This has been another busy term for Year 10, full of cinema visits, camp-outs, learning new skills and for the girls, a taste of the Fashion Industry in action.

November started with a whole school cinema trip to watch ‘The Secret Life of Pets’. This kick-started the school’s year-long project aimed at highlighting the skills needed to care for our animals and allowed us to take part in national arts programme.

The day continued with a short journey to Wymondley Woods, where Year 10 embraced the outdoors and began their overnight trip by sorting out their rooms and taking a walk through the woods.

The trip was a great success which enabled the group to share activities, chores and more importantly, marshmallows around a campfire! We had a lovely evening and were visited by a number of staff who all joined in with our sing-song.

The following day was another exciting event for Year 10 – the opening of The Valley Enterprise stall at the Indoor market in Stevenage.

Prior to the event, the students had been working hard on a variety of hand-crafted items which were put on sale. On our way back to school, we dropped in to find out how the opening had gone. It went very well and to date, it has been very successful.

Students are continuing their with their making to provide stock for the stall, learning how to design, construct, saw, sand, glue, embellish, sew and bead – to mention but a few skills.

At the same time, the students have also carried on with their Valley Tuck shop on Thursdays, again learning a host of new skills such as budgeting, costing, profit, market research and selling. This has also proved popular and we will carry on with this over the year.

More recently, the Year 10 and 11 girls were offered the opportunity of visiting The Clothes Show in Birmingham. This was an exciting and busy trip which included a visit to the North Herts College stand where their students were exhibiting their work. We met the Head of Art and Design and had a look through the artwork produced by their students, learning that the course they were following was the follow on to the GCSE. We then did rather a lot of shopping before watching the professional catwalk show.

In amongst all of this, Year 10 have been moving forward with their learning in school and have begun to take on more responsibilities within school, helping lower years with their trips and supporting individuals when they have needed help.

All in all a very successful term and we are all very proud of them!