UoBSchool Community Newsletter: September 2017
Welcome back to a new school year! The Summer feels like a distant memory now as we’ve been busy this Autumn starting new enrichments, celebrating sporting successes, and welcoming a new Year 7 and Year 12 to our community. Here’s a round-up of the best stories from this month…
Broadening our Horizons
This year we’re thrilled to have launched the ‘Horizons Series’, a lecture series where we invite incredible minds from the University of Birmingham to share their work with our Sixth Form students. So far we’ve had ‘Sex, Lies and Nanotechnology’ with Professor Jon Preece, ‘Creativity and Innovation’ with Dr Eric Shiu, ‘Black Holes and Gravitational Waves’ with Professor Ilya Mandel and ‘How to change the world’ with Dr Vikki Burns. We’re looking forward to even more fantastic speakers over the course of the year.
¡Qué divertido!
We enjoyed a fantastische European Day of Languages on Tuesday 26th September. With French and Spanish themed menus, a Portuguese carnival-themed workshop at lunchtime, library competitions, and answering registers with a ‘Bonjour’ or ‘Salut’, we had a great time exploring the value of languages in our lives.
It’s time for new enrichment options
We’re lucky to have a vast range of enrichment options each term, and this term is no exception. Here’s what our students have on offer this term on Mondays and Wednesdays…
Best of luck to our first ever UoBS Alumni
Congratulations to all of our Year 13 Leavers who received their A Level results in the Summer. We are very proud of them for their achievements. 55% of entries were graded A*-B, and above 22% of entries were graded A* or A. Here are just a few stories of our student successes — find more on our Facebook page.
Best of luck to all of our Alumni, many of whom are starting new chapters at University this week!
UoBS Pupils on National News
On the second day of term, national news cameras from ITV came to our School to hear our pupils’ reactions to news that Birmingham has been selected as the UK’s Commonwealth Games 2022 bid city. The interview formed part of a news piece on national ITV News. Our current Year 9 pupils will be 18 by the time of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, so perhaps we’ll see some of them on TV again… competing in the games!
Building Bridges
We’re delighted to announce Willmott Dixon as a new Corporate Partner for 2017/18. Willmott Dixon have signed up to be generous supporters of our enrichment programme, as part of their goal to transform 10,000 young lives by 2020. They are working with Year 8 this year on an exciting ‘Build a Bridge’ project. Each Year 8 form will spend five weeks exploring the world of construction, through the brand new University of Birmingham Green Heart project.
So far we’ve donned our hard-hats and hi-vis jackets and been amongst the first visitors to the Green Heart building site at the University, and had a go at designing, costing and constructing bridges out of straw and bricks.
Congratulations Miss Connolly!
A big congratulations to Miss Connolly for achieving her Masters in Education with the University of Birmingham. Miss Connolly conducted an investigation into pupil and staff understanding of democracy as part of her Masters course.
Sports Personality of the Year Awards
We had an inspiring evening on Thursday 28th September celebrating achievements of our pupils in the Young Sports Personality of the Year Awards 2017. Thanks to guest speaker Freddie Owsley for joining us, and UoBS Friends and our cooking enrichment pupils for providing a delicious selection of refreshments. Take a look at the full set of photos over on Facebook.
Mini Bud’s Run & Bud’s Run — join in the fun
If you are inspired by our young sports personalities, why not take part in Bud’s Run, on Saturday 21st October? The 5K run is in honour of UoB Sports Coach Bud Baldaro, and is in aid of Parkinson’s UK. There’s also an Under 11's run, and lots of family friendly events on the day. Find out more and sign up here: www.budsrun.co.uk If you’re lucky, you may even spot UoBSchool staff in questionable fancy dress…
We’ll also be holding our own mini Bud’s Run on Monday 16th October, at the brand new University of Birmingham Athletics track, where the Jamaican Track and Field team trained for the World Championship finals this summer! Pupils will be coming up with fundraising ideas to raise money on the day, as well as competing in the first College Sports Competition of the year.
Leading Languages
Well done to our newly selected Language Leaders. The following pupils have been selected to spread the word over the course of the year that learning languages is brilliant! Well done to:
Year 8 — Arzu 8G, Faizan 8M, Esther 8A, Alvyn 8N, Lobabah 8M, Yedam 8N
Year 9 — Simran 9A, Cameron 9G, Patience 9G, Harry 9G, Laylaa 9G, Glyn 9G, Malaika 9G, Ben Ferro 9T, Mia 9G, Kyllian 9G, Aisha 9G, Krisha 9G, Shakila 9M, Billie 9N, Payel 9N, Sascha 9N
So far the Language Leaders have helped to organised the European Languages Day, and are working on fundraising ideas for Bud’s Run — including a languages arcade!
UoBS on Tour — Open Events for Prospective Parents
Mr Roden is going on a tour around the city to share more about UoBSchool with prospective parents/carers (i.e. families who have children currently in Year 6). We’re holding a series of Open Events in the following locations. Please share this with any prospective parents/carers looking for a secondary place for their child.
