Children in Year 3 have been busy exploring how pneumatics can be used to help them to design a moving toy. They have also been learning about how joints, muscles and tendons work and showed great teamworking skills to create models of hands with moving parts.

Following Verulam’s first Social Science Study visit to New York City in 2020, we were delighted to return again in February 2022, despite the many hurdles Covid threw at us. New York City, being the world’s most global city offered the students an insight into a very different society. In Sociology we emphasise to students the need to develop their ‘sociological imagination’, thinking outside of the classroom and to begin to see the ‘familiar as strange and the strange as familiar’. The A Level topics of Sociology of Education; Culture & Identity; Globalisation; Family; Migration; Criminology were built into the trip. The itinerary was tailor-made to meet our specific requirements, not purely around the big tourist sights but based on first-hand knowledge of what this city had to offer. Our trip covered many experiences, some of which were Orientation walking tour of High Line; Twilight ascent of Empire State Building; Ground Zero Memorial; Seminar & Tour; Ellis Island Immigration Museum;  Ice Skating and Hot Dogs in Central Park; Criminology Seminar with NYPD; Museum of Modern Art; Seminar & Tour at United Nations; & Brooklyn Bridge. The students were a credit to the school

Our Year 2 children went on a school trip to Stockwood Park. When you ask the children what they enjoyed most it is often going on the coach or having lunch, but having seen some of the writing that has been produced today there was a lot of science and geography skills being taught as well. Thank you to all the staff and parent helpers who made the day so enjoyable. We have had such positive feedback from the trip and I was proud to be able to congratulate the children for their conduct and behaviour.

Year 8 were treated to a 'Show In A Day' for Extended Learning Day on Friday 20th May. The theme was 'The Lion King' with the whole year group contributing to an afternoon performance in the form of staging, props, dance, drama and music. The music group contributed two scenes and three songs, comprising of Hakuna Matata (Part 1 and Part 2) and Can You Feel The Love Tonight.

The students worked exceptionally hard to learn these tricky songs in such a short space of time and performed alongside a prepared backing track. Congratulations to the whole of Year 8, but a special mention to Jessica, Shae, Thomas and Lauren for taking on lead roles and solos, and to Macey for her especially menacing portrayal of Scar!

 

On Thursday 21 April, our Year 12 Sociology classes took a trip to the Home Office in London to visit The Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) which is located next to MI6 on the Albert Embankment. The Home Office established the Accelerated Capability Environment to explore and embrace new ways to think and react to the threats from terrorism and serious and organised crime. ACE are a team designed to access the best of what industry and research have to offer and coordinate public and private agencies to address and shape public sector problems.

Toby Jones, Head of ACE explained that ACE comes up with fast-paced, innovative solutions to a number of problems with examples that ranged from reducing NHS hospital waiting times to creating a database of potential terrorists. We had the exciting opportunity to speak to various experts as to how they progressed into their role, their career paths after Sixth Form, and examples of what they do day-to-day. 

We were also introduced to Kelly Fisher, Detective Inspector for City of London Police and had the opportunity to ask questions about her career and experiences as a female detective. She gave us advice on the best way to get into the field of detective work which was really interesting and helpful. 

Our next activity involved small workshops from a variety of different professionals. Tracy Alexander, President of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences led us through a crime scene and how to collect evidence using DNA and fingerprints.   Another presentation was about AI and how it is being rolled out in the NHS.  A member of ACE, told us about developments that they are making to a programme that will help doctors to locate and complete surgery on lesions in the brain.  

In our penultimate task, we were given national policing problems that ACE are looking to find solutions to such as: how to reduce knife crime, how to build public trust surrounding the police, and how to reduce domestic violence. Finally, we were given a presentation by Paul Taylor, National Policing Chief Scientific Adviser.  He spoke about plans to try to replace police helicopters with drones to reduce costs and improve safety but also outlined some of the difficulties faced when making decisions like these.  He told us about his education and career development but was very keen to get the message across that there is no one single path that should define us and that we should explore, carve and innovate our own paths.

Overall, it was an interesting and helpful experience, giving us more insight into career paths in sociology we can take after sixth form. 

Sometimes I stumble upon some interesting events as I wander around the school. I had just finished a lunchtime duty a couple of weeks ago when I saw Year 1 having a fashion show—skipping through the willow tree archway in our environmental area showing off the crowns that they had made as part of their Enchanted Woodland topic.

