Say hello, wave goodbye!

On Tuesday, last week we said hello to our Year 8 students who returned a little bleary eyed,  from their trip to Paris. What a huge success the trip was with students enjoying the Eiffel Tower (climbing to the top!) and Disneyland Paris.

A school like a tardis?

It’s that time of year where with just a few school days to go; it’s a magical mystery how we manage to squeeze so much into so little time. Summer term school life is certainly like a Tardis.

So I’m squeezing two weeks of blogs in to one because it’s been such a busy time as our calendar turns from June to July.

On 24th to 27th June, Year 10 GCSE Geography students braved the weather to take part in their first field trip. Mr Burniston reported: “The Geography department took over 200 Year 10s to the Edale Valley in the Peak District as part of their GCSE course. Each of the four days provided contrasting weather conditions to test the students’ data collection and teamwork skills. All students responded well to the Peak District Guides who taught them how to collect and record information safely and accurately, especially those who donned wellies and entered the river! An enjoyable and rewarding week of Physical Geography studying river valley characteristics.”

On Tuesday 25th June, Mr Watson took a group of students to Stockport Grammar School to take part in the Sustainable Science Competition. Furqan Choudhry, Izzy Cooke, Ellis Hampshire and Daisy Freeman were set tasks in each of the sciences that focussed on the area of sustainability. Working in a team, they were asked to think about the challenges we face as a global population, regarding using natural resources. In Chemistry they performed a separation experiment on a Biofuel and in Biology they looked at the role of antibiotics in medicine. Mr Watson reported: “The students performed extremely well and represented the school with distinction. Hopefully this will have inspired future scientists to solve the problems we have with overusing our natural resources.”

The Physics department at The Kingsway School is also celebrating great success in the recently held British Physics Olympiad. The competition is held every year by Oxford University, which aims to encourage and recognize excellence in young physicists across the country. This year, over 7000 Year 10 students attempted the Challenge Paper and less than 500 were awarded the Gold Award. Congratulations to phenomenal Kingsway students Ali Hayat, Amy West, Hani Ehtisham and Jibreel Ali who achieved this accolade.

Our congratulations also go to the other participants, especially Hashim Sikander, Muhammad Afzal, Josh Beckett, Chaplin Lee, Louis Martin, Holly Powell and Pippa Woods who all achieved a Silver Award.

We also had an additional 80 students who achieved Bronze and Participation Awards. Let's see if next year's Year 10 can emulate their success.

On a scorching Saturday afternoon on 29th June, myself and Miss Woodyer met Mr Lawton, Mr Wood and some students at Heald Green Summer Festival. There was loads going on from donkey rides to football matches. Our small ensemble performed brilliantly to the crowds in the Village Hall. I was super proud of them and very grateful to them for giving up their Saturday afternoon. They will be joining the rest of the 40+ strong choir in Italy next week - have fun guys!

And then on Sunday afternoon (not quite so hot) another group of terrific Kingsway students joined a fantastic array of local groups at Kingsway to take part in Gatley’s Parade and Festival.

Oh what a night (and week)!

Another busy week at Kingsway last week.

On Wednesday afternoon Mrs Djang and Mrs Burgess hosted a drop-in afternoon for new parents of students with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND). This was a chance for families to get a sense of the care and support which will be available from our SEND team. It was lovely to meet some of our new families.

Another chance to meet parents new to Kingsway was on Thursday evening when Miss Cropper ran a "Bridging the Gap" workshop - a guide to understanding and overcoming anxiety during the secondary transition. The workshop was aimed at parents of upcoming students in Year 6, who may have been struggling with the idea of joining a new school in September. We worked through understanding triggers, sharing good practice and offered strategies to support during the difficult time. We explored the causes for anxiety, explained how our bodies react to stress, and ideas for how we can eliminate that. Parents seemed to leave feeling much more positive for the start in September, and were signposted to the appropriate staff if they had further questions. They also had the option of leaving each other a "golden piece of advice" in an envelope to share amongst other parents following what they'd taken from the workshop.

On Thursday, nineteen Kingsway students from Year 9 attended The Daresbury Laboratories for the Go4SET regional finals of The Industrial Cadets Programme after 10 weeks of hard work. As I'm sure you can remember from last year, The Kingsway School, not only won this competition with "The Best Overall" project but also went on to win The Big Bang Competition in Birmingham with their project currently being put into production at our sister school The Kolweny Kingsway, Kenya.

Although no prizes were achieved this year (we can't win every year!) all students across 3 teams represented Kingsway superbly with judges being very complimentary about their projects, emphasising that the final decisions had been very very close. It was wonderful to see all Kingsway students graduate and receive their hard earned qualifications. The day was capped off by our own Mr. Hammersley being the guest speaker for the day, addressing all schools and industry present on "How to Increase STEM Capital in your school".

“On Thursday 20th June, the STEM program of students graduated (see photo below) and we all gained our Industrial Cadet Bronze award. After a hard 15 weeks of work, we gathered up all of our data and presented it to the panel of judges who were the backbone of the project. At the start of the project, we were given three choices to base our research on. These were: 'Create Sport' ,'Recycling' and 'My School is an Island'. Luckily, we all chose separate projects so we all accumulated different ideas. At the end of the long yet challenging 10-15 weeks, it was time to present our work to the assessors. It was quite nerve racking but it was an amazing feeling to finalize our work and show off what we were capable of doing. The feeling of graduating was amazing and it was a big milestone that I and many others managed to achieve.”

