Preparation for life!

At The Kingsway School, we pride ourselves on how well we prepare our students for life beyond school. We recognise that a successful and happy future not only depends on good GCSE outcomes, but also on valuable work skills and attributes. We remind our students about the importance of skills such as good timekeeping, resilience and problem solving through our careers programme, which is delivered in Life Skills lessons, assemblies and focus days.

We have already been awarded the ‘Inspiring IAG’ (Information, Advice & Guidance) Gold award in recognition of our high quality careers education.

I was therefore doubly delighted last week to receive an award from the National Citizen Service (NCS) Trust on behalf of Rt Hon Boris Johnson Prime Minister in recognition of our outstanding NCS engagement. The National Citizen Service helps children aged 16 and 17 build skills for work and life. Last year, over 80,000 young people spent their summer having a positive impact in their communities and developed the essential skills that will help them in their futures. Our award was in recognition of the high numbers of Kingsway students who have signed up to this project - over 30% of our Year 11 cohort!

Linked to our careers work, last Friday we were delighted to welcome Kuehne & Nagel to The Kingsway School to talk about opportunities within the Logistics Industry.  This visit coincided with National Apprenticeship Week. Here’s Mrs Flood’s report on the event:

Kuehne and Nagel are one of the largest logistics companies in the world, transporting goods by Air, land and sea for well known organisations including Waitrose and Boohoo.

K & N representatives presented to a group of Year 10 students who enjoyed learning about the different careers that exist for future Apprentices and Graduates in the logistics industry.  Logistics is a huge growth market for labour and there are an increasing number of job opportunities. Following the presentation, some students worked in teams to play a Logistics board game, all about the most economical, environmentally friendly and efficient ways to get goods from A - B.

Another group of students enjoyed a tour of the Kuehne & Nagel Lorry, which was parked up on site.  Lots of information was provided and students had the opportunity to visit the cab and see all the internal comfort and safety features.  Students also had the luxury of pressing the horn!

A massive thanks to all the staff at Kuehne & Nagel for introducing these careers to our students.

The blink of an eye!

I’m sorry it’s been a few weeks since my last blog. There’s been a lot going on and time has just ran away from me. January has disappeared in the blink of an eye and February has already begun!

So here’s a whistle stop tour of what January had to offer at Kingsway.

We began by celebrating the achievements of our December merit winners for each house:

• Pankhurst - Zack Jordan 7E
• Whitworth - Dyan Lamond 9H
• Rylands - Mary Rea 7C
• Lowry - Hannah Phillips 7I
• Gaskell - Charlie Lund 9N
• Turing - Emma Boaler 8K

On Thursday 9th January 2020, Year 11 received their Mock GCSE results. They will be undertaking a second round after February half term. Good luck to our Class of 2020!

Year 9 enjoyed two STEM curriculum themed days. The days were held in conjunction with one of The KIngsway's longest working partnerships - N.G. Bailey, the largest independent family owned Engineering company in the UK. The students were involved in a variety of STEM problem solving activities based around a theme of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. The event was also an occasion to launch "Unifrog" with Year 9, a complete one stop app providing comprehensive careers guidance and support.

The two day event was a competition leading to interviews for the 12 Industrial Cadet places on the EDT G04SET 10 week award programme. We are delighted to say that we have been inundated with applications from Year 9 and interviews will take place on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd of January; very shortly afterwards, the successful candidates will spend a day at Manchester University as they learn about what projects they can do.  They will also meet up with their industrial link company as they begin their journey into hopefully a STEM related career. Students found the day immense fun and very beneficial with a few records being split between multiple winners, due the quality of tasks completed to such high standards.

Happy New Year

A warm welcome back to our staff, students and families.

We have started 2020 with a vengeance!

I gave an assembly to all students about how proud they make me feel. Particularly when I drop in to their lessons and see them working hard with a focus on their learning. I have to remind myself what a tough job school can be - the amount of ‘stuff’ students need to learn and recall is vast. From equations in Maths and Science to quotes from Literature and learning by rote in Drama and Languages.

The standard of their written work is also exceptional. I popped in to Miss Tunnell’s Year 9 English lesson last week and saw students improving their work on Martyn Pig to achieve higher grades. I was hugely impressed with what they had written in just one lesson. Walking around lessons is a real tonic - your children are working hard and you should be rightly proud of their achievements.

