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The Heath
Monday 17th to Wednesday 19th December 7pm
Adults £5 Concessions £3.50
‘The Wizard of Oz’
DECEMBER 2012
Living for Sport A group of year 9 GCSE PE students took part in a living for sport project with Neill Danns an Olympic Skate Boarder, learning key skills to raise their attainment in GCSE PE.
December brings with it tinsel and our touring ‘Wizard’ workshops! Weston, Daresbury and Moore primary schools are all going to be visited by the main cast of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and our performing arts staff on December 10th. Their Year 6 students will be exploring t h e M u n c h k i n wo r l d w h i l e learning ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’! We look forward to hearing about the day! The Heath will open its doors on December 17th to welcome eight local primary schools, our own students and their parents, to present ‘ The Wizard of Oz’. See next term’s newsletter for a full review
and some photographs of our festive fun! Tickets now on sale from school! The Performing Arts Team wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Baking our way down the Yellow Brick Road! The Performing Arts team organised a ‘Bake Sale’ this half term to raise money for ‘The Wizard of Oz’. The staff and students supported the fundraiser and managed to raise £180, which is paying for a carpeted Yellow Brick Road that starts in our school foyer! Huge thanks to staff and students for once again supporting the Arts.
If you know of anything happening in and around our school community, let us know, or if you have any comments about the newsletter email: stewartd@heathschool.org.uk
2012 To help ease the transition from Primary to Secondary, The Heath offers a residential trip to Kingswood at Colomendy in October for our year 7 students. The aim of the weekend is to encourage positive peer relations, allow the students’ time to get to know their form and form tutor a bit better, and likewise allow the year team staff the opportunity to get to know the students better, all in a less formal setting than the normal school day is able to provide. 130 students attended this y e a r ’s r e s i d e n t i a l , a l l experiencing 2 full days of outdoor activities, ranging from Lazer Quest in the woods to Archery and the extremely high climb up Jacobs’ ladder. Pretty scary at t i m e s , b u t a l w a y s a “challenge by choice”, with no one ever being forced into doing anything that they didn’t want to, but everyone being encouraged to try something new and set themselves a little goal that they could achieve. Lots of us did things that we never dreamt we would be able to do, with many overcoming life-‐long fears of heights, encouraged by our friends and reassured by the lovely Kingswood staff. During the evenings we had a huge camp fire in the woods. We sang songs, told stories and jokes and had hot chocolate with marshmallows before going
off to our dormitories for a good night’s sleep in readiness for the next day’s activities. The food was excellent at Kingswood, and made sure that everyone had plenty of energy for all the running around during free time and climbing the hill to the activities several times a day. All the Kingswood staff were extremely helpful and made sure that we had a lovely time with nothing ever being too much trouble for them. A fantastic time was had by all the students and staff, and our aim of getting to know each other better was well and truly achieved. Thank you Kingswood and thank you to the Year 7 staff for making the weekend happen.
Geography
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‘Mount Geography’ has been erupting again this month in as grand a style as ever. Year 8 have totally overwhelmed us with their excellent model volcanoes. This year they have included sparkling volcanoes, cake volcanoes and even one with a fan inside to blow the crepe paper lava up in the air. After days of bubbling eruptions, it may take weeks to get rid of the smell of vinegar (!) but it has been well worth it. Thank you Year 8 for all your hard work. Mrs Hignett
How do I get it? Register and Watch Podcasts Online Login to iZone and click the GCSEPod button. You will be automatically registered and can watch thousands of podcasts for free! Download Podcasts to Your Device to Watch Offline Click the “Add to my Downloads” button next to any podcast on the GCSEPod website and follow the on screen instructions. Get the App! Login to GCSEPod on your computer or mobile device, click the “App Setup” button on the homepage and follow the on screen instructions.
Year 7 Early Bird Reading Intervention
This term has seen the launch of a new initiative to support The Heath’s drive on literacy. The Early Bird Reading Intervention offers early sessions, before the beginning of the school day, for Year 7 students who want to enhance their reading skills. This is a “buddy reading” programme involving 40 trained Reading Champions from Years 8 and 9. The level of commitment and effort shown by our Year 7 students and the high level of skill demonstrated by our Reading Champions in supporting our readers is impressive and all students involved are a credit to themselves and The Heath.