- Akira Edgson, Year 9

Year 10 students enjoyed a great day out on Thursday 20th June at the Cheadle College Taster Day.  Prior to the event, students had an opportunity to select workshops of their choice to sample 'A' Level lessons in subjects they enjoy or completely new ones which they could study post 16.  There were over 200 students, the largest number of students ever taken to Cheadle College; the day progressed smoothly with all students being engaged and focused, so much so, that we received an email (see below) from Cheadle College, complimenting our students for how well they had represented both themselves and our school.

“On Thursday we hosted 200 of your Year 10 students, who joined us for a Year 10 college taster day. All of us at The Cheadle College would like to congratulate your students for embracing the day with such a positive and mature attitude. Our teaching staff were very impressed during the subject sessions. Kingsway students were engaged and enthusiastic throughout and demonstrated smart and enquiring minds. From our side it was a real pleasure to spend the day with your students and staff.”

- Carole Vartan, (Head of Transition, Liaison, Communication and Marketing at Cheadle College)

Feast and fast

I would like to wish ‘Eid Mubarak’ to all our staff, students and families who have fasted for the last 30 days for the muslim tradition of Ramadan. For 30 days, our muslim community have not only fasted from food, but they have also refrained from anger and sin, instead focussing on charity and worship. Whilst many of us may consider fasting for 30 days a difficult, even unsurmountable, Ramadan is one of the most important months in the islamic calendar. Here’s what one of our year… students, Malaika Shehzad said: “I fast because it shows respect for my faith and enables me to demonstrate my dedication to my faith. Although it is tricky in the summer term, persevering not only allows me to show commitment but also shows me that I can achieve anything with a clear purpose and focus". I have been so proud to observe our staff and students respect their faith for the last 30 days and hope they had the most fabulous party when they could finally break their fast.

Whilst food and water may have been on short supply for our muslim students last month, there was plenty of rain for our Duke of Edinburgh participants this weekend. Here’s a report from Miss Horsey, expedition leader:

"This was most certainly our wettest expedition to date, with 38 students - walking in the rain, cooking in the rain, taking down camp in the rain and finishing in the rain; we certainly saw the UK's Great British weather on this expedition. Despite the more challenging weather conditions, the students’ determination to succeed shone through and all 38 students crossed the finish line on Saturday afternoon. Another highlight was the pancake breakfast teams, who cooked pancakes in the rain and gained orders from all teachers for a chocolate covered pancake - reminder girls, for some reason, we are still waiting for our pancakes...

A huge congratulations to all and I hope that Sunday's weather was kind enough to let them dry their equipment out, ready for the next group, next week!"

Winner, winner!

Welcome back to the final half term of the academic year. I hope you all had a lovely bank holiday break. I spent my week here in not-so-sunny Stockport, enjoying time with family and friends. I even tried my hand at golf for the first time. Not a bad first attempt, though I can’t see myself winning the Ryder Cup any time soon.

Thankfully, there were lots of winners at Kingsway before the half term break, starting with our top merit winners for March & April, who received their certificates and stars last week. Here’s where I found them...

Charlie Lund was in Food tech with Mrs Guess, where she was carrying out her final practical assessment. Charlie was making lemon and lime cheesecake decorated with fresh fruit slices. Delicious!

Emily Foster was revising for her end of year German test. The class were playing "Das Vermögen der Familie" (or family fortunes). Miss Slater, Emily’s teacher (pictured below) was delighted with Emily’s award: “Emily always works hard in German and I have no doubt that she will be very pleased with her result on her test!”.

Amy Berry was in GCSE RE with Mr Williams where he was teaching Muslim beliefs about crime. Amy was contributing well to the discussion about the causes of crime in society in relation to a person's upbringing and socio-economic circumstances that could lead to hopelessness. Discussion was had whether the responsibility for changing this lay with the government, the education system or the parents.

Double Winners, Ella-Grace Smith and Rocio McGilvary were found in English, working hard on their timed responses. Miss Mullin was pleased to tell me that both girls “are starting to feel more prepared to tackle their end of year exams”.

Finally, Emma Boaler was also busy revising for her end of year Science exam. Miss Murray explained: “we were doing a Q and A session on separation techniques. Students had to tell me based on their practical work what they did, what mixtures they could separate and explain how it worked”.

As well as being a terrific science teacher, Miss Murray is also our Professional Mentor for trainee teachers. Her role is to coordinate the training they receive from their university mentors with school based experience at Kingsway. We were recently visited by MMU to review the school based provision we provide for their graduates and as a result we were accredited as a Leading Partnership School. This reflects our commitment to school based training, not only from Miss Murray, but all the exceptional subject based mentors we have around the school.

More hopeful winners this summer are our Year 11 students from the class of 2019, who are well in to their GCSE examinations. To help stimulate their minds, Mr Sadler and the English department arrived early on Friday morning to write some key quotes from An Inspector Calls and ‘Conflict’ poetry on the school playground. Whatever next … Pythagoras Theorem on the back of the toilet doors?