Priory School

SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT…

PRIORY SCHOOL SOURCE TO SEA – ENVIRONMENTAL WORKSHOP FOR YEAR 7

On 4 November, the Year 7 cohort at Priory School was invited to take part in a hands-on workshop delivered by Creative Harbour and The Environment Agency, in association with Portsmouth Climate Festival. Preventing Plastic Pollution, from source to sea is designed to educate and engage young adults on the subject of plastic pollution, and the issues that make it one of the greatest challenges of our age. Students learnt about how plastic is made, where it ends up, and how to actively reduce future pollution. The workshops harness digital technology and STEM and were interactive and fun, led by specialists from The Environment Agency. Students listened to a talk from specialist scientists on the impacts of plastic pollution in our oceans, and waterways and following this, took part in a discussion regarding the pollution found on our local beaches, waterways and the surrounding nature reserves. Having considered local impacts, students then expanded their thinking towards plastic as a global issue and were coming up with Ideas and solutions as to how we can tackle this.

In small groups the students took part in activities and experiments, such as looking at the difference between how regular and biodegradable wet wipes break down in water, the different properties of various plastic items and their sources, all the while coming up with ideas to reduce the amount of plastic we use. They all took part in ‘Beach Detectives’, ‘Plastics and Sustainability’, and ‘Impacts of Plastic Pollution’ group activities. “From the activities, I realised that I should check things at home to make sure we buy eco-friendly as much as possible,” said student Daniel. Dr Kelly Haynes - STEM Engagement Officer - Preventing Plastic Pollution Project Environment Agency South West said: “Thank you for allowing us to come in to work with your lovely Year 7 cohort, they are a real credit to you. Your young people were so well behaved, interested and really seemed to engage with the topic giving us anecdotes of plastic pollution they have come across and different suggestions to reduce it and reduce their own plastic use, which was brilliant!” The last task involved using the app Slido.com on their iPads to take part in a “Plastic Health check”. Students were asked to go through a questionnaire as a group and identify as many items they had on them either in their bag or their clothes that contained plastic. It was certainly an eye opener for most of them and they were shocked that so many of their everyday items contained plastic! “During the tasks we identified plastic that appears on our coastline. There was a shocking amount of it and we shouldn’t accept this!” commented student Libby. As a round-up to the workshop students were introduced to the app jetsam.tech working with University of Portsmouth www. port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/new-app-to-tacklesources-of-plastic-pollution-in-portsmouth Students were also encouraged to form an environmental pledge to reduce their plastic usage.

SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT…

BACK TO BUSINESS - GAME-CHANGING EXPERIENCES FOR PRIORY STUDENTS

We all know how much the students have missed out on so many things over the past 18 months. The limitations on trips, visits and events have made it especially hard to facilitate the wide range of opportunities our students would normally engage with. The Autumn term, however, has seen an exciting resurgence of not only regular extracurricular activities, but also those highly impactful unique experiences that we all try to secure for our students. Over the last half-term, Priory students took part in talks, workshops, competitions and visits from a range of highprofile individuals and inspirational speakers. Through the School’s affiliate programme, which creates interactions between students and local businesses and organisations to find out about careers and opportunities after school, students met representatives from The Kings Theatre, the Army and The Holy Spirit Church of Southsea. Students were also very lucky to have Jasmine Whitbread, Chair of Travis Perkins speak. Jasmine has had an illustrious career taking up roles of Chief Executive of London First, non-executive director of BT Group and of Standard Chartered Bank and CEO of Save the Children. Jasmine spoke to Priory Year 10 students about her experience bringing together all 30 members of the federation to create Save the Children International, aligning 25,000 staff in 120 countries behind a single mission, strategy and campaigning voice, growing the global budget to more than $2bn. The focus of her talk was her career path and the choices she had made to get where she is now. Jasmine’s open and frank insights paved the way for a wave of questions from the students. She said she was extremely impressed by the mature and thought-provoking questions; to the point where she remarked she had never even asked one of the questions herself! In October, Priory welcomed Medical Mavericks, a Careers, STEM & Sports Science Enrichment Experience for schools for an inspirational set of workshops for the students studying Health and Social Care. Medical Mavericks inspire the next generation of medics and scientists by taking real medical equipment into schools. Their mission is to inspire and raise aspirations, and to show students the opportunities available in a broad range of medical and health professions. It was extremely interesting to hear about technology used within healthcare and some of the unique jobs available in the sector. This includes some of the lesser-known careers such as biomedical science, healthcare science, medical engineering, medical physics, physiology, bioinformatics and many more. It was exciting for students to have a go at collecting first hand data regarding health and wellbeing by learning to use a variety of medical equipment for procedures such as keyhole surgery, drawing blood, conducting retina scans, ultrasounds and ECGs using genuine medical equipment and simulators. In November, following on from an application made earlier in the year, Priory became one of only four school chosen across the UK to take part in a project created by the contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster Grayson Perry – this year’s recipient of the Erasmus Prize on the theme of ‘The power of the image in the digital era’. The project’s objective is for students to explore the work of Grayson Perry, as well as their own unique identities, in a programme designed by the artist, the British Arts Council and Erasmus Group. Priory School is incredibly fortunate and was selected in the summer to be one of the eight schools internationally to engage with this project, and we have selected a group of Year 10 Art students to complete this special task. The students were introduced to the project through a unique personal video sent from Grayson Perry himself, and have also taken part in a lecture by an artist historian. Students have explored and responded to the artist’s work, and have been connected to a school based in the Netherlands with which to collaborate. The artist Grayson Perry will receive the student’s outcomes, and will consider them for recognition. More on this in the near future! It has been an exciting term for many of Priory’s students who have taken part in these unique and memorable projects.