This is the timetable for revision sessions over the Easter holidays. You will be able to get more details from each individual subject teacher regarding the format and content of the sessions.

Such was the success of having paralympian, Steve Brown, as guest of honour for the school’s GCSE presentation evening back in November, saltash.net invited him back to spend a whole day with staff and students during the Spring Term.  Steve came into school on Friday 13^th March and students from across years 7-13 all had the opportunity of listening to his inspirational life story and what it has been like to be Captain of the England Wheelchair Rugby Team.

Steve led four separate assemblies during the school day and then, as keynote speaker, contributed to a saltash.net staff training residential that was taking place in the evening.

Speaking after Steve’s visit, headteacher, Mrs Bryce, said: ‘Steve epitomises the ‘can do’ attitude that we nurture here at saltash.net.  His story is captivating and I am so pleased that he was able to pay a return visit to us.  We all wish him well for the 2016 Olympics next year.’

Year 11 student, Paris Netherton, posted a photo of herself with Steve on Twitter stating, “Me and the coolest guy I’ve met – made me laugh and motivated me for my exams.”

Steve can be contacted on Twitter @SteveBrownGBWR.

Saltash.net’s reputation for developing students’ musical talents was definitely enhanced at the recent Bandslam concert.  Organised by Head of Music, Emily Venner, ably supported by teacher of Music, Nicola Silvester, the concert showcased an eclectic mix of musical styles, enabling students from across years 7-13 to perform to a packed hall and very appreciative audience.

Musical items included numbers from three of saltash.net’s  bands:  Peppy Tones, Yellow Tor Road and Factor 5, as well as vocal duets from Emily Horsham and Tiegan Aire, ably accompanied by Jonah Rich on the drums, Megan Kelly and Emily Lambert, and Molly Banks with Tommy Williams who delivered a haunting version of Bon Iver’s ‘Skinny Love’.

Solo artists included Jacob Hunt and Shannon Paris, and there was a rousing drum and electric guitar performance by Year 8 students Lewis O’Leary and Ryen Brandwood.  Concluding the concert were the saltash.net singers who sang their hearts out with a harmonious version of ‘We found love’.

Congratulations go to all students involved for a great evening’s entertainment.

Students from across years 7-13 participated in an exciting and varied Spring Term Theme Day on Wednesday 25^th March at saltash.net.  Director of Creativity, Amy Feldwick, assisted by Head of Art, Jim Romain, organised another excellent day of enrichment opportunities, designed to help all students continue to build and develop their SECRET skills.  The SECRET skills help students to become, among other things, good Self Managers, Effective Participants, Creative Thinkers and excellent Team Workers.

Activities on offer during the Theme Day included a parent and student event called ‘Hats through History’ which saw Year 8 students creating and modelling hats from various historical eras, culminating in a catwalk fashion display at the end of the day.

Students from Year 10 worked with RIO, the Real Ideas Organisation, on a social enterprise project whilst for the 6^th Form there was a visit to Cardiff University for Year 12, and a day of university preparation and ‘life skills’ events for Year 13.

Not to be outdone, Year 7 travelled to Bristol to explore the superb museums on offer, Year 9 participated in a day of physical challenges including rock climbing in the school’s sports hall, and for Year 11 it was a day spent preparing mentally and physically for the pressures of the forthcoming GCSE examinations.

Speaking after the event, Amy Feldwick said, “It was a hugely successful day.  Our students learnt a great deal during fun, exciting, engaging and motivating activities.  I would like to thank all staff involved for their hard work.”

You can now download the latest school newsletter

by following the link below;

• Click to download the March 2015 newsletter

The Year 10 Parents’ Surgery is on Thursday 07 May 2015 between 4.00pm and 6.30pm and you are warmly invited to join us to discuss your child’s progress. This is an important time in the academic life of your child and the evening provides the perfect opportunity for you to find out exactly what needs to be done as you and the school work together to enable your child to maximise their potential.

Preparing for the Parents’ Surgery

There are a couple of things which you can do before you attend the Parents’ Surgery which will help you to get the most out of the evening:

1. Look at the Progress Trackers which you received in November and January along with the latest one that you should have received in April ahead of the Parents’ Surgery. Progress Tracker is designed to give you an overview of your child’s performance against their potential as well as the level of effort in each of their subjects. It is issued four times a year in Year 10 to enable you to follow your child’s progress across the year.
2. Please look through your child’s work and planner – you can do this together over the next few weeks and discuss how they feel they are progressing. Subject teachers will have written specific comments on how your child can improve in exercise books, on their work and/or planners. This will happen at key milestones in their learning rather than on every piece of work. Although it will vary from subject to subject, on average there will be at least one key comment for every 6 lessons.

