HARRIS MESSENGER Easter 2013
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Message from the Principal Once more we find ourselves at the end of another half term of hard work. This Academy continues to grow and mature into one we can all be proud of. All key areas of the Academy have improved; attendance, behaviour alongside teaching and learning. We are on target to achieve all targets set at the beginning of the year, thus ensuring we move quickly to improve the Academy for all of our students. The term has seen many highlights, with more Inter Faculty events taking place in Music (Choir Challenge) and Geography Challenge as well as our first ever D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and Read) Day. The half term has been finished with the conclusion of our Aspire, Experience and Explore week. The four days of activities has seen students visit some wonderful places, such as Leeds Castle, Hillingdon Adventure centre, Museums or take part in onsite activities such as Sculpture or Poetry Week. This is just part of the work we will continue to do over the coming years to broaden students experiences and raise their aspirations at the same time. The week also provided Year 11 with the opportunity to spend a whole day in each of their four Option subjects, for intensive revision or coursework completion sessions. This will be invaluable to ensure Year 11 make the most of the available time left before the examinations. When we return from the Easter break, Year 11 students will move into the final stages of preparation before their examinations begin. A letter has been provided to all Year 11 students to inform them of the support sessions they must attend each evening of the week.
Any A.E.E. Week student requiring additional support on a Saturday morning will be contacted in a separate letter. Students must embrace this additional support to ensure they achieve the best possible coursework grades and exam marks as possible. Additional details regarding extra-curricular clubs and supports sessions for Years 7-10 will be published via the website. The start of the new term will herald a new era for the Academy. The Academy has attracted high quality teachers to fill all our vacancies. Our new teachers will begin to join the Academy and support the wonderful teachers we have retained.
A.E.E. Week - Leeds Castle
We welcome the following teachers to our Academy straight after the Easter holidays: Mr Whelan – Director of Maths Ms Loosley – Director of Science Ms Roberts – Head of KS4 Science Ms Penney – Teacher of Science Ms Cresswell – Director of PE
Mr Jensch – Lead Teacher of Boys PE Ms Hutson – Director of DT Mr Fortt –Teacher of DT Ms Catanzaro – Teacher of English Ms Hughes – Teacher of Art
We will welcome the following teachers from May half term: Mr Otermin – Co-ordinator of Maths Mr Pritchard – Teacher in Charge of RS with responsibility for PSHE/Citizenship/SMSC Finally I must inform you that our Year 7 intake for next year has significantly improved. We have over 150 students for next year. We are extremely pleased with this figure. Prospective parents came to visit us after only two weeks of opening in September 2012 and made their decision based on immediate improvements we had made in this short space of time. The parents returned for a visit last week after accepting their place at the Academy and were even more pleased to see the continued improvement made so far and our strive to create an ‘Outstanding’ Academy for all. This clearly demonstrates a healthy future for this Academy. We hope that all our students and families have a well-deserved rest over the Easter break and come back ready to work hard and continue to help improve this Academy. Mr Mallin - Principal
BBC NEWS SCHOOL REPORT 2013 Harris Academy Morden is on the ‘Media Map’ – its official! On Thursday 21st March the Harris Academy Morden BBC School Report team presented and produced a highly innovative and professional production. This was our first entry into the BBC’s national competition for 13 -14 year-old school pupils. A ‘Breaking News’ report on how the press viewed the Chancellor’s budget was particularly topical. The enthusiasm of our pupils was complemented by their commitment to ensuring a ‘polished best’ production was uploaded to the BBC website within a strict deadline. A great effort from all concerned, and a particular thank you to the four Harris Merton Sixth Formers, which included three former pupils from Harris Academy Morden and Ms Wilson and Mr Mallin both of whom, appeared as studio guests.
ENGLISH It’s been a busy half term in the English department and, as always, we have been delighted with the hard work and enthusiasm of our students. In Key Stage 3, Year 7 have been reading the wonderfully spooky novel Coraline by Neil
Gaiman, focusing on the effect of language and how it can be used to convey feelings and atmosphere. Our Year 8 students have been studying Our Day Out, a play about schoolchildren from Liverpool going on a trip to Wales. Their final assessment was a drama performance, and we were all blown away by the effort and enthusiasm of the students, particularly those who attempted a Liverpool accent! Year 9 have been analysing the language and presentational features of a wide range of non-fiction texts, laying the foundation for the skills they’ll need in order to be successful in their English GCSE. Several Year 9 students took part in the BBC School News Report project – watch this space for the next budding Krishnan Guru-Murthy or Emily Maitlis!