In this topic our woodland area was also used for a scavenger hunt, to inspire descriptive writing and for scientific classification. They also used Chromebooks and iPads to research information about trees, leaves and woodland creatures.

In  April, 51 Sandringham students had the amazing opportunity to travel to Iceland as part of our curriculum enrichment offering for all A Level Geographers. This is the first international trip that the department have organised since the beginning of the pandemic, so it was a fantastic experience for us all to travel abroad again and visit such a unique country with many awe-inspiring physical landscapes. 

The trip took us to a series of famous and iconic waterfalls such as Skógafoss, Seljalandsfoss and Gullfoss, as well as the Thingvellir National Park where the first Icelandic Parliament met in 930AD and where the chasm between the North American and Eurasian Plates illustrates the power of plate tectonics. Also, students had the opportunity to bathe in the geothermal pools at the Secret Lagoon and walk on the glacier at Solheimajokull. Finally, the clear skies on the first two days provided a glimpse of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) - a wonder of the natural world!

A huge thanks to the students for their exemplary behaviour during the trip, which we hope they will remember as a highlight of their time at Sandringham, and a big thank you to the staff that gave up their time to accompany them - Miss Borman, Mrs Mouncey, Miss Durrant, Miss Pratley and Mrs Ellis.

 

In May Year 6 have been enjoyed their residential Field Studies trip in Snowdonia. Starting off early Monday morning, the class enjoyed the thrills and spills of Drayton Manor Theme Park and most of the staff also braved rides such as The Apocalypse, Maelstrom and The Accelerator. The class were excited to find out their room allocations at the Broadway Hotel and enjoyed their short evening walks to the beach over the course of the week. After some climbing and team building exercises on the Tuesday, the children literally threw themselves into the challenge of Gorge Walking in the afternoon. This was an experience they are unlikely to forget!

The Miner’s track provided a wonderful route up towards Mount Snowdon on the Wednesday, with the class then able to explore the historic and picturesque Conwy Castle in the afternoon. This was followed by having great fun in the Llechwedd Caverns of Bounce Below, and testing a head for heights in the afternoon on the Safari Zip wires, before speeding down the forest rollercoaster! The children had a fantastic but exhausting time and, along with the staff, will now look forward to a well-earned half-term break.

On Monday 16th May, Year Five went to Sandringham school to make our own soups as part of our Food Technology in DT. We chose our partners and chose our recipes. From a basic tomato soup, to leek and potato, they all ended up amazing! We all benefited from a little guidance and a fantastic helper, the Sandringham food tech teacher, showed us how to do pretty much everything and it was a highly successful morning. We all completed our soups and, of course, then came the hard bit for many Year Five’s. Taking the soups back to Skyswood without dropping/spilling anything.  When we got back to school, we reviewed each other’s soups. We wrote about what we could have done to improve them further and what we liked about them as well.

This was a very fun experience for the Year Five’s and everyone enjoyed it!

Why am I Blue?

This term Year 7’s have been learning about portraiture and expressionism. They have been investigating colour theory and psychology and  have applied their ideas to expressive eyes drawings.

On Thursday 9 June, middle and senior leaders from Ridgeway, Sandringham and Verulam joined forces to share great practice around the future development of Blended Learning.  All three secondary schools embark on a brand new phase in their development as they all embrace the use of Chromebooks for students.  Ably supported by the EdTech Demonstrator team and leads from each school, middle leaders considered and agreed the non-negotiables which underpin great practice across schools within the AAT; discussed the digital tools they use in their context and how they are used; considered the barriers they might be facing and shared great practices and approaches as well as taking account of future areas for development. The session facilitated the sharing of great ideas as well as the opportunity to meet up and network. 

Thank you to the team who made it possible:  Scott Whorrod, Mark Allday, Mark Freakley, Martin Emsley, Lucy Hyde, Louise Jesson, Caroline Creaby and Andy Cracknell.

Tuesday 21 June saw teachers from across the AAT secondary phase come together at Verulam School for the inaugural AAT Teach Meet.  The event was a fantastic opportunity for teaching colleagues to share practice and discuss teaching and learning in a ‘market place’ style setting.  We were delighted to have colleagues from Verulam, Sandringham and Ridgeway sharing their excellent practice and sharing ideas with their peers along with Alban TSH and EdTech presenting. 

The event was a real success with colleagues enjoying the opportunity to network, collaborate, share ideas and enjoy time together in the staff garden at Verulam.  We look forward to hosting future events next academic year.

