Samuel Ryder Academy
Issue: 50 Date: 21 Dec 2017

Dear Parents and Carers

Christmas spirit is in the air at the end of an excellent term.

On Friday last week it was the turn of Year 2 (and family members) to celebrate Christmas with the Christingle celebration led by The Reverend Mark Slater at St Luke's Church.  It was a lovely event to attend, with the children reading out loud to everyone with great confidence, behaving impeccably, singing beautifully and enjoying the spectacle of the event.  Thank you to those family members that were able to attend and to the Year 2 staff team in their efforts to prepare for the event.

On Friday evening I was fortunate to get a ticket for the secondary phase performance of “School of Rock”.  I had heard great reviews from the performance on Thursday evening, so expectations were high, and I am delighted that I was not disappointed – it was fantastic!  The quality of the set, sound, lighting and costume, the high class acting and the outstanding musical performances from both singers and the band, all contributed to a fabulous musical production.  Well done to all involved and thank you to Mrs Ward and Mr Fothergill for pulling it all together and getting the best out of the students.

I would like to congratulate Ciara Calthrop, 9 Christie, for winning the Christmas Card competition.  The card has been printed and used as the SRA Christmas Card this year.  Well done Ciara.

Headteacher’s Awards are presented to those who do something above and beyond.  This could be producing an exceptional piece of work, continually meeting exceptionally high standards or a particular act of kindness either within school or in the community.   This week I have had the pleasure to present Headteacher’s Awards to the following students: 

Oliver Zimmerman, 10 Christie, for his work over and above, and his attitude in French and Spanish, which is exemplary in every way.

Kiran Nandhra, 10 Christie, Freya Diggens-Wilson, 10 King and Eloise Strevens, 10 Christie, for their level of commitment and enthusiasm in Art, and creating exceptional work which is of an A Level standard.

Lava Shikho, 11D, for working incredibly hard in Inclusion, tackling difficult work and ensuring it is understood and achieved, no matter how challenging it is.

Emily Laflamme, 8 King and Gemma Kinnear, 8 Dahl, for consistently producing incredible Science homework and classwork, and showing a great work ethic in helping others to succeed.

Gemma Kinnear also received an award for her RE project, which was completed to an extremely high standard, and included extra work that was above and beyond what was expected.  Well done Gemma, and to all award winners.

Finally, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas break and enjoy spending time with family and friends.

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions I would be pleased to hear from you, please contact me at head@samuelryderacademy.co.uk.

 

Mr Gauthier

 

 

 

Samuel Ryder Christmas Card

The Samuel Ryder Christmas Card has been designed by Year 9 student, Ciara Calthrop, this year. A beautiful design - thank you, Ciara!

 

 

Primary Phase News

What’s been happening in KS1 this week?

Year One

Over the last few weeks, we have been testing the properties of materials to build the ‘Three Little Pigs’ a strong house.  We made predictions and investigated waterproof materials for our roof and strong materials for our wall.  We tested the strength of our houses by placing heavy objects on them and attempting to blow them down with a hair dryer.

This week, we have been using commas in lists to write a letter to Santa and have written a winter poem.  In maths, we have continued to develop our knowledge of addition.

Homework

We will not be providing official homework during the Christmas holidays.  As a writing opportunity to embed letter writing skills that we have been developing in Literacy, it would be nice for the children to write ‘Thank you’ letters to Santa.

Reading Books    

We have collected all of the reading books for over the Christmas holiday.  Please continue to read a range of fiction and non-fiction books, newspapers and magazines at home with the children.  Bug club will still be available for use over the holiday.

Junk Modelling 

We will be creating castles made out of junk/recyclable materials next term.  Please send in any wrapping paper tubes, boxes (all sizes/shapes) and ribbons etc… that we can recycle to create our masterpieces.  We are unable to accept boxes that have been exposed to food items e.g. cereal boxes, due to a range of allergies that children have across the school. 

What’s been happening in KS2 this week?

In Year 4, we have been showing off how much progress we have made in our times tables and have been achieving really good scores in our Times Tables Rockstars tests. Please keep practising over Christmas and see if you can smash it next term too!

We have also welcomed Miss Jackson who will be taking over Durham Class. Please do say hello if you see her on the door.

 

In Year 5, the children have been writing their own Christmas stories.  They have really enjoyed using their imagination and have impressed us by including many of the literary techniques that we have learnt this term.  We have been delighted with the quality of the Christmas / Winter decorations that the children made for their homework this week.   They have  brightened up the classrooms and helped to ignite the holiday spirit.  We will not be setting any official homework, but would like the children to continue reading regularly and practising their times tables.  We wish all of you in Year 5 a restful break and look forward to welcoming you back in the New Year.