Making appointments

You will be aware that we have moved to an online booking system for Parents’ Surgeries. This is working very successfully for the Parents’ Surgeries already being held this year.

You will need

Your child’s legal first name and surname
Your child’s date of birth

To find out more, please find below the letter sent home with students and an accompanying Powerpoint file giving some great tips on how to use the booking system

• Parents HowTo
• Letter to parents

Students and staff from saltash.net came together in a fundraising effort to show their ongoing support for the Saltash based Youth Project ‘Livewire’.

As an independent youth charity, Livewire relies on donations and grants from its supporters to help it continue to provide an invaluable service for the young people of the town and surrounding villages in South East Cornwall.

The school raised the total of £227 through a non-uniform day event and invited the Youth Work coordinators, Andy and Julie Rance, into a school assembly to collect a cheque on Livewire’s behalf.

Headteacher, Mrs Bryce, said, ‘We are always pleased to be able to provide support for local charities and Livewire plays such a key role in our town, developing young people’s musical talents, as well as providing much needed youth counselling and advice. We wish Andy and Julie ongoing success with their fundraising initiatives’.

Details of how to donate to Livewire can be found on the Project’s website www.livewireyouth.com

On Thursday 30th April we will be celebrating the achievements of our current year 11 girls’ football team with a special ‘one off’ fixture. Year 11 vs. ‘The rest of the school’ will be a final opportunity for the year 11s to pull on the red and black shirts that they have had so much success wearing. The match will kick off at 3:30pm on our all-weather pitch and it would be great to see as many students, family and staff down there as possible. Please come and join us as we say ‘goodbye’ to this team as they play a ‘rest of the school team’ made up largely of the current u14 County Championship winning side. Girls’ football is thriving at saltash.net and this is something we are all extremely proud of.

Students at saltash.net community school have been achieving high levels of success in national writing competitions over the last few years.  Most recently, 33 out of 38 Year 9 students who entered a competition entitled ‘Poetopia’ were successful in having their work selected for publication in a forthcoming anthology.

The Poetopia competition is run by the National Young Writers’ organisation and the rules surrounding the conditions of entry were very tough indeed.  They demanded that each student write a poem depending on which ‘faction’ of society they belonged to.  Their ‘faction’ was decided upon after they had answered several questions in a quiz about their personality, a quiz inspired by popular dystopian fiction such as ‘Divergent’ and ‘The Hunger Games’.  Library Manager, Matt Coot, said:  ‘We had a brilliant selection of poems submitted for the competition including many that showed off the students’ knowledge and passion about current affairs.  I would like to say well done to all the students who took part and thank the English Department for their help and cooperation.’

Congratulations go to:

Campaigning has begun in saltash.net community school’s mock general election. ‘vote.net’ will see students choosing their own election winner from amongst eight student candidates representing different political parties and independents.

The election, which will take place on May 6^th on the eve of the UK general election, has been planned to be as much like the ‘real thing’ as possible, and will include hustings, opinion polls, poster campaigns and party political broadcasts as well as less traditional election elements such as  twitter and political muffins.

Voting will also be organised like real life elections with an electoral register, polling clerks, voting booths and ballot boxes, and of course the thrills and tensions of an election count.

The election is being organised by Adam Killeya and Emma Metters, who between them make up the school’s Politics Department. Mr Killeya said, “By the next general election 80% of these students will be able to vote: we feel that it is really important for them to have a chance to experience it now, and learn why it is so important, so that they will engage with politics as adults.”

The full list of candidates is:  Sally Bowman (Labour), Freddie Brasher (Mebyon Kernow.net), Nathan Croft (Liberal Democrats), Amy Donovan (Conservative), Charlie Hele (Independent), Ed Rule (Green), Ben Russell (UKIP) and the Supreme Chancellor of Bin Squirrels (Monster Raving Loony). The Supreme Chancellor is otherwise known as Alex Ferguson, a student currently in Year 11 at saltash.net.

Picture: Candidates and supporters in vote.net 2015, with Head of Politics Adam Killeya.

At the end of every half term, saltash.net community school’s Maths department leads a Maths workshop for year 5 and 6 Gifted and Talented pupils from all its local primary partner schools.

The workshops, run by Key Stage 3 co-ordinators Heather Crook and Jennie Benzie, offer the youngsters the opportunity to explore and discover Mathematics that they would not normally meet in the primary curriculum. Topics covered so far this academic year have included, binary numbers, platonic solids and Euler’s formula, Eulerian Graphs and A-level differentiation. The topics are introduced in a fun and exciting way, which promotes higher level thinking and questioning from the children. They are encouraged to work together in small groups and discuss their learning and ideas.