In Key Stage 4, most Year 10 students have been studying poetry from the English Literary Heritage in preparation for a controlled assessment, with a particular focus on works written about World War One and the Crimean War. Language & Literature students have been exploring the world of advertising, gaining an insight into how advertisers try to appeal to, and manipulate, their target audience. Year 11 Edexcel students and AQA students have been working extremely hard preparing for their summer exams, with many students attending after-school clubs and Saturday School sessions in order to make further progress. As always, we are impressed by the commitment and dedication of all of those students who are willing to go the extra mile in order to achieve great results. At the end of term, we ran several successful on-site English Enrichment days during AEE week. Students had the opportunity to work with a professional poet, produce a viral marketing campaign for a product of their choice, and learn to communicate using semaphore. We hope that the activities we offered were interesting, inspiring and above all, fun! We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Year 11 Edexcel students for their English Language exam results – we are so
Outstanding Students Year 7 – Tara Rousselot for her insightful contributions in class discussions. Year 8 – Antoinette Vassell for her excellent attainment and effort. Year 9 – Gemma Rosser for making great efforts to address her personal target following Parents’ Evening. Year 10 – Mohammed Khan for his outstanding effort, attitude and attainment in every lesson. Year 11 – Maita Ndewere for her excellent effort and attainment.
ART It has been another very busy and productive half term in the Art department. Year 7 are just completing a huge project in which all students have created a clay tiled based on the work of the artist Hundertwasser. These pieces will now be fired in our kiln, and when finished will come together to make one large, very impressive mural. Year 8 have continued their work on cubism art, and have been creating collage landscapes based on the theories of this movement. Year 9 are coming to the end of their current project, and have been designing their ceramic sculptures for their final pieces.
Year 10 and 11 have both been studying the figurative sculptural work of artist Henry Moore. Year 10 have been concentrating on sketchbook studies using a range of mediums, and year 11 have created their own ceramic sculptures. Year 11 students have also been working extremely hard finishing all their coursework in preparation for their exam work next half term, we wish you all luck!
Outstanding Students Year 7 - Travis Thomas and Kyla Pritchard Year 8 - Wiktoria Zabujsc and Adeel Nasir Year 9 - Esther Obuobish and Vinkita Dhawade Year 10 - Jenny Minzako and John Dye Year 11 - Laura Lucas and Ellie Swain
D.E.A.R. Day (Drop Everything and Read) On Wednesday 27th February students took part in our academies very first D.E.A.R. Day (Drop Everything And Read). Students read subject specific material for 10 minutes in every lesson. In Music lessons students read about the benefits of music therapy whilst in Media students read about soap operas. During the day you could also find Science students reading about predators as climate helpers and in Maths lessons students read about Pythagoras theory! Literacy Co-ordinator, Miss Gingell, said “We had a wonderful D.E.A.R. Day. The students enjoyed reading some challenging and interesting texts. Lots of new ideas and concepts have been shared by all departments. The attitude of all students was exemplary.�
Physical Education A huge congratulations to Ms. Byrne’s Year 11 GCSE PE Group who completed their practical examination and worked extremely hard to achieve very good grades. Both examiners commented on how polite and welcoming every pupil made them feel, and the outstanding hard work that they displayed! Well done! Keep up the revision and good luck with your exam in May. All pupils part of the Leadership Programme have out-done themselves again! This term, Year 10’s ran a multi-skill festival to 60 primary school pupils at Abbotsbury where each Leader taught different skills and ran competitions for the younger children. Year 10’s and 11’s leaders also helped the MSSP to run the Morden Primary School’s Hockey Competition. Here Leaders showed great encouragement and coaching to the young players. You have all been exceptional and a credit to the school. The PE Department are excited to welcome two new members of staff after Easter, Ms. Creswell and Mr. Jensch. Both are very experienced and talented PE teachers who will be fantastic additions to our team. We would like to thank Mr. Chellew for all of his hard
work here and for sharing his expertise and stories from New Zealand. We wish him the best of luck in his future. The PE Department will be running extra curricular clubs in rounders, tennis, athletics and cricket so check your tutor notice board for more information.
Outstanding Students Year 7 – Tara Rousselot for her insightful contributions in class discussions. Year 8 – Antoinette Vassell for her excellent attainment and effort. Year 9 – Gemma Rosser for making great efforts to address her personal target following Parents’ Evening. Year 10 – Mohammed Khan for his outstanding effort, attitude and attainment in every lesson. Year 11 – Maita Ndewere for her excellent effort
Student Referral Centre Keeping It Safe Conference On Friday 1st March a group of our year 9 students attended the Keeping It Safe Conference held at the Chaucer Centre. This is the third year that the event, organised by Merton Council and the Met Police, has run for the borough’s high schools. Our students were joined by a group from our sisterschool Harris Academy Merton, alongside students from three other schools.
