News

Elephant’s toothpaste – so called for its resemblance to toothpaste being squeezed from a tube, on a giant scale, is a fun and showy Chemistry experiment to aid the teaching of ‘catalysts’ and ‘decomposition’. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down slowly into water and oxygen. Adding a catalyst (in this case, potassium iodide) speeds up this decomposition….

Students in Years 9 and 11 took part in a special online session run by the UK Parliament Learning today. The one-hour workshop aimed to introduce the Parliamentary system in the UK and explain the roles of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. During the session they also covered the work of…

The 10X Challenge (previously, ‘The Tenner Challenge’) is an annual enterprise competition for young people aged between 11 and 18 years old. The Challenge is run by Young Enterprise, the UK’s leading enterprise and financial education charity. Each team of budding entrepreneurs are given £10 to get their business idea off the ground and are…

Year 9 have been looking at ‘Don’t Ask Jack’ by Neil Gaiman in their recent Drama lessons. The short horror story tells the tale of a group of children growing up in a large house and their relationship with an unusual toy they find in the attic. The students have mind mapped the story, dissecting…

Lockdown restrictions have challenged our ways of teaching and learning, particularly on those projects that involve more than one ‘bubble’ working in collaboration with each other. To mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on our usual team projects, Year 6 and Year 9 have been using ‘Teams’ to work together this term. 12 Year 9 students…

Year 9 have been exploring the perceptions of homelessness in their English lessons, delving into the novel ‘Stone Cold’ by Robert Swindells. They have explored the characters, and completed activities to reinforce their comprehension. As their homework task last week, the students designed alternative front covers for the book, using whatever medium they like. Here…

It has been proven that spending time in nature can improve mood and well-being, but not everyone has easy access to the natural world. Launched on Monday 25th January, the BBC brings virtual soundscapes of music and nature directly to audiences with Radio 3, 6 Music, BBC Sounds, BBC Two’s Winterwatch, the interactive BBC Sound…

Since the start of the academic year, all Year 9 students have had a philosophy lesson once a week. Currently the lessons are taking place virtually, and include the whole year group; making it one of our largest distance learning lessons! Delivered by Headmaster Mr Burke, the students have studied key figures from Greek philosophy,…

If you want to draw lifelike portraiture, knowing how to draw facial features is essential. Learning to draw these parts of the face can be difficult, but with the aid of Miss Haywood’s masterclass this week, Year 9 have managed some fantastic progress. They were shown techniques that would help them to draw facial features…

In their music lessons with Mrs Pope and Mr Wapshott, Year 9 have been exploring the musical genre – Minimalism. Developed in New York in the 1960s by composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, Minimalism involves stripping music down to its bare essentials (and beyond) to focus on its pure sonic…