Maths teacher, Mrs Benzie, said, “The children are very excited about coming to saltash.net, and enjoy the sessions. They always leave with a smile on their faces and are keen to share their new found Mathematics knowledge with their classes and parents.”

Comments received from the primary pupils have been very positive:

“Every Friday when it’s Maths masterclass, I always look forward to it because I want to find out the exciting new challenges.”

“Every lesson I go to teaches me so much and I have such a good time. It pushes me to do my best.”

“I find it challenging, but I learn something new and it makes me proud.”

“The best bit is finding out I have done some A level!”

Please note,

Sports Day has been moved to 3rd July with the reserve date of 9th July

Many students have been congratulated in saltash.net’s assemblies over the past week.  They include four students who have been commended for their ongoing excellence in P.E and have been awarded gifted and talented badges in recognition of their achievements.  The students are Lauren Hancock and Lois Walklin for Netball and Emily Lambert and Hannah Courts for all round P.E excellence.

In addition, three students from years 9 and 10 were awarded with intermediate Maths Challenge certificates:  Victoria Carter, Ben Illingworth and Amelia Horne.  They join Year 11 Maths Challenge champions – Abigail Medland, Ryan Harvey, Ed Gilford and Michael Spencer.  Thanks go to Mrs Hinds for coordinating the Maths Challenge and to Mrs Hancock for establishing the gifted and talented awards scheme at saltash.net.

saltash.net celebrated British Science Week with a variety of events at the end of the spring term.

The school was delighted to host a team of STEM Ambassadors from Babcock engineering who had organised a challenging activity for Year 8 and 9 students based around the problems of working with a nuclear reactor. The students joined in the challenges with enthusiasm, donning specialist protective gear and taking on a range of roles to plan and design a solution to an engineering problem. They rose to the challenge, with all the teams completing the task, some of them clocking up very speedy times.  The sessions also provided an excellent opportunity for the students to meet and talk to people working locally in the engineering industry and finding out about the career paths and options for future scientists and engineers in the South West.

Science teachers from saltash.net also went out to visit the local primary schools to run a special event to celebrate science week. Children form Landulph, Sir Robert Geffery’s, St Stephens, Brunel and St Germans had the opportunity to design, build and race air-powered rocket cars. The children all enjoyed the activity immensely and there were some fantastic creative designs, as well as some speedy cars hurtling across playgrounds and halls.

Back at saltash.net, Teacher of Science, Mr Granville-West hosted a series of lunchtime events, open to all students, in which he demonstrated a fire twister, made ice cream from liquid nitrogen, set fire to his own hands and blew a lot of smoke through an air cannon, amongst many other exciting and hands-on demonstrations.

Over the past Half Term, 8B5 along with Ms Childs, Mr Hodson and Mrs Coot have been working hard to produce their contribution for the BBC School Report.

The School Report is a nationwide initiative for schools that encourages secondary school students to research, write, produce and present their own news reports about news that matters to them.

This year’s contribution was magnificent and focuses on what it is like to be a teenager. Students interviewed a range of people from the school community from Year 7 to Year 13 and then teachers and support staff.

The students conducted themselves in a professional manner and took the report very seriously. They did a wonderful job and the report can still be viewed at www.saltash.net/schoolreport

Ms Childs

Participants: Ben Earl, Kathy Kaye, Charlie Trueman, Lewis O’Leary, Luke Seabrook, Emily Toner, Chelsea Trebilock, Danielle Spurling, Connor Townsend, Connor Pering, Joshua Graham and Jack Nancarrow

Over the past few years there have been a number of changes to Microsoft, and a raft of these have been in its educational offering. In early 2015, Microsoft identified that they needed to look at the impact the changes were having on education, but, more importantly, receive feedback on how they needed to improve.

To this end, Microsoft decided to put together a Global Advisory Board that would meet regularly to directly influence and impact what Microsoft in Education did. Officially announced on 10^th April, the Board is sponsored by Anthony Salcito, the Vice President for Education at the company, with its core objective to “Create a group of up to 10 dedicated ‘go to’ education leaders worldwide who meet regularly to provide input around education initiatives.”

The selection for the Board was extremely detailed, as this Advisory Board would need to be able to reflect the views and opinions of the World Wide Microsoft in Education programme. Whilst no one could apply to join the Board, and it would be by invitation only, selection was still made based on a number of criteria ranging from location, past involvement, personality, and input.

Mr Sparvell, Senior Manager at Microsoft Education, explained, “The educators represented on the Board are some of the most inspiring and exemplary educators across the world who are committed to transforming education.” He added that the benefits of being on the Board included, “Networking, informal professional learning, recognition, and access to latest developments and the opportunity to positively influence beyond their school, region and country.”

Out of the 10 Advisory Board members, Microsoft allowed for just three to be teachers or “Expert Educators”. It is therefore incredible to find out that one of those, is teacher of Maths and Integrated Learning, Scott Wieprecht, from saltash.net community school.