This session involved students ranking a list of values / hopes for the future in priority order. A discussion which looked at how a person’s priorities change depending on their age and position in life. followed Under Pressure by Joan Simms (Uptown UK) This workshop looked at the pressures faced by young people caused by the media and social networking. It gave students The focus for the event was crime and community the opportunity to discuss how they feel safety. Students took part in drama scenarios, about this and also to identify what type of interactive workshops and presentations that media they use the most and are therefore included the following: most affected by. It included the topics of cyber-bullying, under-age sex, stereotypes, Stop and Search Workshop by John O’Kelly (St internet pornography and the effects that Teresa’s Youth Project) exposure to these have on young peoples’ This workshop was very entertaining. It began with actions. some of the students being stopped and searched Action and Consequence by Ollie Campbellfollowed by all students participating in role plays Smith (Bare Truths) about concealed weapons and how detectives This drama based workshop encouraged deduct who may be carrying a weapon. students to consider the consequences of The session concluded with students being given risk-taking – both positive and negative. information about their rights if they are stopped Community Safety Quiz and searched and also emphasised the need for An interactive quiz focussing on crime them to show respect to an officer if they are statistics. stopped. Positive Paths by Anna Chivers (LBM My Futures Team)
Drama - ‘In Holland Stands a House’ In Holland Stands a House tells the story of Anne Frank and her family and friends who lived for two years in an annexe above her father’s office during the second world war. After her death, Anne’s diary was published by her father. This play is adapted from Anne Frank’s diaries by Sue Sanders and is performed with permission from Harper Collins. Auditions have taken place for our academy’s production of ‘In Holland Stands a House’. Auditions were well attended although there is always room for any students that were unable to attend.
Humanities Spring 2 has been a very short half term, however, the students have been continuing to work hard and make progress in their Humanities subjects. We have held our second departmental interfaculty event, which was another great success. The Geography Department led by Mr Ralston, devised a Geography map challenge, in which students,
our Kst 4 students. The Year 11 History and Sociology students have now completed their course and can focus on revision. Year 11 Geography students have been preparing for their final controlled assessment and so they too will be focusing on revision next term.
Clubs
We have a variety of Kst3 and 4 clubs taking place this term. We are running Year 11 History and Geography clubs on Wednesdays and Fridays to support students in the final stages of their revision before the exams begin. We also have a Kst3 Humanities Homework club, so come along on a Monday after school if you need some extra help to complete your homework for the week ahead. For more information about clubs, check our Humanities noticeboard. working in faculty teams, had to find and use clues to draw an accurate map of the world. Many students took part and embraced the challenge with enthusiasm. They showed great team work and were developing their map skills at the same time. In KS3 History Year 7, 8 and 9 students have been developing their extended writing skills. Students in Year 7 have been studying the balance of power in the Middle Ages. Year 8 students have shown great interest and empathy in the unit we have completed on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Finally, students in Year 9 have been learning about the events that took place after World War One and have investigated why Hitler had become so popular by 1933? It has been another busy half term for
Next half term is going to be the most important term yet. Our Year 11 students must take full advantage of all the support we are providing to ensure success in their summer exams. All other year groups must be working hard to ensure their target grades are met in this final term of school. We also have another PSHE Culture day to look forward that is planned for May 24th 2013. Students will be taking part in a variety of activities which will help them to explore the cultural identity of themselves, the school community and our nation.
Outstanding Students Year 7: Derrel Abdulla for excellent effort in his Humanities lessons. Year 8: Shannon Britton for excellent Humanities homework. Year 9: Jaden Abrahams for excellent progress in History. Year 10: Malini Ravichandran for excellent effort in all her Humanities subjects. Year 11: Savita Paul for her dedication to her Humanities subjects.
