14 February 2020
Dates for your Diary - Spring Term 2020
- Year 7 Parents' Consultation Evening - Monday 2 March 2020, 4.00 - 6.00 p.m.
- Year 8 Parents' Consultation Evening - Monday 23 March 2020, 4.00 - 6.00 p.m.
- Year 10 Parent' Consultation Evening - Monday 27 April 2020, 4.00 - 6.00 p.m.
Chinese Spring Festival
All of year 7 took part in a day of cultural activities to celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival. Students were able to do painting, make bracelets and lanterns and learn calligraphy. Mr Hu, one of our Mandarin teachers, was joined by five talented volunteers from the local community who shared their skills in Chinese painting and papercraft.
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Mrs Wood - Subject Leader, MFL
Climate Change and the Environment
This term, the house team are focusing on the incredibly important issue of climate change and the environment.
I have met with each of the houses to hear their ideas. I had previously asked them to discuss the following with their form: “Climate change is an issue that will affect your generation. What can we do as a school to support/help? What could you (as a form) do in form time (or during break / lunch) to raise awareness of climate change and our environment”?
I have been overwhelmed with the response. Truly thought-provoking! Very insightful observations from our young people, simple, but clever ideas. Their passion for this has really shone through (please see the list of ideas below).
We look forward to supporting our students with this. Please look out for further notices highlighting their campaigns!
Miss L Forbes - Senior teacher, SL Business & Computing
Date Me Out 2020!
First lunch saw the original Blind Date format make a comeback, with several of our KS3 & KS5 students looking for love! “The ONE” was selected and off they went to the Isle of Simons café!
Three panels, three “perfect” matches and 500+ audience members! All contributing to the show and to charity.
Thank you so much to everyone involved, we have raised over £250 for our environmental initiatives & the House Fund (we also had a giggle in the process).
Superb!
Miss Forbes the House Leaders
Year 11 Science Intervention Timetable
Visitors from Teikyo University
Durham Johnston hosted a group of 9 visitors from Teikyo University on Monday 10th February. The group included professors, teachers and student teachers. They enjoyed an afternoon of observing a variety of language lessons including Latin, French, Spanish and German. They also took part in meetings with Mr O’Sullivan and then the MFL department.
It was a pleasure to welcome the group to the school.
Mrs Wood - Subject Leader, MFL
Music Notices
Congratulations
Last Saturday evening Sol Christopher (year 12) performed in the final of the annual James Etherington Music Competition. The competition is open to all young musicians who are in full time education, including Undergraduates, in DH postal districts. Sol’s programme included guitar repertoire by Stuart Ryan, Pat Metheny and Michel League. He was commended for the standard of his performance and was awarded third place and presented with a cheque for £100.
Spring Concert
School Spring Concert: Thursday 26th March, James Hall, 18.30 and 19.30 All school performing groups will take part with rehearsals during the school day. Tickets will be go sale for this event in early March.
Mr Holmes – Subject Leader for Music
Lost Property
We have a large amount of unclaimed lost property which has accumulated since beginning of the year. The unclaimed items include a large amount of outdoor coats, the majority of which are unnamed and cannot be returned to their rightful owners. We are conscious that outdoor coats are purchased at considerable cost to parents. During half term, please could parents check with their children that they know where all their equipment and clothing is.
We would like to give students the opportunity to reclaim their garments and will arrange for articles to go on display during the first week back after half term. Forms tutors will let students know when this will be convenient.
We regret that as we do not have sufficient storage for large amounts of lost property, that we will pass any unnamed and unclaimed items on to charity within three weeks of this notice.
PE Department News
On Monday our VIth form football team traveled to St John’s for a league and cup double. Despite the difficult conditions we proved too strong for them eventually winning 3 – 0. Also on Monday our U13 girls A & B Futsal teams were taking on Parkside in the Area finals. Our B team drew with Parkside but unfortunately our A team suffered a 3 – 2 defeat meaning our teams finished in 2nd and 3rd place behind Parkside.
The U14 girls' county cup semi-final which was due to be played on Tuesday had to be postponed due to the high winds. However the U15 girls' indoor cricket tournament did go ahead. We started with a comfortable victory over Framwellgate. Our final game was much closer as we took on St Leonard’s. However we kept our nerve winning an exciting finish by 6 runs helped by a hat trick for Izzy Lawson.
On Tuesday our U16 basketball team were competing in a tournament at Hartlepool VIth form college. We won all our group games to reach the semi-finals where a comfortable 10 point victory saw us reach the final against English Martyrs who we had already beaten. This was a close game which was level with 2 minutes to play. However our shooting deserted us as we lost by 2 points to finish runners-up.
On Wednesday our U13 girls' football team were taking on Lanchester St Bede’s in the county cup semi-final. We lead 2 – 0 at half-time and never looked like conceding as we reached the county final with a 3 – 0 win.
Also Wednesday Grace Walker was competing in County Inclusion indoor rowing finals at Trinity School. She produced an excellent performance to win the silver medal. The highlight of the week was the performance of our Year 9 rugby team. There were at Billingham RFC competing in the finals of the County Cup. We started with a hard-fought victory against High Tunstall. This was then followed by an outstanding performance against Yarm School. We took control in the first half-half eventually going on to win by 12 points. Our final match was a more straightforward victory against St John’s which confirmed us as County Champions.
Yesterday our Year 8 netball team were at the Louisa Centre competing in the Area tournament. After an excellent afternoon of netball we remained unbeaten wining all our games apart from a draw with Durham High. Unfortunately the final result then went to goal difference with Durham High scoring more goals, leaving us as runners-up.
Unfortunately the Tyneside cross-country competition which was due to take place today was cancelled due to lack of interest from other schools.
Finally, can I remind all those Year 7and 8 pupils going on the Malaga sports trip in the summer that the second deposit of £250 is due by Friday 28th February.
Mr Hopper, Subject Leader for PE
Whole School Literacy
How did you do with our ‘begin and end’ word challenge? Answers below:
We decided to finish our word games with the most popular one: boggle. Although I could not resist making it even harder this time.
Ms Clark - Whole School Literacy Coordinator