UoB School Community Newsletter: a new chapter

Welcome to the new look Community Newsletter!

We’ve been enjoying sharing stories from our School community on a regular basis with parents and carers, and felt it was now time to move forward and introduce a format that is a little more mobile and tablet friendly, as well as enabling us to share all the wonderful happenings from our School with the wider world.

We hope you enjoy this edition, and if you have any comments or questions, we’d love to hear from you. Just send us an email on welcome@uobschool.org.uk, with ‘Community Newsletter’ in the subject title.

(NB: If you’re new to our community, and have stumbled upon this post via the rabbit-hole of the internet, welcome! We’ll be sharing more stories about the ethos behind our School over time. In the meantime, you can find out more about us by heading to our website.)

Wem-be-ley!

We had an incredible day on our recent trip to Wembley Stadium, to watch the Women’s FA Cup Final! It was a brilliant game, in an iconic venue, watching Manchester City vs Birmingham City, with Man City winning 4–1. Our day was topped off by getting to meet Man City Player Izzy Christiansen. We’re very grateful for this one-off opportunity — it was a day many of our pupils won’t ever forget.

Musically Talented

Congratulations to all pupils who performed in our Spring Concert Series at the beginning of May. We enjoyed performances from each of our Year 7 class orchestras, many of whom hadn’t played an instrument before they began at UoBS in September. We also enjoyed hearing from our UoBS Orchestra, Jazz Band, Guitar Ensemble, our Music Theatre group, Steel pan, Flute Ensemble, Dohl drumming, Samba Batteria, Senior String Ensemble, Choir and our Brass Ensemble.

A big thanks to Friends of UoBS for putting on delicious treats in the interval, to our music teachers Ms Palmer and Mr Norris, and our wonderful comperes — our very own Ant and Dec; Ben and Oli!

Success for our young Engineers!

In the last newsletter, we shared the Engineering Education Scheme (EES) project, which our Sixth Form students have been working on this term alongside Network Rail. They gave a fantastic presentation in early May at the EES Celebration Day, an inter-schools event at Cranmore Park in Solihull, and we were delighted to hear that, following this, the team have been selected to go forward to the Midlands region semi final on the 3rd July at MTC Coventry, in order to be considered for selection for the Future Industry Leaders Awards, to be held in London on the 6th September! A big thank you to Mr Britton for supporting the team, and best of luck to all the students for the semi-finals.

Engaged in research

Miss Till ventured up to Edinburgh to present a research collaboration between our School and the University of Birmingham at the ‘Research With and For Children’ RWF Conference, giving a talk entitled ‘Exploring Newness: Settling in, Transition, and Space’. She spoke about the research our pupils have been working on alongside the University of Birmingham’s Professor Peter Kraftl and Dr Sophie Hadfield-Hill and PGDipEd Students to explore ‘transitions into newness’.

The research, which our pupils have taken an active and leading role in, focussed on three themes:

• Young people’s experiences of settling in within the first months of arriving in a new school and importantly a new building
• Pupils’ everyday experiences of transition (from a diversity of primary and secondary schools)
• Spaces of settling-in and transition — exploring the relationship between settling-in and the building.

Miss Till also shared the ‘Student Friendly Maps’ that our pupils have created as a result of the research, which we are hoping to have ready for our new Year 7 pupils in September.

Enrichment

As a School with character education at the heart of what we do, we’re lucky to have an incredible menu of options each term for our Monday and Friday enrichment. This term was no exception, with over 41 choices on offer, including: Ultimate Golf, Egyptology, the David Attenborough Fan Club, Magic the Gathering Club, Designing Sundials, and Gardening and Foraging.

Pictured below from left to right:

In Missing Maps enrichment we are developing our map-reading skills and creating our own maps.

In playdough creations, we are exercising our creativity virtues by creating playdough sculptures on a given theme in just under an hour. Pictured are our creations from the ‘Ocean’ theme.

In German enrichment, Omarion in 7T produced a wonderful piece of work in response to ‘Der Mondmann’.

Racing to UoB

8S got the chance to meet the University of Birmingham Formula 1 Racing Team, and take a tour of the workshops at the School of Mechanical Engineering on the University campus. They heard from engineers there about all the work that goes into designing, funding and building a single-seat racing car from scratch to compete in the Formula Student competition each year.

Thanks to Carl, Charlie and the team from the University of Birmingham for providing this experience for us which is the last of three year 8 trips there this year. You can find out more about the F1 team by visiting their website.

Music exam successes

Some of our young musicians received The Royal School of Music ABRSM examination results for our first cohort of applicants and we are delighted to have a 100% pass rate, with students taking exams from grade 2–6. Congratulations to all students for showing determination and resilience in passing the exams, and a big thank you to the Music Service for all of their support.

World-changing cancer research

Year 7 and 8 enjoyed an inspirational talk by Dr Farhat Khanim from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, about Dr Khanim’s research into drugs that can treat cancers, and how these can be tested to be ‘recycled’.

Dr Khanim also emphasised the importance of being aware that everyone can make a difference to the problems of the world and the importance of following your passion. Growing up in inner-city Birmingham, her parents encouraged her to study medicine but she didn’t get the grades she needed and ended up doing a biology degree. Dr Khanim said that was the best thing that happened to her, as she then went on to do scientific research which became her passion, and she is excited to be doing work that is set to have far-reaching consequences for the world.

Maths Challenge

Well done to the 48 Year 7 and Year 8 students who chose to take part in the UK Maths Trust Junior Maths Challenge alongside students up and down the country recently.

