Senior School Newsletter - June 21 2019

SENIOR SCHOOL

 NEWSLETTER Friday 21st June 2019

Congratulations to Sports Day winners Fry House

Banburyshire Book Event

The Hall was buzzing with book banter at the inaugural Banburyshire Book Event!

Students from Sibford, Chenderit and Warriner Schools spent the morning discovering new books through a variety of activities including the Reading Game (speed dating with books), investigating Warriner School’s story sacks, a book quiz, a debate about which book should be the Banburyshire Teen Read of 2019 and advice from an author on how to be a good writer.

Sean Coleman, a local author, kindly gave up his time, whilst trying to meet his next novel deadline, to speak to the students about why he became an author. He gave excellent advice ranging from ways into writing to how to structure a story. Before he left, he launched a writing competition through his publishing house - more details to follow……………

The Banburyshire Teen read 2019 is……… Thirteen Hours by Narinda Dhamai a thriller; the book cover reads…..

Your home was the one place you felt safe.

Now it’s your prison.

You were invisible.

Now your every move is monitored by masked strangers.

You looked after your mum, your best friend.

Now you barely know her.

Everything can change in thirteen hours.

New books were discovered, new friendships were made across the schools, budding writers were inspired and all thoroughly enjoyed the morning. (Frances King, School Librarian and Sally-Anne Ward, Head of English)

Music

Congratulations to the following pupils for their recent music examination successes.

Isobel (Year 9) - Grade 5 Flute, Tilly (Year 8) - Grade 5 Flute, Lily (Year 9) - Grade 3 Flute, Jamie (Year 7) - Grade 5 Trumpet Liliana (Year 13) - Grade 8 Piano Well done! (Fiona Hudson, Head of Music)

Religious Studies

In Religious Studies Year 8 have been finishing this year learning about Sikhi. They had a Sikh visitor in school last week called Manvir Singh, who explained to them what it means to live as a Sikh in Banbury. The children were particularly interested to hear about how Manvir approaches racist comments with calmness and prayerful thoughts, his work in the prison service and how he wears his kirpaan at the airport! In lessons this week Rachel Bee's groups went to the Food and Nutrition room and made Karah Prashad (a mixture of semolina, butter, sugar and water) which is given to all who visit the Gurdwara as a symbol of equality and unity among all people. (ZoĂŤ Simms, Head of RS)

Moth Traps This week Andy Newbold, former teacher of Biology and Director of Studies at Sibford, worked with some Year 7 pupils to set up moth traps overnight. The next morning the pupils surveyed the moths with him to see what they had found. There were over 140 moths caught of 36 different species nestling amongst the empty egg boxes in the trap. The pupils found the Elephant Hawk moth most interesting. It was a relatively still and warm night so the traps were teeming with some common and some unusual specimens some of which were not moths, including a hornet and many maybugs. The pupils enjoyed looking at all of them closely with hand lenses and cameras to appreciate their delicate markings before releasing the moths into the hedges. The pupils really enjoyed the session and it was a good opportunity for some of them to get over their fear of moths! (Deborah Holroyd, Science Department)

Support for Learning - Learner of the Week Beau is this week’s SFL learner of the week. Sue Sabin is delighted with all Beau’s hard work this year. His writing has been careful, thoughtful and creative. Congratulations Beau!

In Key stage 5 PSHE, the Year 12 students have focused on relationship and sex education . Students have explored a variety of areas such as the dynamic nature of a relationship involving questions surrounding trust, the role of sex, arguments and the unforeseen pressure of life’s complexities that place pressure on us all and test our relationships. Other areas of discussion have included consent, sexting, sexual harassment and pornography. These topics set the scene for the arrival of guest speaker Detective Inspector Jim Holmes who focused predominantly on the interpretation and consequences of the law surrounding these topics.

His presentation was extremely powerful as he was able to pitch it perfectly to our Year 12 cohort and it certainly captured their attention. Detective Holmes spoke about how consent can become very confusing especially when other factors are involved namely alcohol. He carefully explained the position of the law and how clearly it is interpreted in a court of law. He emphasised three basic principles: choice, freedom and capacity. This was followed by a few hard hitting real life stories illustrating how certain individuals who made the wrong choices and who were ignorant of the law are now facing life changing consequences.

Overall, I hope that our Year 12 students will reflect on what they heard. I hope that the knowledge gained throughout this RSE (relationship and sex education) topic will allow them to be more informed now and in later life so that they make the right decisions when it matters most. (Darren de Bruyn, Assistant Head of Sixth Form)

Our ‘Adventurers’ from Year 10 and 11 will begin fundraising and raising awareness for their expedition to Ladakh, India and the Snow Leopard Trust on Friday during Senior School Sports Day. A range of treats will be on offer throughout the afternoon and some fun activities are also planned. Please do come and support them 10VR raised over £70with this some week spare by holding a cake sale in aid Head of their charity, The change.

(V. Macaulay, ofchosen Key Stage Three) Alzheimer’s Society. Well done to all those who baked a cake and thank you to everyone that bought one or donated. An excellent effort for a worthy cause. (Verity Redrup, Science Department)

The Year 10 Design Technology class was invited to tour a plastic manufacturing plant in Banbury. Glazpart design products according to customer specification. Then they test the prototypes before manufacturing tools to make thousands of them. Our students got to see this whole process.

In the design studio they showed us the huge range of products they make, as well as designing and 3D printing our Sibford School emblem as a gift.

The students got a full tour of the factory: from the tools being machined out of solid blocks of aluminium and steel to the 280 tonne injection moulding machines producing hundreds of products every hour.

The highlight of my trip was seeing how powerful the machines need to be in order to press together to create the plastic, and how quickly they can produce products. I also enjoyed viewing the designing aspect, as it was interesting to see how long it takes and how detailed they are. (Bobby, Year 10) I enjoyed seeing the 3D printing facilities, and how the initial prototypes are created, we also got to see how the products were first thought of. (Will, Year 10) I was able to activate this really huge machine that is able to carry extremely heavy loads- it

could pick up half of the whole school! It was extremely simple to move around the factory, but there were a huge amount of extra buttons to do different tasks. (Edward, Year 10) I liked that we were able to go inside the factory to get an explanation of how all the machines work. We could see the people design a product and how they improve it to make it prefect for the customer. We got an explanation of how all of these processes work. (Emily J, Year 10) I was very interested in the size and cost of the machines and was blown away with the cost and the size of the machines to make such a small thing. Also, I was interested in the design room and it was cool to see what had to be done before the final product. I found the complexity of designing the products fascinating, (Adam, Year 10) I thought all the robots and machines doing the work was amazing. The speed they made the parts compared to a 3D printer was fantastic. You can create 12 parts in 7 seconds with one machine! All the people were lovely and made us feel very welcome. They made us Sibford School crests out of plastic! I really enjoyed meeting the people and hope that other people get to go themselves. (Toby, Year 10) It was interesting to see how they designed the products and then made 3D prototypes to see how it came out. It was also interesting to know that there are very few workers making sure that the machines are working perfectly. I thought that they would have workers on almost every machine until we got told that most of the machines are programmed to run 24/7 and only really need to be refilled to keep going, which was really impressive! (Charlie, Year 10)

Well done to Katie (Year 11) who won silver medal in the British Age Group Championships in Nottingham last weekend. She competed in the U20s category and was one of the youngest in this age group. The race was changed the day before from a Triathlon to a Duathlon due to the amount of rain, and the River Trent not being safe to swim in.