The City Times Spring 1 2015

TheCityTimes FEB

13

To be returned to your tutor on Monday 2 March.

GCSE Options Form Your details Please complete in full Student’s name:

Spring 1 issue February 2015

French

Tutor group: Parent/Carer signature:

or

To be returned to your tutor on Monday 2 March.

or

History

Main options choices Please indicate 1st, 2nd and 3rd preferences for both options columns by writing a 1, 2 and 3 next to your subject choices.

Option 1

Parent/Carer signature:

Languages and Humanities Geography

Option 2

Please tick

A reminder that all year 9 students must return their GCSE Options Forms to their tutor on Option 1 Monday 2 March.Option 2 French

Year 7/8 Parent Day Monday 23 February

FEB

Consultation Week Tuesday 24 - Friday 27 February (no Additional Studies this week)

Tutor group:

Parent/Carer’s name:

Please tick

Spanish

Student’s name:

FEB

23

Your details Please complete in full

Parent/Carer’s name:

Languages and Humanities

Year 9 GCSE Options Forms

GCSE Options Form

or

Spanish

Geography

or

History

Main options choices Please indicate 1st, 2nd and 3rd preferences for both options columns by writing a 1, 2 and 3 next to your subject choices.

Art

Art

Art

Art

Dance

Drama

Dance

Drama

PE (First Award in Sport) BTEC

PE

PE (First Award in Sport) BTEC

PE

Music

Music

Music

Music

Religious Studies and Sociology

Religious Studies and Sociology

Religious Studies and Sociology

Religious Studies and Sociology

Food Technology

Economics

Food Technology

Economics

Graphic Products

ICT

Graphic Products

ICT

Resistant Materials

Business Studies BTEC / ECDL

Resistant Materials

Business Studies BTEC / ECDL

24

See page 4 for a list of events for the half term ahead or visit: www.thecityacademy.org/events.

Top of the league: City Academy ranked Drawn in by books top co-ed in UK for pupil progress with Quentin Blake Textiles

Computing

Computing

French (Accelerated)

French (Accelerated)

Spanish (Accelerated)

Spanish (Accelerated)

The all-important measure, ‘Pupil Progress’ - which is fairly self explanatory - looks at the

80

76%

60 40 20

84% 68% 41%

Non-Pupil Premiu m

“We have a motto at The City Academy, Hackney: Values and Success,” remarks Mr. Emmerson. “It embodies our belief that good values and hard work are the building blocks of real and lasting accomplishment. Our students have embraced these values; they are a fine group of wellmannered, kind and industrious young people who will go on to great things. These results are a fair and true reflection of the efforts and abilities of our students and, of course, the huge investment made by their families, our staff and our sponsors.”

100

Pupil Pr.

“At the end of the day it’s all about student progress, ensuring every student makes outstanding progress and achieves their very best” says Principal, Mark Emmerson.

amount of progress students make during their time at a school, from the levels they join with in year 7 through to the GCSE exam results they leave with in year 11. The academy ranked second best in the entire country (see table, bottom left) and number one school in London for pupil progress.

Pupil Premiu m

Following on from The City Academy, Hackney’s stunning first set of GCSE results in August which saw 81% of students achieve five or more A*- C grades including English and maths - more than 20% above the national average - the academy has been ranked the second best nationally and the top school in London for pupil progress in the 2014 school performance tables released by the Department for Education.

Non-Pupil Premiu m

Textiles

TCAH 5 A*- C incl. Eng. & maths

This also meant that The City Academy, Hackney was ranked top school for the ‘Value Added’ measure which shows how well a school is supporting students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In fact, students at The City Academy, Hackney who are eligible for Free School Meals out-perform the national average attainment levels for all students, thus proving socio-economic background need not limit a student’s chances in life.

Our joint sponsor, The City of London Corporation, invited a group of students to attend a talk at the Guildhall given by one of our best-known children’s book illustrators, Quentin Blake.

With an accompanying slideshow of sketches from his archive, Blake led us through a brief history of his work, his techniques and what he has been working on since his much-celebrated collaboration with Roald Dahl.

Talking about the process of drawing itself, Blake referred to journalist, Malcolm Gladwell’s, 10,000 hours suggesting that an artist should draw 100 miles of line if he or she wants to develop their technique and master their craft. Likening it to reading or learning a language - drawing is something you need to do a lot of if you want to find your own voice and become fluent in it.