Angela Farr Glynis Russell
PE News November has been a busy month in PE. The girls have started on their new units of work, with the Year 8’s studying Health Related Exercise. Some of the girls took part in a boot camp and, although some of them got rather muddy in the process, they all enjoyed the lesson and would like a repeat performance! Our Year 8 football team had success at the Halton Schools 5-‐a-‐side indoor football tournament at OBA. We were worthy winners and the girls want to thank Mr Cahill for his managerial skills and for all his motivational team talks. Breakfast blast continues throughout this half term. Our regular attendees enjoy some games of basketball, rounders and tennis before having a healthy breakfast. Big thanks to Karen from the bungalow and Mr Bond for making our toast each week. Our year 11 rugby team have been in action this month and got a great result. They beat Sts. Peter & Paul 17-‐10 AND with only 9 PLAYERS! Tries were scored by K Ashley, D Strain and O Campbell and T Dempsey kicked 2 goals and a drop goal. Our Leadership groups have also been busy this half term. The Year 11’s have prepared a fitness session for a local residential care home and will be delivering it in the next couple of weeks. The Heath School played host to the annual Everton FC Mini Kickers Runcorn Primary Schools festival on 6th November 2012. Despite the poor weather, the year 1 and 2 pupils played really well and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. This event would not be able to happen if it wasn’t for the brilliant support given by our Year 10 Leadership group from PE. They arrived at school at 8am in order to set up the goals and make the final preparations for the day and displayed their excellent leadership skills throughout the festival by refereeing and supporting the schools . Paul Bennett, Development Officer for Everton FC, praised the efforts of our referees who had received some coaching prior to the event. The Heath has had links with Everton FC for 4 years and are delighted that this partnership will continue into the future.
If you would like apply for a place or find out more information please contact Kate Allerston, Principal of LIPA 4:19 at the Heath t: 01928 576664 or e: kallerston@heathschool.org.uk
Boe Bot Wars Learning electronics, Programming and Robotics all at once. Tuesdays 15:10 – 16:10 We’ve spent the last few weeks building our robots, adding Capacitors, Servos and LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes) to our circuit boards. We finished the chassis last week and are now ready to f inish programming the two Basic Stamp 2 Microcontroller Brains using PBASIC. By Christmas we are hoping to have the robots zoom around the class independently. Student comments... “We get to program circuit boards. It teaches us stuff about programming” - Sam “Teaches us how to put real things together” - Callum “Helps you build robots” - Rhianna “It’s awesome!” - Reece “Something fun to look forward to every Tuesday!” – Mathew
Year 8 meet artist Jeni McConnell for Inspired Responses 8. This year we are very lucky to be working with the artist Jeni McConnell. Jeni brought examples of her work in and gave a great talk to 8X4. She demonstrated how she draws using pipettes, salt and oak apple ink. Our students had a go and the results were really interesting, they had fun exploring the techniques. Last lesson we explored ideas about Runcorn and the Heath’s local history, the Heath School Badge, Family Coats of Arms, and ships. Their work is on a blog Jeni has made us on exploringtheheath.blogspot.com so you can take a look. The exhibition or our students work will be on in The Brindley Arts Centre , Runcorn in January 2013. Mrs Wade & Mrs York
Ten Heath pupils from years 10 and 11 visited It was not all hard work though. We were able our partner schools in Cape Town during the to spend time with Durbanville pupils visiting October half term. It was a ‘working holiday’; some of the tourist areas. One of the w e w e r e h o s t e d b y highlights was our trip up Durbanville High School Table Mountain in brilliant pupils and we worked in sunshine – where we the Alpha school nearby watched Mr Gregory abseil during the day. off the top! We also saw When we learned what p e n g u i n s a t B o u l d e r s Alpha had in mind for us, Beach, visited the District on our first day, it was a bit Six museum, Camps Bay of a shock! We were b e a c h , a C h e e t a h shown to a patch of rough sanctuary, Cape Town g r o u n d w h e r e a W a t e r f r o n t a n d playground was needed. Stellenbosch. Not put off, we came up On the Thursday, we were enjoying the sun at Camps Bay Beach with a plan (or ‘a vision’ to honoured to be invited as be precise, expertly sketched by Mr Gregory), ‘VIP’ guests to the Alpha’s concert. We were sourced all of the materials and got to work. treated to an hour of dancing and singing – it Within four days, the fence had been painted, a was a truly amazing experience. border had been installed, the ground had We look forward to hosting pupils from been levelled out and tyres had been delivered Durbanville High School in June 2013 and for sinking into the ground and using as showing them the sights of Runcorn! swings. The following day, a huge amount of Mrs Segal, Miss Olden and Mr Gregory sand arrived to fill the area and the playground was done! All of our pupils worked on the site, along with Alpha pupils and our staff too.