Energy Tours

Year 7 have been enjoying fascinating energy tours during physics lessons, exploring the School rooftop, getting to see solar panels up close, and learning about how energy efficient our School is. It turns out, our building does very well! A big thank you to our Facilities Manager Mr Cooper for leading the tours.

Troisième Place!

Our UoB School linguists put in a formidable effort in the Language Perfect World Championships, competing against hundreds of schools from all over the globe. Collectively we answered over 80,000 questions. We finished the leaderboard on 3rd place in the UK for French, and 11th place in the UK for all languages! A huge well done to all of our students who participated, showing excellent determination and teamwork.

Forwards with For-wards

Students involved in the For-wards music project had another exciting rehearsal session with composer Bobbie-Jane Garner. The students will now be working towards an Arts Awards bronze qualification as part of the project.

PGL Tour

Our first PGL Tour set off in early May, heading to Liddington in Shropshire for a weekend of exciting sporting activities. From activity challenges like Aeroball, ‘the crate challenge’, descending from a great height in both abseiling and the ‘giant swing’, as well as competing against schools from all over the UK in netball and football, the PGL tour was a fantastic experience for everyone involved — pupils and staff alike! Our pupils did the School proud, and showed huge courage and teamwork on the weekend, as well as resilience in making it back to School on Monday morning! We’re looking forward to sharing more photos with you soon over on Facebook.

Sports News

As if a PGL Tour and trip to Wembley wasn’t enough, Team UoBeasts (aka the PE department) have also had another half-term of excellent fixtures.

• We enjoyed a great contest against tough opposition of Bournville School as our Year 7 boys’ football team clocked up a 3–1 win. The team went on to win again last week, with a 2–1 result against Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School!
• We racked up our first ever boys’ hockey victory on May 11th — congratulations boys.
• We followed this up with our best girls’ football performance to date against Queensbridge Girls, with our pupils showing fantastic perseverance and determination in the searing sunshine to score us our first goal of the season!
• Congratulations to our girls’ cricket team who qualified for the Level 3 Birmingham School Games last week.
• Our athletics team have continued their training, and we were delighted to enjoy support from Olympians Matt Hudson-Smith, Hannah England, and Jade Surman from the University of Birmingham Athletics Team and Birchfield Harriers.

Work work work work work

Languages: Year 7 have been enjoying flavoursome French lessons, learning to make crêpes. Bon appétit!

Biology: It’s hard to believe we had snowstorms just a month ago, but despite this our biology teams were out sampling with Year 12, exploring biodiversity in our local area.

History: Thank you to Dr Rees from the University of Birmingham who ran a workshop and spoke to our students about the Russian Revolution. Thanks also to Dr Willis who ran a great session on Tudor Rebellions, and the importance of seeing them from below. He also produced fantastic resources on how to structure essays and paragraphs for our students.

Religious Studies: Our pupils have been enjoying some exciting lessons, with 8G analysing Jedi-ism and Pastafarianism to put forward their ideas about what constitutes a religion, then comparing these to the ideas of Ninian Smart.

7M were given excerpts and ‘reviews’ of a mystery book, and had to work out who the author of the mystery book was.

Thinking of you, Manchester

We were all deeply saddened to hear about the tragic events in Manchester last week. Some of our Year 7 pupils crafted a range of origami creations, and each wrote a small message of support for the people of Manchester. We are proud of our pupils for showing empathy and resilience at this difficult time.

Come learn with us: Building Character through Youth Social Action

Our friends over at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues are launching an exciting new online course (MOOC), exploring how character is developed through youth social action. This international course starts on June 12th, is free to sign up to, and will take the form of online lectures and discussions. If you’re interested in taking part, you can sign up online here.

If you sign up and would like to be part of an informal group to discuss the course materials, please email Miss Deva on welcome@uobschool.org.uk by June 10th with ‘Future Learn Course’ in the subject line.

You’re invited: UoB’s Community Festival

The University of Birmingham’s hugely popular Community Festival returns in June; it’s open to all and it’s free! Taking place on Sunday 11th June, from 11:00–16:00, at the Chancellor’s Court, there’ll be interactive talks, funfair rides, street-food markets and more. You’ll also be among the first to check out the University’s newly opened Sports and Fitness Centre.

Find out more about the University Festival here.

Get Ready: Challenge Week 2017

We are beyond excited for UoB School’s Challenge Week 2017, taking place from 5rd-9th June, immediately after half-term. The week is set to challenge pupils in transformational ways, testing their character virtues in ways they may not have experienced before. We’ll be collaborating with Edgbaston Reservoir Water Sports, a team of ex-Royal Marines, the University of Birmingham Sports and Fitness centre and many more, to make this first ever UoB School Challenge Week one to remember.

Please check the booklet sent out to all parents and carers recently for information about the week, as well as what to pack for each day.

Goodbye and Good Luck Year 13

We said a fond farewell to our first ever UoB School Leavers on Year 13’s last official day of their School lives. Students and tutors enjoyed a last day brunch, and received their Leavers Hoodies, before their very last gathering in the School Hall. Our Student Guild Chair Ronan organised an entertaining Leavers’ Assembly, which included a farewell speech from Mr Roden and some only-seen-once interviews with various teachers around School.

We all wish Year 13 the best of luck for your upcoming exams, and most of all good luck in the exciting adventures that lie ahead of you. We hope to see many of you returning for years to come, as our first ever cohort of alumni, continuing to share in our unfolding journey of the University of Birmingham School.

That’s all from us this half-term. We hope you enjoyed the new newsletter format. Wishing you a restful and enjoyable half-term break.

Best wishes,

The University of Birmingham School

www.universityofbirminghamschool.org.uk