The culmination of the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award is being invited to receive your certificate at a royal palace.  These presentations have not taken place during the pandemic so it is great to hear that a large number of our Gold participants were invited to garden parties at Buckingham Palace to celebrate and receive their Gold certificates.

We would like to say a huge congratulations to Isabella D, Amelia B, Dmitry S, Joel  S, Annabel H, Chiara G, Adam N, Sarach C, Scout N-B, Jessica F, Matthew H, Jake F, Callum H, Katya R, Eleanor B, Morgan D, David B-R and Joseph H.

We hoped you enjoyed your day and we are sure you will inspire others to take part in the amazing Duke of Edinburgh Award.

Six girls and six boys were chosen for the Year 4 St Albans District Schools’ Tennis Tournament earlier this month. Eight of the children were then put into the Skills Group Tournament and four were selected for the Competitive Tournament. The skills group were assessed on a range of tennis skills whilst the Competitive Tournament involved actual matches. All of the children were fantastic, with the school winning both tournaments. The competitive team of Alby, Annabel, James and Ellie will now go forward to represent St Albans at the Herts County Finals.

We are delighted to announce that we have achieved the School Games Platinum Mark Award for the 2021/22 academic year. The School Games Mark is a Government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust to reward and recognise school’s engagement (provision and uptake) in the School Games against a national benchmark and to celebrate keeping young people active, and we are delighted to have been recognised for our success.

We believe in the power of physical activity and school sport as a school and give opportunities to those young people that need it most either as a participant, leader, official or volunteer. As part of our application, we were asked to fulfil criteria in the areas linked to the five School Games outcomes and we are pleased that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded this year. A special thanks to all of the PE staff who have contributed so much of their time to creating opportunities for our whole school community.

Congratulations to:

Emily and Florence for their gymnastics certificates. 

George and Harry who have achieved swimming awards

Connie, Eleni and George for their prowess on the rugby field

Emily for Cheerleading

Nancy who achieved a swimming award

Harry for taking part in a Bubble Rush Charity run

Andrew, Sophie and Luke for cycling 10 miles

Ralph who was awarded his Half Marathon Wristband by Junior Parkrun

Anjani who achieved a swimming award

Oscar for taking part in a St Albans 10k run

Harry, Max and Alby for winning medals at the WGC Youth FC 2022 Tournament

Oliver for scoring 3 goals, helping his team reach his football tournament final.

We are delighted that Nabrissa B in Year 13 has won the ‘Young Person of Distinction’ award at the St Albans Mayor’s Pride Awards. The award is given to ‘an exceptional child or young person who deserves recognition for their talent, positivity, energy or strength of character’. When we saw this description, we immediately thought of Nabrissa as it sums her up entirely. The nomination detailed Nabrissa’s commitment to the school and wider community since starting in Sandringham in Sept 2020.

This included leading a very successful Young Enterprise group which worked to provide resources for children during lockdown, leading the student leadership group for Equality and Diversity, and working with the World Class Schools programme to support young people and develop resources. Nabrissa has also been able to balance the demands of her studies with completing her Gold DofE award and succeeding in achieving a very competitive scholarship to study at Duke University in the US. A huge congratulations to Nabrissa for this very well deserved award!

Ridgeway Academy has earned a prestigious award recognising its commitment to the personal development of their pupils and staff and has been awarded the Personal Development Excellence Award for Schools after making the development of everyone at the school a key priority during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In March 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, Ridgeway Academy committed to becoming a school of excellence in delivering personal development,” said associate assistant headteacher, Sarah Merrigan.

“Since then, we have gained parents, students, staff and the local community’s feedback and have strived to continue to improve the personal development provision offered at Ridgeway Academy.

“We have received wonderful feedback about our new initiatives with one student stating the focus on healthy relationships on our return has made a real difference.

We were delighted to hear that Rebecca in Year 6 and Edward in Year 4, recently took part in a wonderful violin performance as part of the St Albans Music Festival to an audience in the Vintry Gardens.

Well done to both talented young musicians.

We were very excited to hear that Kitty in Year 4 is competing in a skating competition representing the 6-9 years olds in the GB Artistic Skating Championships in Great Yarmouth. Kitty is so excited to have reached such an amazing achievement and can't wait to take part. We are really proud of her and look forward to hearing all about it.

We were also really pleased to hear how Evan from Year 5 took part in a 5k charity run earlier in the term. Despite being unwell from a fall just prior to the race, he managed to complete the 2-lap course in 50 minutes to raise money for St Francis Hospice in Berkhamsted. Well done Evan!

