Spotlight On South - CHS South Issue 2

WE ARE

CHS South

Welcome to the second issue of ‘Spotlight on South’!

Seemingly moments ago I was writing to introduce our first issue of ‘Spotlight on South’ and yet here we find ourselves at the end of our second full term together! The year seems to be flying by; we are past the mid point of year one and transition arrangements for our new Year 7 cohort well under way! It is therefore timely to reflect on all of the fantastic achievements of the current CHS South community.

Our students continue to embrace all of the amazing opportunities they encounter with our staff both inside and outside of the classroom and I am delighted to be able to share some moments from the past term that capture the spirit of CHS South.

As we progress into the summer term we do so safe in the knowledge that the founding members of our school community have much to be proud of, and much to draw upon to exemplify creativity, happiness and success for our growing community.

Mr D Prophet

Headteacher, CHS South

PRIMARY

Spring is the season when transition to High School is on the mind of every Year 6 student and parent/carer. Extending a warm welcome to all, our Pastoral Leader Mr Mundell visited sixteen of our local Primary Schools. He provided information about our upcoming Year 6 Open Mornings and an Alumni Afternoon Tea event for Primary staff; he also delivered over one

thousand copies of our brand new ‘Spotlight On South’ magazine, filled with exciting news, events and success from our very first term!

On a busy ‘National Offer Day’, our admin team cheerfully received calls

from happy parents/carers to accept offers for their children to join CHS South in September.

Our Alumni Afternoon Tea event on Wednesday 6th March was a chance for Primary staff to visit CHS South and to catch up with some of their former students whilst they toured them around our new school. Our visitors also received a fantastic CHS South welcome when a group of students baked scones and prepared refreshments for them all to enjoy.

Saturday 9th March saw CHS South welcome even more visitors as we opened our doors to welcome the families of Year 6 students who had already accepted offers or who were still thinking about which High School they would like to attend. Once again our brilliant students were thrilled to be involved and excitedly spread the word about our Creative, Happy and Successful school.

Our next Year 6 Open Morning is Saturday 27th April 10:00am - 12:00pm

INTRODUCING OUR SCHOOL COUNCIL

During the Spring Term, our School Council met to set the tone for 2019!

In September, Form Representative elections were held in each Form Group. Pupils who were interested in becoming Form Reps gave a short speech to their Form which was followed by a secret ballot. The two pupils with the highest number of votes in each form were elected as Form Reps. The role of our school Counsellors are to be a voice for the students. School Counsellors are key trusted members of our community that each student can go to if they’d like to put a point forward to staff or would like to make a change. School Counsellors take their responsibilities seriously as role models by setting good examples and representing CHS South at events.

Our school Counsellors have shown visitors around the school premises, and also take the lead on our development projects. One recent project has been to reduce the amount of single use plastic in use in school. The Council met with staff from our catering providers Caterlink, to agree a way the products available in our canteen could support this

vision, including reducing some of the plastic packaging. CHS South have also provided every students with their own reusable water bottle to support the Council’s initiative!

CHS South School Champions

Head Girl

Hannah Abdullah Head Boy

George Parker

‘Being Head Girl has given me lots of new opportunities to represent the school and be creative, happy and successful!’

‘This position is brilliant! I love it! In particular I love being able to acknowledge the successes of other students with our praise postcards!’

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2019

Celebrated annually on March 8, this day has occurred for well over a century; CHS South marked its first IWD in style!

During our after school club #thisgirlcan we have explored themes that impact on girls lives and discussed two main things. One was the large pay gap that still exists between men and women in the UK and the other was derogatory language that uses gender as an insult. ‘What’s wrong with being a girl?’ We asked!

To help challenge the gender pay gap Ms Burke, Assistant Headteacher, organised a careers event for our female students to attend. We invited women from different backgrounds and ages, all with interesting and varied careers. They volunteered their time and took part in a ‘speed-networking’ event, giving our students a chance to speak with sixteen different women about their life experiences and career routes.

Olivia Lee, Contact Theatre, discussed the personal barriers and social pressures she has faced in education and the music industry, providing an uplifting message - to value being yourself and celebrate each others’ differences. Closing the event Leila Herandi, Odd Arts, reminded us all about the significance of IWD and how women can work together to support each other.

you to all the women for attending and inspiring the next generation.

EXTRA-CURRICULAR GIRLS CLUB

#ThisGirlCan

Over the Spring Term we have enjoyed a series of fantastic sessions during our new Extra-Curricular Girls Club.

These after school sessions aim to provide a fun and relaxing environment for making new friends, conversation, sharing ideas, supporting wellbeing and getting involved in new activities.

So far, participants have enjoyed an evening of walking and swimming, a visit to Food Tech to bake muffins whilst listening to music, and a social event filled with laughter, chat and oat face packs!