In the assembly, I also talked about how our students make me proud outside the classroom. For example when they are representing the school in community events or representing school sports teams or just taking part in enrichment activities. I had the pleasure of reading the GCSE Latin coursework for a group of Year 9 students and Miss Murray who are now studying the level 2 course after successfully completing level 1 at the end of Year 8. Wow! What an accolade.

I am also proud of how respectful our students are and the maturity they demonstrate on a daily basis. They are a caring bunch, looking out for one another and behaving respectfully in school. I loved being asked “Did you have nice Christmas Miss?” last week or being wished  a “Happy New Year Miss”.

What a lovely start to 2020 I had!

Another great experience last week was our Year 11 GCSE mock results day. All Year 11 students were formally given their mock results by senior staff on Thursday morning. All students acknowledged that their results reflected the amount of studying they did. From those who achieved the highest possible grades, to those who were disappointed with their outcomes but solemnly acknowledged “I didn’t do much revision Miss”. These exams provide a crucial learning opportunity for our Class of 2020. They now know how big the mountain is they need to climb in order to get the grades needed for the next stage in their education/career pathway.

Seasons greetings

Christmas is coming and we've had a week of celebrations.

Let me start with celebrating those students who have worked hard all term, getting themselves to the top of the merit tables. I was delighted to share their success with them last week by presenting their certificates and badges to them in their lessons.

Gaskell winner, Nayl Ahmed (Y10) was in Mrs Greenwood’s GCSE German lesson. Nayl was responding to the FAR marking of an exam-style writing task, which he had written on the theme of free time, so he was correcting and extending his language.

Imogen Davies (8T) and Esme MacDonald (8T) were joint winners for Rylands. They were in Mrs Bradbury-Cheethams Art lesson, where they were doing oil pastel studies of John Piper’s work - a British artist.

Emma Boaler (8K) was Turing’s highest merit total winner. Emma was in Mr Dubale’s Maths lesson, where she was in the process of completing her "red pen retest" from the first Year 8 end of unit test.  Emma then went on to learn about conversions between fractions and ratios.

Dylan Lamond (9H) was the Whitworth winner this month. Dylan was in History where Mrs Mackay was teaching the lead up to the Second World War with a focus on Chamberlain's policy of appeasement and the analysis of the cartoons of David Low.

Pankhurst winner, Zack Jordan (7E) was in Music with Mr Wood, where they were doing their assessment using duration notation. They were creating their own 4 bar rhythms then arranging them so they demonstrated Pulse, Call & Response, Polyrhythms and team/ensemble skills.

Finally, Lowry winner, Hannah Phillips (7I) was taking part in the scholars’ workshop.

On 13th December, Year 7 scholars were invited to a workshop presented by Stephen Frew from ‘Tomorrows Engineers’. This is a charity which aims to enthuse and instruct young people about the world of engineering and STEM.

The scholars spent the day learning about renewable sources of energy, discussing why these are important in the industry of today, and then making and testing electric cars. Students worked together as engineering teams and spent time considering variables in order to achieve a set distance for their car before it ran out of energy.

Students were encouraged to develop creative technological ideas in order to enter the ‘bright ideas’ student STEM challenge and become engineers of the future.

Dr Holdsworth, who organised the event said:

“The 50 students taking part today were chosen based on achieving and maintaining greater depth in their Year 7 studies and being awarded the highest Attitude To Learning scores in the year group. We hope that by providing our students with enhanced learning opportunities that we can help them to compete for the most sought after college and university places in the future.”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Goodness me! This half term is flying by - not only in school, but also with festive preparations at home too. We have our tree up and outside lights and the turkey is on order! There’s something about Christmas that makes hard work fun!

Kingsway also got into the festive spirit this weekend at Cheadle Victorian Christmas Market day. Near ‘Splat the Victorian Rat’ and the Coconut shy you will have found the amazing ‘Human Fruit Machine’, Manned by Kingsway’s student ambassadors!  The stall was great fun for children of all ages. The Cheadle markets were a huge success with hundreds of visitors throughout the day. I even got the chance to do a bit of Christmas shopping from the craft fair and makers’ market.

Here’s Liam, Georgie and Jodie being the fruit machine!