Our Year 4 golf team enjoyed a wonderful local tournament and came out victorious with the magnificent sum of 823 points, edging ahead of Fleetville on 818 points and clinching our school’s first ever golfing trophy.

The tournament involved a series of games to test the children’s skill, accuracy and team work. Their skills were put to the test through putting and chipping, with eight creative challenges and lots of fun for each of the four schools that took part.

Skyswood will now go forward to represent St Albans in the Herts County Year 4 Golf Championship Finals. Report written by Claudia and Naomi

We are so proud of our Year 5’s who won the annual Year Five 6 a-side tournament hosted by Colney Heath School on Saturday 7 May. Well organised and managed by veteran Garden Fields football manager Mr Berman, the team won all of their games scoring 20 goals and only conceding one!

Congratulations to Sam, Oisin, Harry, Jeevan, Joel, James, Victor and Fraser on your amazing achievement. Also congratulations to Martin who played in the qualifiers but was ill and so couldn’t attend the final itself. We look forward to seeing how you all get on in the district league and cup tournaments in year 6 next year!
 

Congratulations to Ava L, Reuben M-K. Bethan P, and Tabitha B whose work has now been published in the Young Writers Twisted Tales anthology.

Students who entered the competition had the opportunity to write from the perspective of a villain. We are proud of all four of you for being chosen as there were many entries from schools across the country.

We hope you enjoy seeing your writing in print. 

 

Priscillia in Year 5 has participated in the recent Northampton Festival of Performing Arts and achieved 1st place in the Intermediate piano section. Many congratulations Priscillia!

Talented singer Kali, from Y5 has been performing in Milton Keynes in a professional stage show of Les Miserables. We are very proud and honoured that one of our children has been selected for such an impressive role! We hope that you have enjoyed it Kali!

Erin in Y6 represents our St Albans and District football team as their goalkeeper. In May the team won the Southern Counties League Championship! This is the first time the St Albans District Girls team has ever won the league.

Congratulations Erin—this is an excellent achievement!

Congratulations to Kaela L & Marelie R for winning the tennis U18 County Double Championships.  Great work ladies!

Well done also  Marelie R who has been playing in an IFT tournament in Pretoria, gaining a win at the doubles in J4 and runners up in J5 singles.

Another fantastic achievement! 

Our primary school assembly tour continued this morning as our Senior prefects visited St. Alban & St. Stephen Catholic Primary School. Harrison, James and Sam spoke amazingly and answered a host of questions from the students

Senior Prefects also delivered an assembly to children in Years 5 & 6 at Fleetville School. They talked about transition and offered the children some great advice. Thank you to Myles, Harris and Mr Anthony for your time. It gave th children lots to think about and also answered a lot of questions the children had.

We are delighted to report that the Sunflower growing kits raised £85 for the Ukraine DEC appeal. Thank you to everyone for their support as always.

Sadie and Finlay from Y4 walked to 10 miles to raise money for diabetes research. This is very dedicated and thoughtful of you both - well done!

Chloe in Thames class held a sale recently to raise money for Ukraine and for Garden Fields PTA. She managed to raise around £460 (donations still coming in) and is going to split the money 50:50 between the two. This is also very thoughtful - great work Chloe and thank you for your kind donation!

Anya, Marisa and Chloe (once more!) all from Thames Class, along with their helpers of Elena (Bluebell Class) and Isla and Alex (Oak Class) organised a charity sale recently. They worked incredibly hard gathering all the items, organising competitions and advertising the sale. They raised an amazing £203! and decided to donate 2/3 of this to the Ukraine and the remaining 1/3 towards the Garden Fields Eco Committee's plans to develop our environmental area at Garden Fields. Well done to all of you—it looks like you had an amazing sale!

The Senior Prefect Team from the outset expressed their interest in a mentoring scheme with lower years to help nurture their development as a Verulam student. Mentors can raise students’ confidence and problem-solving abilities. The mentoring scheme was broken down into two sections, Reading and Maths. We were assigned to two students who were requiring extra support for their reading skills. We helped with reading confidence and explaining meanings of words, as well as helping with their accelerated reader quizzes. Recording each student’s progress allowed for benchmarking of advancement and development of each student’s reading and comprehension skills.

Over time each Prefect became closer and closer with their students, where our roles evolved, not just helping towards reading was given, but any issues in the sphere of school life. Overall, the mentoring schemes have been a great success and we are in the process of creating further mentoring schemes for a range of individuals/ other subjects.