You can check out all of our Extra-Curricular clubs, by using the website link below: www.chssouth.org.uk/student-life/enrichment-curriculum /extra-curricular

CARDBOARD, DANCE AND GRAFFITI

Our students have been demonstrating and developing their art and dance skills, whist exploring their identities!

ART

This term our students have been constructing artworks with cardboard after being introduced to the artist Ana Serrano, an American artist working primarily with this common material! This will lead to students making their own 3d cacti inspired by the artist based on sketches and 2d plans.

Our students have also been practising their observational drawing skills, looking at scale and proportion and developing their application of colour pencil, to add detail and tone.

DANCE

This term our students have continued to focus on developing their dance skills. Using a range of dance styles from around the world they have explored styles from different cultures, whilst demonstrating their own

choreography skills. Our students have explored traditional and contemporary dance from England, India, and Brazil, such as Katak and Capoeira. In addition, students are also researching various professional dance works and using this information to further develop their performance and choreography skills.

ART CLUB

This term in Art Club our students have enjoyed a fantastic introduction to graffiti art. They have been questioning the legalities of this urban art form and using this discussion as the starting point to begin to think about the importance of understanding their own identity.

Our students have developed their colour mixing and painting skills to be able to create and add detail to brick backgrounds. This has been used to create a backdrop for their own graffiti style to reflect themselves with their own name and tag. Next half term our students will bring both elements together by attaching and adding extra details to personalise their artwork further.

WORLD BOOK DAY 2019

Students took part in various exciting reading and learning activities and CHS South staff dressed up as their favourite literary characters, helping celebrate the love of books and creativity. Throughout the day, our English Department ran a treasure hunt activity, where students had to guess which book character our staff were dressed up as, and then collect a phrase from each of them.

Each collected phrase, when put together, created the famous Dr Seuss saying below:

Students took part in various exciting reading activities for ‘World Book Day’, to encourage reading, imagination and sharing!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

WELLBEING AMBASSADOR TRAINING

We welcomed Manchester Mind (@ManchesterMind) to provide and run Peer Mentoring and Wellbeing Ambassador training workshops.

Our students took part in a series of activities and discussions, helping them to learn about the ways in which wellbeing, increased self-esteem and confidence can be promoted throughout our school community. After the training our new Ambassadors have continued to discuss the various ways they can help support their fellow students, feeling empowered to do so with a better understanding of the power of listening and reflection.

Manchester Mind aims to support better mental health for everyone. They believe that everyone deserves to be supported in their mental health needs and that we all have a part to play in that. We at CHS South are proud to champion their vision.

SCIENCE AT CHS SOUTH

Students get creative with Science and reach for the stars!

Early in the term, students at CHS South were encouraged to express their scientific knowledge in a creative challenge to produce the most original and interesting atomic models! Mr Knipe, Curriculum Leader for Science, was blown away by the effort and amazing standard of the finished models. The students’ work was given pride of place in our CHS South reception as a wonderful showcase of the creativity and motivation shown by our students in response to their challenge.

Amazing planetarium experience!

Our young scientists recently shared a fantastic learning opportunity with fellow Chorlton High School students, ‘flying’ across the Universe in an amazing planetarium! This incredible, science experience provided stunning and immersive views of our solar system and beyond, proving to be a fantastic reward for students with the highest effort levels for home learning.

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL...

This term, our students have explored the writing and themes of the classic ‘Animal Farm’ during English lessons. They have thought about and discussed the ways in which ‘knowledge is power’ and the importance of education in creating an empathetic community.

As part of their studies, each student chose a character to portray and began to draw, design and create a mask using paint, papier-mache and card. Once complete, the students used their masks to act out iconic scenes from the novel, helping to further expand their knowledge and relationships to the questions raised in Orwell’s story.

“Using creativity in the classroom has helped to bring the text to life, allowing each student to explore in their own personal way.”

English students celebrate iconic scenes from ‘Animal Farm’

by Geroge Orwell

Curriculum Leader for English Ms. Iredale

SOUTH SPORTING SUCCESS

Students at CHS South have embraced all their opportunities to take part in our extensive extra-curricular sporting provision.

TABLE TENNIS

Table Tennis has continued to thrive at CHS South, with numbers growing every week at our extra-curricular club. We entered the Manchester Schools Citywide U13 singles tournament and we achieved huge success, with all our players finishing 1st or 2nd in the group stages. There were over thirty entries for this competition and Mustaqeem Hassan finished 5th overall. This was an outstanding achievement, considering all our competitors were playing against Year 8 students!

In addition, South also entered the Manchester Schools Citywide U13 team tournament. Our boys won bronze medals at this competition, beating William Hulme Grammar in the play-offs. As we continue to invest in this inclusive sport we can’t wait to see our students flourish.