“It’s amazing to have even been thought of as an option,” explains Scott. “I do tend to apply for things that I think benefit the students at our school, but it’s really humbling when you get invited to take part in something on this scale, through invitation alone. I can’t however pretend even half the credit is due to me, as this is just a reflection of the amazing culture saltash.net has towards new technology and improving life chances for our young people. Microsoft, along with a whole string of other technology giants, see exactly how incredible our students are, and want to hear and share their best practice.”

Scott is the only UK ‘Expert Educator’ on the board which will meet monthly online initially.  However, there are then plans to assemble the group for face to face discussions around the globe.

“The key thing for me is taking what I know works, and sharing this. Student leadership, which is key to lots we do at school, is just so important, and it’s great that Microsoft sees this, and wants to continue growing with this in mind. Plus, a nice trip to Australia wouldn’t go amiss!”

Students at saltash.net community school have been able to have their cake AND vote for it this week as their vote.net 2015 mock election entered the realm of political muffins.

Students were able to choose muffins at morning break topped by a logo representing one of the eight candidates standing in the election – for Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, Green, Mebyon Kernow, Monster Raving Loony and Independent.  The muffins were made in the school’s canteen but the toppings and designs were created by the school’s DT department.  Visitors to the school during the run up to the mock election were also able to sample some of the political muffins; Mary Crawford and Martin Lister, from the local Saltash Observer newspaper, were each given one to enjoy with a cup of coffee and were pleasantly surprised to find it was possible to eat the campaign slogan topping as well as the muffin!

In addition to the political muffins, students have also heard hustings speeches in assemblies and radio broadcasts from the candidates during morning tutor time.

The election will take place on Wednesday 6^th May and thanks are expressed to Mr Killeya and Mrs Metters, both teachers of Politics at saltash.net, for their organisation of the event.

The cut and thrust of the hustings, the buzz of the polling station, the drama of the count and the thrill of the close result… Not the real General Election, but much more important – the saltash.net mock election! Over the two weeks up to May 6^th eight candidates vied for the votes of the whole school – speaking in assemblies, recording a radio PPB (Party Political Bulletin), and plastering their colourful posters around the site.

On the day itself a dedicated team of students helped turn the lecture theatre into a very lifelike polling station – voters queued up to register to vote, got a stamped ballot paper, took it to a voting booth to vote secretly and then dropped it in the ballot box. They even got stopped by our exit poll-ers on the way out.

In the end over a thousand students and staff voted, and the final result was:

There were 14 spoilt or unclear ballots, 3 blank, and 1 not officially stamped

• Total Votes 1217
• Electorate 1532
• Turnout 79.44%

The winner was therefore The Supreme Chancellor of Bin Squirrels. As a result the Supreme chancellor now joins the school council. Well done to all candidates and thanks to everyone who helped or voted!

A Killeya & E Metters, Joint Returning Officers

Ex-student, Zoe James, returned to saltash.net community school during the week of 20^th – 24^th April to lead assemblies for years 7 – 11.  Currently on her Gap Year before commencing university in the Autumn, Zoe was invited back to share with the school community details of her journey to Jamaica with other representatives of the Baptist Mission Society, a volunteering project that saltash.net had supported through its non-uniform day fundraising efforts last year.

Zoe, accompanied by Reverend Michelle Parkman from Saltash Baptist Church, gave an excellent presentation with three other Gap Year students who had accompanied her to Jamaica.  The assembly gave details of the community work the group had been undertaking in a range of different schools, youth clubs and churches, and also gave current students an opportunity to try out their Patois!

At the end of the assembly, Reverend Parkman invited students to a special lunchtime meeting of the school’s Christian union ‘Soul Survivor’ for anyone interested in finding out more about Jamaica or opportunities available during a Gap Year.

(Picture shows Zoe with her fellow Baptist Mission Society team members, Reverend Michelle and five members of Soul Survivor Club.)

A team of four students from year 8 and 9 were recently selected for the UKMT Junior Team Maths Challenge regional final at Penair School. This is the first time saltash.net has entered the competition and the school was delighted to join 13 other teams from Cornish schools at Penair Community College on the 17^th April.

Freddie Brasher and Amy Donovan from year 9, and Carys Scales and India James from year 8, went head to head in some fast pace timed challenges, where speed and mathematical accuracy really were of the essence. The first challenge was team based and they had to answer 10 questions between them in 40 minutes. The second and third challenges involved them splitting into 2 pairs and only able to communicate answers through an invigilator. The final challenge was a relay where the pairs had to run across a sports hall to share questions.

The team had an enjoyable time at the challenge and all are keen to enter again next year!