The Batley Buzz April 2023

April 2023

Edition 8

Our children deserve the best. No child left behind - ever. Every school a great school. Creating remarkable people.

Our Trust Vision

Every young person, regardless of their starting point, or background receives a high quality education, including first class care, guidance and support.

Our Infant and Primary News

A very special visitor

Nursery have had a very exciting visit from Goldilocks as part of the Traditional Tales they have been exploring. Goldilocks ran straight into Nursery after leaving the house of the three bears. Luckily, the Nursery children had lots of questions for Goldilocks that they had already prepared, they wanted to know whether Goldilocks went to school, which of course she did and she made sure that she attended school every day! Some adults at Manorfield thought that Goldilocks reminded them of a certain member of office staff, however I can confirm that Mrs Stephen was in fact tidying out a cupboard when Goldilocks was in the building, so any similarities were just a coincidence.

Reception family fun afternoon

Reception children and their parents had lots of fun at our recent workshop!

Parents took part in a variety of activities that showcase how readily available resources can be used to support learning at home. The activities included making number lines out of playdough, Ramadan decorations, playing dice games using home-made dice and printable board games, going on an Easter egg hunt, planting ‘evil’ peas and even making their own superhero outfits!

We had some lovely feedback from parents:

‘The workshop was very interesting on how to interact with your child’s learning. I will help my child’s learning at home with the ideas out of this session.’

‘Parent workshop was very useful. Took loads of ideas to home. Great initiative.’

‘The parent’s workshop was interactive, engaging and very helpful. I found the activities a great starting point to do at home. Thank you for a great session.’

We are excited for our summer term plans which include lots of fundraising thanks to our fabulous fundraising team and a full schedule of exciting trips to enhance our children’s understand of the world around them.

Keeping Batley Tidy

Our Year 3 and 4 children, along with many other children from our Trust family of schools, went out and about picking up litter from the streets nearby as part of Keep Britain Tidy's Great British Spring Clean. Our Eco Warriors are determined to ensure we can all have pride in our local community.

Year 5 and 6 Sports Leaders

Year 1 and 2 children had a great time at Batley Sports and Tennis Club this week, joining in lots of games with children from other schools.

We were so proud of our 10 Year 5 and 6 Sports Leaders who ran the whole event! Mick Troop, our North Kirklees Coordinator, was full of praise for how they confidently and competently organised and instructed all of the younger children.

Raising money for Syria and Turkey

Having seen the devastation following the earthquake in Syria and Turkey, some of our Year 5 children felt they had to do something about it. They began making and selling loom band bracelets and charms. They designed posters and worked out prices by themselves - so far they have raised over £30!

Fun at the Science Fair!

The Science Fair afternoon was an event organised by three students from Year 6. We are so proud of how proactive they were in putting forward the idea for this afternoon. They did all the preparation in their own time and every time more suggestions were made to improve the organisation of the afternoon, they went away and worked even harder to plan alternatives. They all showed outstanding resilience and perseverance to make this project happen. An exceptional effort!

This is the children’s write up of the event: During the event, Year 6 students have showcased experiments, while helping the children learn, interact and communicate, but mostly... HAVE FUN!!!

For a starter activity, each class did a chromatography experiment.This experiment was set to the side (after it had been done) and soon changed colours. This was explained at the end of the session. After the starter, every class in Reception, KS1 and KS2, was put into 3 groups.

Each class in Reception and KS1 took part in:

● Skittles experiment

● Sugar cubes experiment

● Volcano experiment

The skittles experiment bursts out with lively colours and unique spiral patterns. The sugarcubes showed how we can stop water from being absorbed when foil is placed between them.

The volcano erupts with fizz bursting out of it, which was enjoyed immensely.

In KS2, there were also some experiments that the children took part in:

● Volcano eruptions

● Absorbing sugar cubes

● Bouncy balls

Sadly, the bouncy balls took a turn and didn’t work out. Due to this, Year 5 did the skittles experiment instead which was a great success!

Thankfully, all the other experiments worked! What a great afternoon!!

World Poetry Day at Healey School

Year 1HC Class won our Key Stage 1 Poetry recital competition with an absolutely fabulous performance of ‘Rainbow Dragons’. Every child in Year 1 and 2 took part and it was wonderful to see such confident performances from all classes.

What an honour it was for Year 4 to meet a local poet, Mohamed Saloo.

It was an inspirational day as pupils learnt how Mohamed overcame shyness through his poetry. Children loved learning from him and then attempting some of their own poetry!

Carry My Story

Over the course of the year, pupils from Year 4 are taking part in the ‘Carry My Story’ project.

The programme encourages tolerance and builds respect by linking schools together so they can learn from each other. In March, our young people joined up with their link class from Crossley Fields School.

Having already exchanged letters, poems and art work as well as having an online meet-up, it was great to finally get together in person! Nervous faces were soon replaced with huge smiles as we took part in a fun-filled morning, playing games and immersing ourselves in team activities.