- Jewellery Quarter — Springhill Library, Fri 6 October, 3.30–4.30pm
- Hall Green — Highfield Community Centre, Mon 9 October, 7–8pm
- Small Heath — Khidmat Centre, Weds 9 October, 7–8pm
Duke of Edinburgh Launch
We’re excited that all of our Year 9 pupils this year will be working towards the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. They’ve begun their DofE adventures by learning the essentials of orienteering and map-reading.
Friday Enrichment
In our Friday enrichments, Year 7 and Year 8 have been getting out and about with trips to The Oratory, University of Birmingham, Bournville Quakers Meeting House, and visiting our local areas with art and theatre collective Stan’s Cafe. In School, we’ve been cooking up a storm in Thank-you Cafe, devising theatre pieces with Round Midnight, and learning about stop-motion animation.
Sixth Form Sports Series
Our Sixth Form students have also dusted off the cobwebs from their sports kits to get active on Friday afternoons. They’ve had a brilliant selection of activities on offer each week, from getting to use the University of Birmingham’s Sports and Fitness facilities, to self-defence classes, to dance lessons with professional dancers.
Rush Hour Research
If you know teachers or educators from across the West Midlands, please invite them to our upcoming Rush Hour Research event. Rush Hour Research is an opportunity to share education relevant research from the University of Birmingham alongside inspiring conversations, a cup of tea and some cake. It’s a great chance for teachers to connect with like-minded individuals. Please share details for the next event with teachers in your community:
Multilinguism in Everyday Practice
Professor Angela Creese
Tuesday 10th October 2017
Book tickets here: bit.ly/uobsangelacreese
This fascinating presentation will report on initial outcomes of a research project which investigates how people communicate when they bring into contact different biographies, histories, and trajectories.
Inspiring Learning, Transforming Lives
A warm welcome to all of the student teachers on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDipEd) course with the School of Education at the University of Birmingham. They’ve begun their year-long teaching course by immersing themselves in the world of UoBSchool, observing our fantastic teachers, teaching mini-lessons, and getting training from our team.
Do you have School Uniform you no longer need?
UoB School Friends (our PTA) are starting a collection of used School uniform with the aim of offering it for sale. If you bought new uniform over the summer and now have items that you don’t need, they will happily accept good quality outgrown items.
These items can be given into reception, in a bag labelled ‘UoBS Friends Second-hand Uniform’. When they have enough stock, they will announce when the sale will be. Your donations will be gratefully appreciated.
Art in the halls and on the walls
We’re delighted to have beautiful artwork from our students adorning our corridors, as a new gallery has been installed on the top floor of our School.
Faraday Challenge
We had a fantastic Faraday Challenge Day run in partnership with the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). Pupils were set real-life engineering challenges, and spent the day competing to design, create and promote the best solution. We were really impressed with our pupils’ creations!
National Poetry Day 2017
We enjoyed a day of brilliant workshops and a performance from poet Terry Caffrey to celebrate National Poetry Day. We also had a fantastic poetry book display, and a poetry wall where we shared our favourite poems.
The Art of Asking (Really Good Questions)
Three Faiths Forum (3FF) ran workshops for Year 7 pupils on the Art of Asking and the Art of Empathy. In the workshops we explored how we share, reflect, and have dialogue with people from all backgrounds, including how we ask questions that are mindful of ‘ouch’ and ‘oops’ moments, (when we might ask a question that hurts someone).
Sporting Results
Our Cross Country team had a successful afternoon last week with 9 students qualifying to represent South Birmingham next week! Thanks to Olympian Hannah England for working with our pupils, alongside our PE dream team.
Teachers doing Masters
We’re big fans of lifelong learning at UoBSchool, and this brave team of teachers are taking on Masters in Education courses at the University of Birmingham — on top of their action packed jobs. We’re looking forward to sharing more in coming months from the learning journeys of Miss Exton, Mr Norris, Miss Isbell, Mr Bennett, Mrs Deegan, Miss Lockett and Mr Connell.
You said, we did…
Last term, we asked parents and carers for their views on the School, and you responded by letting us know what you love about UoBS — and where you thought we still had room to grow. So we made some changes to respond to your feedback — and hopefully made our School an even better place to be a pupil as a result.
For example, you said you wanted to see more regular structured homework. We have now introduced our homework folders for all children, who are all set regular amounts of homework depending on their age. Some parents said they would like to see more visible links with the University — we have introduced our Horizons Lecture Series for all Sixth Formers, who hear an academic from a diverse range of subjects speak every Wednesday afternoon. You asked for a list of teaching staff to be displayed on the website — our brand new website which launched this summer does just that. And you also asked for additional languages to be taught — German is now on the curriculum for Year 7 and 8, and Spanish and Portuguese are enrichment options for all pupils who want even more languages!
We know there is still work to be done, and we are constantly striving to create the very best environment for everyone in our School community. With your feedback and support, we will address the challenges and make the changes necessary to do just this.
That’s all folks.
We hope you enjoyed the first community newsletter of 2017/18. If you have any ideas or feedback for us please feel free to email us on welcome@uobschool.org.uk with ‘Community Newsletter’ in the title.
Best wishes,
The University of Birmingham School