FOOTBALL

CHS South A team have had massive success this year in the Greater Manchester Schools’ Cup. The boys beat Burnage Academy, Abraham Moss and Crompton House to progress to the semi- finals of the knockout cup. They faced Audenshaw High this term

and narrowly lost 2-1 in the last minute. We are all very proud of what the team have achieved this year and we know the success will continue into Year 8. Next term the PE team will focus on fixtures for our B and C teams, to ensure all students have the opportunity to play competitive football.

INDIVIDUAL SUCCESS: Owen Reekie

Owen has been a stand out track athlete, winning gold in Manchester Schools Year 7 Cross Country championships; he has now qualified for Greater Manchester Schools Championships at Heaton Park. Owen ran a brilliant race in his club colours (Trafford AC) against eighty five of the best runners across Greater Manchester and finished 15th overall. Well done Owen on a fantastic season!

ATHLETICS

This term our students entered the Manchester Schools Indoor Athletics championships, winning individual medals in a number of events. We were really impressed with their competitive spirit and thirst for winning throughout the competition.

The overall standings for our athletics team were: 800m girls 4th, 800m boys 1st, 200m boys 2nd & 3rd, 60m girls 1st, 60m boys 2nd & 3rd, 4x200m girls 3rd, 4x200m boys 2nd. Athletics will become a focus in PE lessons in the summer term, as students are prepare for our annual Sports Day at Longford Park Athletics Stadium!

CRICKET

This term CHS South competed in the LCCC U13 indoor cricket tournament. All our boys were the youngest at the tournament, however finished third overall, beating MEA Central in the play-offs and losing by three runs to William Hulme Grammar.

Cricket is very popular at CHS South and we have entered the Manchester Schools Cricket Cup this summer. We know our boys will be ready for the professional competitive format of the game!

RUGBY

The partnership with the RFU All Schools Programme has continued to develop at CHS South. The partnership provided the opportunity for our students to visit the prestigious Canterbury Kit workshop at the start of the rugby season. This term, the team received their jerseys and we look

forward to competing in our new colours in the new RFU Manchester Schools League next term.

INDOOR ROWING

The Manchester PE association and School Games organisers run a brilliant annual indoor rowing competition for all abilities. Over 950 students entered the competition across all age groups and CHS South entered over twenty athletes into the races.

Our rowers worked really hard throughout the heats and posted great distances for their age category. CHS South will enter this fantastic competition again, as we continue to put our stamp on the indoor rowing scene.

MARTIAL ARTS CHAMPION!

WFMC GB Team (World Fightsports & Martial-Arts Council)

Akhas Khan has grown up with a passion for watching sports including boxing, wrestling and karate. Involving himself with almost every physical activity available, he joined a mixed martial arts club named ‘Black Belt Academy’, in Didsbury leading to his dream to become a professional athlete.

When Akhas began training at the club, he was not very confident, but his nervousness grew into a determination to overcome any fears by dedicating time and effort into honing his skills further. He began developing a love for mixed martial arts, in particular light and semi – contact kick boxing, and was soon winning his first tournament!

Akhas has now taken part in many competitions around the UK, achieving medals, trophies and certificates. Impressively, Akhas has recently represented Team GB for 2019 and he is also set to participate in the World Championship in October. He now trains three times a week in preparation for tournaments and encourages others to take up sports as an aid to becoming both mentally and physically healthy.

Thanks to the sport he loves, Akhas is now a confident and active student who thrives to push himself to achieve his goal of becoming a World Champion!

Our huge congratulations to Akhas and good luck from Team CHS South for your future competitions! We salute you!

KARATE BLACK BELT!

The Shotokan Karate Academy (SKA) Manchester

Since starting his High School life at CHS South, Mohamed has been described by his teachers as a confident young man who strives for success in all areas of the curriculum. This discipline and work ethic transfers to his passion and enthusiasm for Karate. Mohamed trains and competes for The Shotokan Karate Academy (SKA) Manchester under the Chief Instructor, Sensei Garry Harford (8th Dan).

Mohamed began Karate at the age of six. He received a black belt at the age of nine, presented at a Grading by Sensei Andy Sherry (9th Dan) and Sensei Frank Brennan (8th Dan) in 2017.

As well as his commitment to his academic studies, he trains up to three times a week at his club and has been awarded with a prestigious trophy for great achievements in kata and Committee at the Academy. He has also won bronze medals in the Shotokan Academy competitions and competed in national competitions twice, both at Birmingham and Leicester. He is currently the youngest black belt karate member at his club and thus his opponents are always older than him. Later on this year, he will be graded for his second Dan.

Team CHS South wish Mohamed the very best of luck in his future competitions. Your dedication and commitment to training is inspiring!

South

“THEY FOCUS ON THE HAPPINESS OF STUDENTS”

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SOUTH

#Creative #Happy #Succesful