro Pi competition.

A group of our year eight and nine students have successfully passed the first round of the European Astro Pi Challenge - Mission Space Lab! The winning entries will have their code run on a Raspberry Pi on the International Space Station for three hours each. The device will use sensors to measure the internal conditions on the ISS and will return data to our students. This is a scientific experiment and the data received back at Neston from the ISS would enable our students to analyse the data which could include images of the country as the ISS passes overhead.

Our group of students are now working on their project to submit their code for Phase 2 by 7th February 2018.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg10

Friends of Lees Lane Ponds visit Eco action team

On Wednesday 25th October Robert Perry secretary of Friends of Lees Lane Ponds visited school to give a talk on a wonderful local resource – Lees Lane Ponds to the Eco Action team.

A new community group has been formed to help manage the area surrounding the ponds and the links to the Wirral Way. The group are keen to study the existing wildlife to better manage habitats for pond life, fauna and butterflies. They aim to share this knowledge through school and group visits, public events and facilitated learning.

The ponds are at least 150 years old and were created after marl was hand dug for farmers to fertilise adjacent sandy soils and as such they offer interesting examples of semi natural woodland and aquatic habitats.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg11

The group have hosted primary school visits (pond-dipping) and also made on-site visits to local schools ( apple pressing ).They have recently begun to build seating suitable for use as an outdoor classroom. A new pond stage overlooks the main Lees Lane Pond and is ideal for pond-dipping and nature watch. So far they have led 8 pond-dipping events with schools and the public.

There will be regular sessions at half-terms and in the summer holidays.

This is a new group so there are exciting opportunities for schools and the general public to get involved to tailor visits to their own needs. To get in touch contact Robert Perry on 0151 336 5863 or by emailing: leeslaneponds@gmail.com

Robotics Club Years 7, 8 and year 12 students have been regularly attending the new Robotics eXL club after school on Thursdays with Mr Wentworth. In this club students have been investigating and experimenting with embedded software programming techniques to control servo motors. Servo motors are the key physical output devices involved in robotics they provide the actuators for movement of the robot. Students have been learning how to control robotic movement of a robot arm. Controlling individual fingers, thumb and wrist movement. Students have then built on their designs to create gestures for the robot hand, e.g. making a wave movement of the fingers, the peace sign, OK sign or countdowns 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. In addition to the robot arm year 7 & 8 students have been looking a controlling movement of eyes in a robot head. Whilst our year 12 A-level students through the Java programming language have been interacting with the webcam built into the robots eye. Students have used the BBC microbit devices to write a python program that will take any plain text and convert this to robotic speech that can be played back through a speaker, the speak will be built into the robots mouth.

If you would like to follow our progress please take a look at our twitter page http://twitter.com/NestonRobotics

Head Boy and Head Girl/ Oxbridge Students Meet with key teachers On Friday 9th June, nine year 12 students presented their ideas to the sixth form in a hustings for the position of head boy and girl. Students were interviewed for the position on Friday 16th June, our Head Boy for 2017 is Owen Dowling and head Girl Charlie Pennington.

All potential early applicants for Oxbridge, Vet, dentistry and Medicine met with Miss Griffiths, Mr Burton and Mrs Lacey and 9 potential Oxbridge candidates who are looking at studying Law, Languages, Computer Sciences and History.

The students will be split among the staff so they can have closer contact and discussions around their personal statements which will be complete before the summer.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg12

………Sixth Form

Sixth Form Lessons From Auschwitz Project

This year Daniel Roscoe and Katie Johnson were selected as student ambassadors to participate in The Lessons From Auschwitz Project run by The Holocaust Education Trust. During the half term, the students were fortunate enough to meet a Holocaust survivor and visit Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. They are currently busy preparing for their Next Steps Project and will lead the whole school act of commemoration on 27th January 2018.

Sixth Form Geography A Level Tectonic Conference

Y12 / 13 visited Manchester University to take part in the Tectonics A level revision conference. Numerous guest speakers came to give lectures on different earthquake and volcanic hazard events. This included Professor Ian Stewart who is based at Plymouth University and responsible for natural history documentaries for the BBC.

Mental Health First Aid Training for sixth form students Through collaboration with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Neston High School Sixth Form students had the opportunity to apply for and undergo training in Mental health First aid. Eight students together with Mrs Lacey and Mr Burton engaged in two days of training and were certificated as Mental Health first aiders. Students have now been allocated to a slot with student services where they will offer support to lower school students and sixth formers. Four of the Mental Health First Aid students presented at the parent’s well-being information evening on November 23rd.

The Mental Health First Aiders delivered a presentation to parents on our well-being evening. They spoke about the effects of some mental health conditions and then what they have been trained to manage within the school setting. It was very well received by parents and other members off staff that attended the evening and I believe feedback was excellent.

Pastoral Learning Mentor for sixth form, Mrs Crilley has worked with students to help them to set up a rota system, they each do one shift in student services per 2 weeks. They work collaboratively with the Pastoral Learning Mentor on duty. If the PLM feels it is appropriate for them to offer support to a lower school student this will be offered. The students have supported a number of lower school pupils in this drop in service and have passed on any concerns to the appropriate members of staff. It has been beneficial to us as some of the children have found it easier to open up to other young people. It has also helped with the sixth formers confidence, given them experience of the working environment and allowed them to gain many valuable skills.

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg13

Kate Adele

Paisley

Erin

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Will

Sally

Morgan

Jacob

WEEK 1 Monday – Period 2 WEEK 1 Thursday – Period 2 WEEK 2 Monday – Period 3 WEEK 2 Thursday – Period 5 AT STUDENT SERVICES

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Head of House or Pastoral Mentor

Neston High School | IN TOUCH | SPRING 2018 | pg14

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