11 October 2024 - Letter to parents

Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope that you have had a great week.  We were really pleased to see the support of parents and carers at our Year 9 parents and carers at our Information Evening and we had a wonderful awareness raising day for World Mental Health Day yesterday, plus a Year 11 trip to the Hippodrome to see the play, ‘An Inspector Calls’, which they are studying for their GCSE in English Literature.

Key Dates 

Year 11 Exams Prep Information Evening – Wednesday 26 March 6.15 – 7.45pm

Parent Subject Consultation Evenings 

The dates for these through the year are as follows: 

Year 7 Parent Subject Consultation Evening – Thursday 3 April 3.30 – 7pm 

Year 8 Parent Subject Consultation Evening – Thursday 5 December 3.30 – 7pm  

Year 9 Parent Subject Consultation Evening – Thursday 6 March 3.30 – 7pm 

Year 10 Parent Subject Consultation Evening – Thursday 14 November 3.30 – 7pm 

Year 11 Parent Subject Consultation Evening – Thursday 13 February 3.30 – 7pm 

Please also note the following date: 

Year 9 Options Evening – Thursday 27 February 5 – 7pm 

To help parents and children decide together which options subjects/GCSEs they might choose to take over the next two years in school. This is on the same date as the Subject Consultation, as we found this worked very well for parents last year. 

Teaching and Learning/Curriculum 

This coming week sees our first Year 10 data capture. This will give us an idea of how our Year 10s are settling in to their GCSE courses. As mentioned at the Year 10 Parents’ Information Evening, the most powerful thing to do to help students remember things is to regularly test them in a relaxed way.

During that evening, for example, we regularly tested each other to try and remember Mr Hurran’s favourite food (black beans and rice or ‘feijoada’ as it is known in Brazil). A great way to help your child to do this is to write questions on one side of a piece of paper and answers on the other. You could use cue cards – sometimes called Flashcards – to do this.

Attendance 

Congratulations to the following Tutor Groups for the highest attendance in their year groups this last week!

7A2, 8A2, 9W2, 10W2, 11D2

We are continuing to celebrate the highest Friday attendance too, with House Points awarded to every student in the winning Tutor Group of each year. These winners are shared in Tutor Notices in the afternoons.

More information will follow next week on our first Attendance Reward event.

Safeguarding

Supporting Inter-parental Communication Project

This is a great opportunity for support for parents/carers (separated/together/solo) that

-are arguing a lot/struggling to communicate/stopped communicating

- have a child aged between 8 and 14 years

-are not experiencing current domestic abuse/ substance use difficulties and are not in current court proceedings (please contact for other support in this case)

The help on offer will either be Mentalization Based Therapy with a relationship therapist or access to online resources with practitioner support. It’s a research project which requires 3 questionnaires to be completed at intervals and parents/children are rewarded with shopping vouchers. £10 per questionnaire with a bonus £10 for completing all 3. A family of 3 would receive £120 in total.

Further information here: Support for Interparental Communication (SIPCo)

Referral form here (parents can self- refer): https://forms.office.com/e/kcjftQn66D

Planned Lockdown Practice

We will be holding a lockdown practice on Thursday 24 October at 2pm. Staff and students have been informed so they can prepare for this and make sure they are aware of what they need to do. It is important that we carry out these types of practices to ensure we are prepared and know what to do in the event of an emergency in the same way as we practise evacuating the building in the event of a fire. You will also receive a text from the school on the day as a gentle reminder that this practice will take place. Please speak to your child about this at home.

Kinship Care Week

As part of changes to support offered by the Local Authority and schools, some students who are in kinship care can access extra support.

Kinship care is where a child is being raised in the care of a friend or family member who is not their parent. The arrangement may be temporary or longer term.

This includes:

- informal arrangements

- private fostering arrangements

- child arrangements orders

- special guardianship orders

- kinship foster care

- adoption (friends or family)

Find out more about the different types of care.

Support offered in Bristol for kinship carers:

Kinship Compass

Kinship Compass offer a range of information and training, and coffee mornings to connect with other kinship carers in the area. Find out more on the Kinship Compass website.

Special Guardianship Support Service

The Special Guardianship Support Service is a dedicated team that supports special guardians in Bristol. They organise regular coffee mornings and family events where you can meet others in similar situations and access support.

To find out more, email special.guardianship@bristol.gov.uk.

Reading Rulers

Reading rulers have launched in all lessons, for all year groups and have been a great success! Students have each been given a branded Orchard Reading Ruler and have been shown how to use them. For any reading task, they can hold them above the line, below the line or even a few lines below. Reading rulers have been shown to support literacy and help students to engage in being active readers at all levels of reading age and ability. 

If your child has lost their reading ruler, they are available to purchase on Arbor Pay for 25p and they can be collected from the library, either at lunchtime or after school until 4pm. Please contact us via your child’s Pastoral Manager in confidence if you wish to access the Hardship Fund for this purchase. Many thanks for your support with this. 

Our School Library

Our school library is the beating heart of our school! It’s a beautiful space with huge windows overlooking the field, and is wall-to-wall with over 9000 books. It is open every day for students to use and enjoy at lunchtime and after school until 4pm. It is also the venue of homework club. Students each have an account with the school library and can take out up to three books at a time. We also have a book club, visiting authors and various book award shadowing events which are advertised to students in tutor notices. We are very proud of our library and we would really appreciate it if you could discuss with your child how to use it for reading, research and homework.

Community Events 

There are a few community events coming up at Ebenezer Church on Filton Avenue, including their free, 90th birthday celebration this weekend on Saturday 12 October. See their flyer for more information.

With best wishes, and in hope of a sunny weekend! 

Mel Sweet, Headteacher