Blake, who received the Freedom of the City of London, was recently invited to open a new museum, The House of Illustration in King’s Cross which is well worth a visit.

“These statistics show the extent of the progress of this year group in their time at the school. In particular the extent and range of A/A* passes and the progress statistics are exceptional.”

TheCityTimes - in print and online every half term |

www.thecityacademy.org/news |

@cityacadhackney |

flickr.com/tcah

2

148 Word wheel can you find more than 60 words all containing the middle letter? There’s one nine-letter word too.

D A

R

E

T G

B

105

134

83

Y

63

U

Lights! Camera!

Action!

Nora Al Morhiby Aldgate G

Rojhat Suluhan Aldgate M

Alexander Abley Aldgate G

Gurdit Singh Ludgate P

Klara Qosja Aldgate G

Top merit winners this half term www.thecityacademy.org/students Congratulations to all of our top merit winners from the past few weeks. Students receive merits every day and rewards each term for outstanding behaviour, attainment, effort and positive contribution to the academy.

JAN

JAN

JAN

JAN

FEB

Rickye Allen Aldgate B

Ashraf Rashid Aldgate M

Safia Abdullah Newgate B

Zakariya Hashim Newgate L

Clive Kandza-Itsieme LGC

5

House Captains to feature in short film promoting City of London academies.

Thank you and well done to Katy (pictured, above), Tijani, Trae, Jessica, Chamaria and William who were interviewed by film production company See That who are creating a short promotional film about all three academies in London sponsored by the City of London Corporation. If you haven’t seen it already, the academy made a short film about its first GCSE results day - a link to which is on our homepage - and the latest film will be released next month on the City of London YouTube channel.

12

19

26

2

Accelerated Reader of the Week www.thecityacademy.org/students/library Congratulations to the Accelerated Reader of the Week winners for this term. Each week our winners are announced in assembly, in the library section of our website and via our Twitter feed.

In Key Stage 3 all students participate in the Accelerated Reader programme to encourage them to read and enjoy the broad range of books available in the academy library. How does it work? Having read a book of their choice, a student then takes a quiz which tests their knowledge of the book they’ve read, the story, and the characters. If they pass the quiz then they receive a certain number of points (based on the complexity and length of the book) towards their personal reading target for the term. Many of our students exceed the target set for them.

One in a million 83,120,891 words at 200 words per minute = 12,000 words per hour = 288,000 words per day (24 hours a day) = about the right number of words to read if you have a one-way ticket to Mars.

Millionaires’ Row (students who read one million words during the autumn term)

Lilian Nwosu 1,868,130

Francesca Fernandes Rojhat Suluhan 1,781,390 1,496,273

Nora Al Morhiby 1,371,449

Daniel Walsh 1,131,109

83 million words and counting We have lots of challenges and fun competitions to stretch our most avid readers including the new ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ where students are challenged to read one million words in a term. Last term we had five millionaires in Key Stage 3 and, despite being just half way through, we already have one millionaire this term too.

In a past issue of The City Times we looked at the equivalent number of books to one million words - the entire Harry Potters series is only just enough - but how long would it take you to read the 83,120,891 words read by the whole of Key Stage 3 last term? Well, as the graphic shows, about as long as it takes to fly to Mars.

On average, every student at the academy reads more than 150,000 words per term. Parents would you like to read a similar amount each term with your child? Why not try Emma by Jane Austen, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - all about the right length.

Very poor

Poor

Neither good nor poor

Good

Outstanding

92++M8 92%

of parents would grade the academy as good or outstanding.

3

Half term highlights: science special On Tuesday 10 February, The City Academy, Hackney hosted its first Big Bang science fair in partnership with STEMNET and Engineering UK. Students in years 8, 9 and 10 spent the entire day taking part in a wide range of science and engineering workshops featuring everything from robots to Jelly Babies.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

1. Charlie and Luis construct a double helix DNA model out of cocktail sticks and Jelly Babies 2.

Incubating and extracting DNA from kiwi fruit 3. Using wind up radios to detect electromagnetic radio waves emitted from a battery short circuit 4. Under the microscope: students spot the differences between male and female ‘disease-spreading’ mosquitoes 5. What’s in the box? Hundreds of bloodsucking monsters (more mosquitoes) 6. Teams of students were tasked with building prototype vehicles powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. With a choice of components, cogs, gears and wheels, the aim was to build an efficient vehicle that would travel further as far as possible 7. Cosmetics Club: students designed and made their own bath bombs and soaps using a range of ingredients and compounds to determine the colours and smells of their products 8. Students use a chess board to research the spread of diseases by varying the percentage of the population who are vaccinated. Photos from all the events showcased above, and more, can be found on www.flickr.com/tcah.