Modern Foreign Languages Year 7 students have been learning how to describe their wonderful families and friends in Spanish. They are making fantastic progress, with many students working at a level 5. If they keep working this hard they will soon be ready for a GCSE in Spanish! This term students in Year 8 have continued to become experts in the world of Sport. They have described gruesome injuries and studied the importance of healthy eating. They have also read a short story about Chabacano a small penguin and his adventures at the Olympic Winter games! Year 9 students became Spanish TV critics this term. They have expressed their views of different genres of programmes and films and studied the original Columbian soap opera:
Outstanding Students Spanish
Year 7 - Charlotte Harling and Chenelle Sparks. They are becoming Spanish stars! A term of brilliant work. Well done girls! Year 8 - Rhiannon Hughes for achieving a L6 in an amazing piece of homework! Year 9 - Bailey Jones for her hard work and determination to improve her level every term! Year 10 - Roberta Boswell for achieving an excellent standard in her Oral Controlled Assessment. Year 11 - Sasha Harper for working exceptionally hard this term and producing an excellent piece of writing for her Controlled Assessment.
French
Year 10 - Natasha Colwell and Shauna Marney for 100% effort this term! Year 11 - Pratik Rai and Sandra Acheampong also known as the French perfectionists. Keep up the excellent work!
Ugly Betty. It has also been fantastic to hear that many students have chosen or are considering doing Spanish for GCSE! Despite the weather here in the UK, our year 10 and 11 students have been reminiscing of holidays abroad and memories of relaxing at the beach in preparation for their Written Controlled Assessment. Year 11 students must now focus on preparing for their final Listening and Reading exams. Revision will begin during Easter School-make sure you are there!
Year 10 & 11 Flamenco Show Trip Going to the Flamenco Festival on a wet and cold night definitely set my mood before we had even arrived. However, as soon as the curtains rose, my mood certainly lifted. The energy of the talented dancers got me wanting to go up on stage myself and I soon forgot about the dreary weather. Every movement seemed perfect to me whether in unison or not which was unbelievable. I could tell everyone around me was amazed as I was since after every two minutes we wanted to clap and cheer. The live music on stage made the night extra special because we could see what each musician was doing; incredibly impressive! It was honestly a performance worth watching! Maita Ndewere - Year 11 Student
Maths During the second half of this Spring term our focus has been ‘Maths month’. Throughout March, students from all year groups have participated in a number of maths challenges, the highlight being our Manga High online competition running across the Federation. Over 160 students have represented our academy, and despite our relatively small size, we are competing strongly with schools much larger than ours. Positions on the leader board of our top ten students change daily, and are watched carefully on our Student Bulletin Board. Winners will be announced at the end of March. March was also the month is which our Year 11 students completed their GCSE examination. We were extremely proud of the determination they showed in their preparation for this exam and we look forward to the results next term. Year 10 students are ready to begin their final preparation for their first sitting of the GCSE examination in June, along with Year 11 students, as they push to achieve even higher grades. We are also very proud of our Year 8 G&T team who will represent our academy soon in a Federation competition being held at Harris Academy Purley. We wish them lots of luck!
Congratulations!
Outstanding Students
Many other students who were nominated by their teachers this term.
Year 7 - Makoni Kargbo. A magnificent clearthinking mathematician who makes thoughtful contributions to learning. Year 8 - Romans Kuznecovs, A creative thinker who loves to solve problems. Year 9 - Navid Rehman . A talented mathematician who shows interest in all aspects of mathematics. Year 10: - Mohammed Khan A student who loves a challenge and can apply his knowledge to solve even the most complex problems. Year 11 - Veronika Zidulini. An extremely hardworking and talented student who uses clever thinking to solve a range of problems.
Some of these students are – Tyler Thompson, Samantha Feist, Warsame Ali, Denneil Dunbar, Jenny Minzako, Innocent Makwara, Phillip Wren, Francis Garcia, Josirah Caballero-Farquharson, Sandra Pielech, Mohammed Khan, Isaac Mbimbi, Houshang Beigzadeh, Anisha Islam, and Firaz Qamar
ICT The focus of the ICT Department has been on a purposeful campaign to ensure that our young people maximise their potential in this, the shortest term of the Year. Our Year 11 students are now in the home straight of their educational journey toward their level 2 qualifications. It is imperative now that these students maintain their efforts and sustain their focus to ensure they attain the best qualifications they can…and they have certainly been doing that in the ICT department of late. We have run many additional intervention sessions both in school and outside school hours with Saturday school, after school and half term break sessions that Harris Academy Morden have put. We hope this will allow our students to face their challenges with courage and go on to succeed. In KS3, Year 7 have been exploring the MIT learning application “Scratch”, an application designed to instil the basics of computer programming into young people. Year 8 and 9 have been exploring web development this term and have been learning the process of creating animations for the world wide web in the form of their own “hand drawn” animations and moving on to creating advertising movie banners in the Adobe Creative Suite, namely Flash CS4. Year 10 are well on the way to completing their gaming scenario for GCSE Computing in the programming language of Python. Our Year 10 business studies students have been learning aspects of business administration as part of their AQA course. Year 11 OCR and GCSE students are now coming to the end of their coursework modules and I am pleased to say that we look as though we are to have a very successful year, providing our young people maintain their own high standards for the last few weeks. We wish them all the very best of luck of course. Looking ahead, we envisage some excellent results this summer. We like to think we are preparing the students for success in the 21st century.