Pupils at The Alpha – you can just about make out George Fairclough, James Shellshear, Sam Bazley and Ellie Smith in the middle!
Taiko Drummers Our Japanese Taiko drumming group has been very fortunate to work alongside the Mugen Taiko Dojo drummers at the Brindley as part of the Warrington and Halton Music Hub Taiko Residency. The drummers, who are based in Scotland, are the only professional touring Taiko group in Europe, so working with them was a fantastic opportunity. The Year 7 and 8 Taiko group learnt some new techniques as well as improving and developing one of our existing pieces. The Mugen Taiko players thought we were amazing! The project lasts for two weeks, and the group are travelling around schools in Halton and Warrington to work with Primary, Secondary and College students. The Heath was a host school for four feeder primaries and the whole school resonated to the sound of the Taiko drums! Well done to everyone in Year 7 a n d 8 w h o w a s i n v o l v e d w i t h t h e p r o j e c t . Miss Dale It is that time of year again, when hundreds of thousands of p e o p l e i n c h u r c h e s , s c h o o l s a n d workplaces all around the UK join together to do something really special. It is to make sure that more than a million children around the world know that they are loved and not forgotten at Christmas, through Operation Christmas Child. Pupils at The Heath have been busy wrapping and packing shoeboxes for the charity Samaritan’s Purse to be sent to children in need overseas. Last Christmas Samaritan’s Purse collected 1.1 million shoeboxes and sent them to children in 12 countries across the world. This year we collected 91 shoe boxes which were greatly received by
The Samaritan’s Bootle depot. Thank you to all the parents, pupils and staff who have got involved and contributed to Operation Christmas Child. Your love and generosity in wrapping, packing and sending shoeboxes makes a big difference to children’s lives.
Dance
Drama
The Dance department were busy preparing for the next Halton dance festival in March 2013 buy delivering an training day to the local primary schools involved. Participants were up on their feet –trying out new ways of working with dance (and introducing dance to those who may be less experienced). They left with a tool-‐box of ideas for their dance. The Title this year’s festival is ‘Inspire a Generation’ and We have more schools than ever taking part this year. Watch this space for details of the performance and where to get tickets.
Anti-‐bullying Week 2012 Once again GCSE D ra m a st u d e nt s from Year 9 & 10 led the way this Anti-‐Bullying Week as they performed a piece of Theatre in Education, devised at KS4 Drama club, in assemblies throughout the school. The thought provoking piece entitled ‘How can you tell? You can’t!’ resonated more so than usual with students this year, as staff bravely offered their own experiences of bullying and these anecdotes were included in the performance. The students wanted to challenge the stigma attached to reporting bullying and the mindset that it’s somehow a reflection on the victim. ‘How can you tell? You can’t’ is now available to view on our school website.
Drama Partnerships The Drama Department welcomed our friends from Cronton Sixth Form once again as our Year 10 students took part in their ‘Phantom of the Opera’ workshop on Friday November 30th. The Heath students were keen to hear the casts’ thoughts on A Level and university applications. Year 1 0 a l s o d i d a s t e r l i n g j o b o f capturing the dark characters in the classic musical, as we can see below!
The Heath - Closure Dates SCHOOL CLOSES
SCHOOL REOPENS TO STUDENTS
Thursday 20th December 2012
Monday 7th January 2013
Friday 15th February 2013
Monday 25th February 2013
Thursday 28th March 2013
Monday 15th April 2013
Friday 3rd May 2013
Tuesday 7th May 2013
Friday 24th May 2013
Monday 3rd June 2013
Friday 19th July 2013
Inset Days Monday 22nd July 2013 Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Wednesday 24th July 2013