Twitter @CityAcadHackney Every week we share a similar grid of nine photos showcasing a range of activities, classroom best practice and trips our students have been on. Why not subscribe to our Twitter feed by following the links on our website?

4

91% of students left the TCAH

National

75%

academy this year with five or more GCSE grades A*- C, the top attaining cohort in the borough.

Key dates for the half term ahead, February - March 2015

Term dates 2014/15

www.thecityacademy.org/events

www.thecityacademy.org/events

We begin this half term with the first Parent Day for our year 7 students and parents (and year 8), and Consultation Week for all other year groups. A reminder for all students and parents/carers that there are no Additional Studies classes during Consultation Weeks as the meetings are scheduled during this time.

School will finish at 3.40 p.m. Additional Studies will begin again on Tuesday 3 March.

Term dates for this academic year are listed below.

Please refer to the Events page on our website for up-to-date information regarding training days, school concerts and Parent Staff Association events.

FEB

Year 7/8 Parent Day

23 Monday 23 February, 1.30 - 8 p.m.

The first day after half term is a Parent Day for years 7 and 8 taking place in the Sports Hall between 1.30 and 8 p.m. All students return to lessons on Tuesday 24 February.

Consultation Week

Spring term 2 Monday 23 February – Friday 27 March Monday 23 February – Year 7/8 Parent Day Tuesday 24 February – all students return

Students in years 9 to 12 have meetings with their Personal Advisers scheduled during the first week back. Remember, there are no Additional Studies this week.

Summer term 1 Monday 13 April – Friday 22 May Monday 13 April – staff training day Tuesday 14 April – all students return

MAR

Year 9 GCSE Options Form Monday 2 March A reminder to all students and parents in year 9 - you must return your GCSE Options Form to your tutor on Monday 2 March.

Summer term 1 Monday 1 June – Wednesday 15 July Monday 1 June – Year 9/10 Parent Day Tuesday 2 June – all students return

MAR

World Book Day Monday 2 March Every year, the academy celebrates World Book Day with a week-long range of events and competitions to further share a love of reading with our students. This year our staff will be dressing up as their favourite children’s book characters and our students will compete to guess who is who. For more information about World Book Day, including details of the ten books available to buy for just £1 visit www.worldbookday.com.

MAR

Twilight staff training Wednesday 4 March (no Additional Studies) Due to a staff training event there will not be any Additional Studies classes running on Wednesday 4 March. Additional Studies will run as normal for all students on the Tuesday and Thursday either side of this.

MAR

GCSE Music Recital Friday 6 March, 4.30 p.m.

Everyone is invited to attend our termly music recital at neighbouring National Trust property, Sutton House. Students from all year groups and with a range of abilities will be performing and everyone is welcome to attend free of charge.

FEB

24 Tuesday 24 - Friday 27 February (no Additional Studies), 3.40 - 5.30 p.m.

2

2

4

6

MAR

Education Cafe: PHSCE

19 Thursday 19 March, 6 p.m. in the Drama Studio

The Parent Staff Association, in collaboration with our Subject Leader for PHSCE, Ms Noel, are hosting a discussion evening regarding the PHSCE curriculum. How does the academy promote its values with reference to its motto: Values and Success? What does personal, health or social education look like? What should it entail? All students, parents and staff are invited to attend this free event and join the debate. For more information, including details of our guest speakers, please visit the events section of our website.

Parent Days 2015 An opportunity for students, parents and teachers to meet and discuss progress.

Year 7 Year 8 Year 9 Year 10

Monday 23 February Monday 23 February Monday 1 June Monday 1 June

Consultation Week The academy invites students and parents to two Consultation Week meetings each academic year.

The aim of the first, attended by all students, is to set targets for the year ahead. At the second, targets are viewed and progress checked.

Years 9 - 13 Years 7/8

The City Academy, Hackney is sponsored by KPMG and the City of London Corporation.

The City Academy, Hackney is a registered charitable company. Registered office: The City Academy, Hackney, Homerton Row, London, E9 6EA.

w/c Monday 23 February 2015 Monday 1 June 2015