Reminders

Flying High in Year 5

Congratulations to all of  those children who received a Flying High certificate this term.  It will be great to celebrate further successes from the children in the New Year.

Swimming Year 4

Just another reminder that swimming will continue on the first Friday back (12th January) for this week only. Please ensure children have a swimming kit in school that day.

End of term arrangements - school finishes for the term on Thursday 21st December at 12.15. All children will need to be collected in the usual way at 12.15. Children will not have lunch at school on the last day of term so please do not send them in with a packed lunch or expect them to have access to a school lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Junior Apprentices

Team Brainstormers:

A big well done to Team Brainstormers and their Year 13 mentor, Khadja Zaman, who​ baked and sold some very yummy cakes to raise money for their charity, Young Carers in Herts. Last Thursday the team also sold some ‘Make your own key rings’ after school to primary children. Their combined total comes in at just under £100. Superb effort guys!

Super St Andrews:

​A big well done to Super St Andrews who are running a copper run event. Thank you to everyone who has provided coppers, the team are currently counting them all. All proceeds will go to their charity, Daylight Club. Last Thursday and Friday, Super St Andrews and their Year 13 Dragon, Hannah Morriss sold some candy canes to Primary children and raised just over £80. So far, they have raised almost £150 for Daylight charity. Well done Super St Andrews

A huge ‘well done’ to both Junior Apprentice teams. It’s been a pleasure seeing their enthusiasm and determination over the past 6 weeks.

Mrs Jenkins

Student Voice Coordinator

    

 

Primary Football

Congratulations to our Year 4 and 5 football team, who came so close to their first victory last week, drawing 3-3 at Bowmansgreen Primary. Mason Owen scored a brace and Luke Dunton put in a very strong performance in defence.

Mr. Barlow is proud of the team’s progress  so far this year. ‘We have BEEN thrown in at the deep end against some strong teams, packed full of Year 5 and 6 pupils, so for us to get our first point is real progress. We have learnt a lot about the strength of the league and, more importantly, the ability of our pupils this term. Thank you very much to all parents for their support and to the pupils, who gave me a lovely card this week. Have a happy Christmas everyone!

Secondary Phase News

 

 

                                                                             

 

                                                   Student Celebration

We are delighted that two of our students are performing as part of a dance troupe in local pantomimes this year. Ellie Calas, is currently performing in' Aladdin' at the Alban Arena and Lilly Wortley is performing in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' at the Gordon Craig Theatre, Stevenage. Well done girls!

   

Life Skills

At the end of this term, the Life Skills groups put on their traditional Christmas productions. Firstly the Y9 group produced an excellent Locked-Room mystery for the staff. Luckily we had Mr Gauthier and the English department to decipher the final anagram, otherwise we’d all still be locked in!

Then the Y7 group put on an excellent performance of “A Christmas Carol”. Congratulations to all who learnt their lines, brought in costumes, and entertained their parents.

Finally, this morning saw the Y8 panto “Cinder-smella”, whereby Cinder’s smelly feet stopped the prince from marrying her – again, well done to all the boys who happily dressed as women and made us laugh with their antics and one-liners.

A huge thank you to all the parents and staff who attended and supported the children. This was the biggest turn-out ever. Well done to all the Life Skills staff, especially Miss Begum, who have worked with the children and helped them gain confidence and skills and have helped the Y7s settle so well into Samuel Ryder Academy.

 

Upcoming Events

Year 7 Parents Consultation - Thursday 18 January

Year 8 Parents Consultation - Tuesday 30th January. The deadline for returning slips has passed.Please can we have the last few returned.

Year 9 Parents Consultation - Thursday 8th February. Please return reply slips no later than Wednesday 20th December.

Sky Academy Trip

Despite the cold weather, on the 15th of December, some students from Samuel Ryder had a great day on the Sky Academy science trip.  First, before we got started with the activities, we were shown what exactly engineering is and what professions are related to it.

 The first activity was an opportunity to learn what it is like to work on a news set. We were put into groups and given a studio each to perform and film part of a news report on fossil fuels. Afterwards, our videos were put together to make a full report that we all got to watch and enjoy.

 The second activity was very competitive. We were each given equipment and told to make a car run by elastic energy. The winner was awarded a speaker.