We all made new friends too!

Our Secondary News

Poetry workshop with Sheffield Young Poet

Laureate A group of 12 Year 7 and 8 students have been involved in a two day poetry workshop with a Sheffield Young Poet Laureate, Nyanda Foday.

The first day enabled our young people to learn poetry writing and performance techniques, followed by an opportunity to create a piece of poetry with a focus on themselves; how they feel and hopefully allowing them space to be honest and focus on the positive views of themselves and their future career pathways.

The second day gave young people the opportunity to learn and practice performance techniques, ending in a poetry slam style event where each student can perform their work.

Business Breakfast with FDM

We held our first Business Breakfast as part of our suite of career initiatives. Our aim is to inform young people about a broad range of careers which they may have not previously been aware of, or thought about. These events will become a regular feature of the school calendar to enable us to introduce a variety of employers to our young people.

Our first employer to attend was FDM, an IT company. FDM Group is an award-winning, accredited IT services provider providing IT solutions to a range of clients globally.

Young people from Key Stages 4 (GCSE) and 5 (BG6) were interested to hear about the opportunities available. We hope this will inspire them to think about careers within the technology industry in the future.

It’s a brilliant experience for our young people to learn new skills, broaden their imaginations and stretch their comfort zones. Writing poetry is also a super tool for

Community Kitchen with Batley Grammar School

Our Community Kitchen, which is run by Sally Porter, Facility’s Supervisor and Community Outreach Worker and Christine Chappell, Assistant Head - Culture; seeks to support local families by providing much needed food and sweet treat hampers throughout the year.

Following some extremely generous donations from Birstall Rovers FC and Gary Scott (Grounds Maintenance) as well as monetary donations from staff (and their families) at BGS, Community Kitchen were able to donate 16 Easter Hampers to local families for them to enjoy throughout the holidays.

Each hamper contained a range of sweet treats including hot-cross buns, crumpets, hot chocolate and nutella - along with fresh products such as butter, milk and many other items, including hygiene products. In total, 48 children all received an Easter Egg as part of these hampers.

Community Kitchen works on a referral basis and aims to support local families periodically throughout the year. If you would like to make a referral, donation or you would like to know how you can join the Community Kitchen team, please do not hesitate to contact Sally or Christine at Batley Grammar School.

Year 8 Dragons’ Den

We held a Dragons' Den event for our Year 8 Young Green Briton Challengers. This sees the culmination of a series of work during Inspire time to identify climate issues, the impacts and the solutions, which then informed their drop-down day design sprint session. Learners then continued developing their business plans, identifying roles based on individuals' strengths to cover; costings, benefits, promotion and how their idea would work in practice.

Ten groups competed, presenting to four Dragons; made up of teaching and associate staff including the Headteacher and Trust CEO.

Five finalists have been awarded £100 per team and matched with mentors from Young Green Briton to help further develop their projects. The winner will go on to take place in the National Awards in London, this summer.

Transferable skills in History

Year 7s have recently been applying their history knowledge to career development to see how it can inform their future pathways. Learners were tasked with researching the Battle of Hastings and producing a newspaper article on the event. This showed our young people how the skills they learn in History can help to develop their research and editorial skills.

Preparations for Spring!

Some of our learners have been busy during the winter months repairing and building new paths around the garden and repairing cloches for the vegetables to be protected so they can grow. This year we are growing an abundance of tomatoes (currently under close watch!) of differing varieties from black, yellow, tiger striped to giant tomatoes!

Another group of learners have been doing the first hive inspections of the year and were checking the brood for disease etc. The hives were all fit and well and some honey trays have been placed ready for the bees to start producing. We used smoke to calm the bees down before the inspection.

Our Sixth Form News

Dr Juanvi Canet-Perez, Lecturer in Biological Sciences and Admissions Lead for Biomedical Science at the University of Bradford, recently delivered a session to highlight the pathway to degree courses within the life sciences faculty at the university.

The initial talk described the Biomedical Science programme and its career options. Following a short Q&A, the 20 young people attending engaged in two hands-on activities. One was a micropipetting competition where they learned a key laboratory skill: how to use a micropipette with accuracy and precision to transfer small volumes of liquids and for the second; they observed three specimen slides using a compound light microscope.

A Year 12 student said:

I really enjoyed today and found the session interesting. I learned new information that opened my university and career choices, that I would have never thought of if it wasn't for today's sessions. I found the activities fascinating, especially when looking at the tissues through the microscope to identify them. I am looking forward to attending the open days at University of Bradford in the future!

The tragedy of a Thursday evening!

Betrayal. Jealousy. Lies.

Love. War.

All this took place on your average Thursday evening. Of course it didn’t affect us, we just went to watch it all unfold in the theatre.

Watching a play and reading it are two very different experiences; I personally thoroughly enjoyed watching it live as it was much more interesting to see the raw emotions from each character and how the scene changes so drastically from a normal setting to when a soliloquy is being read.

