It’s been a fantastic start to the academic year for year 9 and we can’t believe how much we’ve already covered.

In English we have looked at imaginary stories through Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak and biographical and autobiographical writing, focusing on the achievements of Lewis Hamilton. In maths, aside from the day to day sessions, we’ve undertaken some interesting activities to develop children’s understanding of number. This includes developing weighing and measuring skills through cookery, handling money through monopoly and challenging children’s mental addition and subtraction skills through playing darts.

In humanities the pupils have loved learning about The Great War, WW1. We have learnt about the causes of the war, the alliances, life in the trenches, the role of animals in the war and the Battle of The Somme and Remembrance Day.

In science the children were challenged to make the largest circuit they could using electrical components in our Autumn 1 science topic Electric Circuits. The pupils also had great fun using the Van der Graaf generator as you can see from the images below.

In the second half term we have been investigating forces, the children rose to the challenge and made parachutes to protect an egg being dropped from the fire exit and designed paper boats and challenged one another to see whose boat could take the most weight.

In the first half of the Autumn term in Learning for Life gave children had the opportunity to learn about taking care of themselves both physically and emotionally, looking at a balanced diet, exercise regimes and taking care of their emotional health. This half term we have been discussing what it means to be British, learning about the government and what a democracy is.

Some of the year 9 pupils have been busy outside with Mr Bradshaw and one of our governors Catherine Muncaster.  The pupils are creating an allotment space in the woodland area where they have already planted Onions, Garlic and a number of Raspberry canes.  They have also spent time out front of the school reception, putting in some spring bulbs including daffodils, tulips and many Crocus corms kindly donated to the school by the Stevenage Rotary club.