The car that went the furthest went 5 metres!

 The final activity was code breaking. We were given clues to find out who the hacker was. During this session we learnt what a coding wheel was and how to use it.Overall, a great day for the Samuel Ryder students

Charlotte Johnson, Year 8.

On the 15 December, Y8/9 went to the Sky Academy, near Heathrow. We got to experience 3 different activities. The one that I did first was the elastic band car. We had to use elastic bands to power a  K'nex car. We made the car, then had a competition in our groups. There were 3 different groups. In group 3, myself and Daisy Page won. The second activity was the code breaking challenge. We learnt about how different era's used different codes to send messages. We used the Cesar wheel to crack codes. The final activity was the skills studios. We got to record out own news report. We wrote the script, filmed and presented our own section of the video.  The trip was amazing, except the traffic on the way back, but morale was high.

Alice Smith 

 

Dragons Apprentice

Team Stealth invites you to come and have lots of fun at their ‘Bring your Granny/Grandad to Bingo’ night on Thursday 25th January 2018 at Samuel Ryder Academy. Doors open at 6pm, for a prompt 7pm start.

Refreshments will be available to purchase and raffle prizes will be available to win.

Tickets are £5 per person

Please visit their website Www.bit.ly/2kf4aF2 for more information and to purchase tickets.

All proceeds go to their charity, Armoral Hill Day centre.

 

 

Samuel Ryder App

Please remember that we supply the ‘Samuel Ryder’ mobile app.  We use this for non-student specific communication, it also has a copy of the school calendar and the latest Samuel Ryder news.  This can be downloaded from your mobile device’s App store by simply searching ‘Samuel Ryder’. Click here for a guide on how to download.

We have recently created ‘All Primary’ and ‘All Secondary’ notification groups. We ask that you please select one or both of these options in your app settings in order to receive information about primary or secondary as a whole. This needs to be done in addition to your year group selection (please change this to your current year group as soon as possible). If there are any queries regarding this please don’t hesitate to contact App_Help@SamuelRyderAcademy.co.uk

Facebook and Twitter

To keep up to date with lots of exciting activities happening in school please like our Facebook Page and follow us on Twitter!  Click here to visit our Facebook page, and follow us on twitter at @SRASecondary and @SRAPrimary. Our Facebook and Twitter accounts can also be accessed through the ‘contact’ section of the app. Simply click on the small Facebook or Twitter icons and you will be linked straight to our pages.

Technical Assistance

If you are having any issues regarding Parent Pay, the Samuel Ryder App, or Sims Login , please use the following email contacts for assistance:

Parent Pay Log in requests:

Finance@scholarseducationtrust.co.uk

School App

App_help@samuelryderacademy.co.uk

Sims Log in Technical Assistance

technicalassistance@samuelryderacademy.co.uk

School Volunteers

We now require all volunteers to provide a reference for us to keep on file. If you are currently on our records as being an active volunteer at Samuel Ryder with a current and valid DBS, you are required to complete and return a “SRA Volunteer Reference Form”. Please can you ensure that all referees have a valid email address, so that we can approach them in this way. Thank you for your help and continued support for our school.

 

Term Dates Academic Year 2017-2018

Autumn Term

Half Term – Monday 23rd-Friday 27th October 2017

Friday 24th November (INSET) – School closed to Students

Finish - Thursday 21st December 2017 – Autumn term ends for all Students, 12.30pm.

 

Spring Term

Start – Friday 5th January 2018 (INSET) - School closed to all Students

Monday 8th January 2018 – Spring Term starts for all Students

Half Term – Monday 12th-Friday 16th February 2019

Friday 23rd February 2018 (INSET) – School closed to all Students

Finish – Thursday 29th March 2018 – Spring Term ends for all Students, 12.30pm.

 

Summer Term

Start – Monday 16th April 2018 – Summer Term starts for all Students

Half Term – Monday 28th May – Friday 1st June

Finish – Friday 20th July 2018 – Summer Term ends for all Students, 12.30pm

 

Harnessing the power of emotional intelligence

On Friday 2nd March, 09:30-12:00pm, there will be a Parent Coaching Workshop 'Harnessing the Power of Emotional Intelligence'  at Batchwood Leisure Centre, run by Sarah Ellis and Sally Sharp.  This workshop will explore:

  • What emotional intelligence is and why it is important
  • Navigating social and emotional challenges
  • What gets in the way
  • Teaching, building and modelling emotional intelligence
  • Supporting emotional regulation

For further information, please click here