Outstanding Students Year 7 - Tara Rousselot - Her sheer enthusiasm for ICT is amazing! Year 8 - Bethany Coates - Great effort in lessons. Year 9 - Ben Tomanek - Outstanding progress in ICT lessons. Year 10 - Erica Da Silva - Outstanding work in lesson for the AQA GCSE in Computing. Year 11 OCR - Aly Hamdan - Making a huge effort with his OCR coursework and getting it finished
Inter-Faculty Geography Challenge Harris Academy Morden’s first ever inter-faculty geography map challenge took place in March and was met with enthusiasm and courage by each year group. The challenge set, was to draw an accurate version of the world map from memory. Clues were set up around the academy to help student’s complete specific details such as mountains, deserts and important cities. Competition was high as only two students were allowed to leave to find the clues, which they had to memorise before returning to draw. Maps were graded on accuracy, shape and the location of countries and also on specific details. With each faculty providing a team, student’s memory skills were put to challenge and the final results was a range of outstanding maps. Having 30 minutes to complete the task, stamina and planning was the key to success, with the final minutes of the competition based around students locating Micronesian islands and drawing accurately Antarctica. Several Key stage 4 students were a credit to the academy as they guided teams of Key stage 3 students in finding clues and directing teams.
Inter-Faculty Choir Challenge Harris Academy Morden’s first ever Inter-Faculty Choir Challenge was held in February and the students involved were an absolute credit to themselves and the Academy. All four faculties put out a very strong choir for the competition. They had to demonstrate their ability as a choir to perform a piece of music. Faculties choice of songs were The Kings of Leon’s ‘Use Somebody’ and Rihanna’s ‘Unfaithful’. Backing tracks and the lyrics were provided and after an intensive rehearsal which focussed on learning the lyrics and the melody, students were put through their paces in front of a panel of judges. During the performance, each faculty choir was given an opportunity to wow the judges with their vocal talents. The judges were very impressed with the stamina, pronunciation, tone and volume of each choir during their chosen performance. The Blue faculty had a very strong turnout of members and achieved a very high score for volume, whilst the Red faculty scored very confidently for tone. The Green faculty scored highly for pronunciation and the Yellow faculty sang the entire song with great stamina!
Science Another whirlwind term is at an end and looking back is as exciting as looking forward. The term was filled with intervention session, revision days, Saturday school, G&T club and the all important preparation for the Year 11 exams. Students in KS3 had a chance to complete their Spring 2 assessment and are preparing for the all important end of year exams. Year 9 students had to make the all important subject choices and some were brave enough to pick the Triple Science route. Science also ran intensive revision days for all year 10 students and everyone had to work hard to complete their controlled assessments. We were again very lucky to bring in experts from the Harris Federation to assist us in delivering a fantastic program that all students had high praise for. As always the science enrichment clubs are there supporting students who are in need of extra
challenges but also for supporting students with whatever questions they might have concerning the curriculum. Science have also appointed 3 permanent staff members for after Easter and we know that this is a positive step in creating an awesome Science department for the future.
Outstanding Students Year 7 - Anjeela Thapa. A student with a brilliant mind and inquisitive nature with a love for everything Science Year 8 - Sandra Pielech . A student who shows real commitment and loves the challenges posed to her in Science. Year 9 - Akshay Chundunsing. A real scientist in the making exploring and questioning problems posed in the lessons. Year 10 - Mohammed Khan. A dedicated student who works hard and deserves every praise there is for an excellent half term. Year 11 - Ivet Angelova. A Student that proves that hard work, resilience and dedication will bring success.
Aspire, Experience & Explore (A.E.E. Week) To broaden students’ experiences at Harris Academy Morden, a week of ‘Outstanding’ educational opportunities were offered for students to select and experience. The programme provided students with the opportunity to visit places of interest and take part in wonderful activities to experience new learning opportunities. Students had a fabulous week, experiencing ‘deep learning’ events and activities including trips to The London Science Museum, The Natural History Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum as well as HMS Belfast, Leeds Castle, Hillingdon Activity Centre and the Greenwich Observatory alongside a poetry day to celebrated National Poetry Day.