The set was a fascinating concept as they only had one set for the entire show. It was great to see the way the actors used the set to present each scene no matter what it was.

Account from a Year 13 student.

University of Bradford - Science Week

Our Curriculum Enrichment

Our trust family of schools offers a wide range of curriculum enrichment activities.

This greatly enhances our young people's educational experience, and also supports their health & wellbeing.

Lisa is a champion for Eco-Schools, as well as sustainability, both at UBHS and across the Trust family of schools. Her commitment to this is evident from her recent work with Year 8 learners at UBHS in support of the Young Green Briton Award. Lisa also coordinates a group of colleagues from all 6 schools in working towards Eco Schools Awards.

Our Staff Super Heroes

Jess and Lucy have successfully secured the Artsmark Gold Award for BGHS. The attainment of the creative quality standard for schools is a celebration of the commitment to arts and cultural education by Batley Girls’ High School.

The submission was led by Jess and the award is a demonstration of her tenacity. She was supported by Lucy, Head of Art.

Kiara (a teacher at BGS) has been a key part in developing the Pol-Ed programme for schools. She received a commendation from West Yorkshire Police at a recent event, for her fantastic work in developing this high-quality curriculum resource now being rolled out to all schools in West Yorkshire.

Patrick is the Year 9 Achievement Leader at BGHS. He has done an amazing job engaging young people in his organisation of the First Give social change project.

Sam is the More In Common subject leader at UBHS. Hre has led some excellent work around implementing Pol-Ed into the curriculum, and he presented superbly well at the recent West Yorkshire conference. This exemplifies how he is a champion for More in Common (PHSCE).

Lisa Woods Jessica Barratt and Lucy Swierczynski Kiara Laher Sam Rodwell

Our Community Work …

really means a lot to us, and we see our Trust and our schools at the very heart of our community. Community Makes Us and it is the unity in community that matters. Spring cleaning around our schools…

The environment and sustainability is high on the agenda across our Trust family of schools each of whom have an Eco Committee and either Eco School Green Flag status, or are working towards this accreditation.

The Great Batley and Spen Spring Clean took place 17 March - 2 April and our family of schools took part in various litter picking activities during this time, pledging to collect a specific number of bags of litter in and around their school areas.

Our local MP, Kim Leadbeater, led the Great Batley and Spen Spring Clean, as part of the Great British Spring Clean, which is organised by Keep Britain Tidy.

Calling all Trust colleagues!

If you would like to arrange a visit to the UBHS apiary please contact

sdobson@ubhs.co.uk

If you don’t have space on your school grounds, Steve will help you site and manage your apiary at UBHS.

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The new digital newsletter: Batley & Spen Noticeboard has now been launched - bringing you information about local events and groups.

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Careers work

The careers teams across our Trust schools meet regularly to discuss what we can offer to all our young people in our family of schools to ensure the support is consistent and effective in all school environments. It’s useful to share knowledge and good practice, working together to create outstanding career opportunities that are tailored to our schools and our fantastic young people, taking into consideration the breadth of ages, from primary through to sixth form.

As a team we are looking towards the new academic year and what the needs are of each individual school. Our aim is to build our young people’s confidence, during their journey through our Trust schools, by developing skills that are transferable and in demand by employers. We aim to offer unique workplace experiences that are both engaging and inspirational to ensure our young people are aware of all the routes open to them, as they look towards their futures beyond our family of schools. We are also exploring adult career opportunities, and apprenticeships on offer, for our colleagues across the Trust.

There are exciting times ahead, and together, we will deliver exceptional experiences for our young people, that will go on to impact our local community here in Batley.

Our wider links

Our family of schools Works closely with the BBEST Hub. Check out their website for details of local services, support and activities.

https://bbesthub.uk/About-Us/

We are proud to lead the Yorkshire Rose Teaching Partnership - providing high quality primary and secondary teacher training in West Yorkshire. This consortium includes 15 local schools, Exceed SCITT and local Higher Education Institutions.

Our schools play a key role in the Calderdale & Kirklees Teaching School Hub. This Hub offers support to over 270 schools across our region. The purpose of the hub is to provide high-quality professional development for teachers and leaders.

https://www.ckteachingschoolhub.org/

Support & advice for parents, carers and families.

Childnet International has produced a very informative resource for parents to help you keep your child safe online. https://www.childnet.com/resources/online-safety-activities-you-can-do-from-home For young people; For families; Other specialist services; Childline NSPCC Get it right from a genuine site

Providing help & support for Free support & advice for Find out which sites are legal for downloading Under 18s. parents/carers worried about movies, music and games.

0800 11 11 a young person. https://www.getitrightfromagenuinesite.org/ 0808 800 500 https://www.nspcc.org.uk/ Ask about games

https://www.childline.org.uk/

Advice and online guides about gaming and The Mix Family Lives PEGI ratings. Provides essential support for 13-25 Free, professional, non-judgemental https://www.askaboutgames.com/ year olds. advice.