Our Year 7s had a very successful Eco Day for extended learning day.  We revamped the pond, planted some trees and improved the garden.

Not even the rain could hamper our spirits. 

We enjoyed wonderful Global Families event, where families from across the globe shared their heritage and amazing cuisine.

Thank you so much to all those families that made this event such a success. It was great to be able to hold an event on the field that encouraged families to get to know each other a little better.

Karina in Year 5 and a friend organised a cake and jewellery sale on Saturday 16th of April. The aim was to raise money for children in Ukraine, a cause close to Karina and her family’s heart. In total £450.00 was raised thanks to some very generous neighbours and friends. The money raised will be split over the following 3 charities: - Children's Hospital Okhmatdyt in Kyiv, which treats children wounded in the war. Voices of Children and City of Goodness who provide assistance to women and children who have been internally displaced due to the war. Well done Karina!

Local fund raising legends The Men of Fields are back in action in June. The local cricket team, made up of both former and current parents, are often to be found raising money for Garden Fields at our Christmas and Summer Fairs, but they also raise a lot of money for various charities through charitable walks and other activities.

This June they will be taking part in the fourth in a series of walks which have already raised more than £80,000 to date. The 2022 event is the famous Ulster Way walk of 75 miles (120km), which will be dedicated to The British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal and a charity close to their hearts and local to the walk: the Northern Ireland Hospice Appeal. Their aim is to raise £10,000 for each charity.

We wish them good luck!

We have commenced some outreach work looking to boost the provision on offer from some of our local primary schools. Groups of sixth form students have been attending and aiding lunchtime sessions at Fleetville Primary School & St. Albans and St. Stephens Primary School.

It has been extremely enriching, not just for the younger students who loved having the presence of older role models but also for our sixth formers who get to develop vital experience and build a variety of skills whilst doing so. It has been useful for our primary schools as it provides them with an extra, invaluable layer of assistance to run these clubs.

Year 9 will also have groups of students providing reading and literacy support to local KS2 students with a Rise and Read Primary School scheme that looks to bolster the confidence and ability of students in their reading. These are all examples of our students being amazing ambassadors for the school and amplifying their presence within the community. Mr. Anthony, the Primary Liaison, would like to commend the students for their volunteering and amazing commitment to the school and our outreach work.

In May 41 members of our school choir from Years 5 and 6 performed alongside approximately 7000 other children in the Young Voices concert at the 02 Arena. It was a truly uplifting experience to hear the children sing together and to see their joy and excitement as they performed. I am sure it is something they will remember for years to come.

Thank you to Miss Coupe for her ongoing dedication to choir and for organising the opportunity for the upper school members to participate in this fantastic event. Thank you too to Ms Salter, Mrs Burnett and Mrs Bigmore for giving their time to accompany the children. 

We have been very lucky to have some special visitors to our assemblies.  One of our most recent visitors was Daisy Cooper, who spoke to the whole school about her work in the local community and about her role as a Member of Parliament. The children then had the opportunity to ask lots of questions and Daisy was very impressed by the awareness of children from across the school about current issues. 

Year 12 formed a model UN, choosing a member state to represent. Leading up to curriculum enrichment day, we followed the prompt of tackling “social issues” and researched about any affairs in our chosen country. On the day, we simulated activities as the third committee of the UN, who deal with social, humanitarian, and cultural affairs. 

In our final activity six delegates from different countries made major proposals to solve local and global problems and then everyone got to vote for the one they felt was the best. My group chose to be delegates for Poland, and we researched about issues such as the conflict between religion and current movements supporting gay marriage, as well as the refugee crisis at Poland’s borders. We had to ensure we represented the stance Poland has on these affairs, keeping in mind that we might receive criticism from other member states with opposing views. We informed the other delegates of our country’s beliefs and cultural norms so that they had a better understanding of the attitudes Poles have towards these affairs. Similarly, our aim was to be respectful toward others, even if we had somewhat opposing views, whilst trying to improve on a global scale.

One thing I gained from doing the model UN was that I improved my confidence with public speaking by preparing and presenting our speeches in front of the delegates from every member state. Working with new people to prepare for important activities helped me improve my teamwork skills and communication.

What I liked most about the day was role-playing. We found it funny at times, but we also got to step into the shoes of the people making major decisions and proposals to ensure safety and support the prosperity of the people in this world. We watched videos about how these conferences were conducted in real life, which was really interesting to see, and then we immediately got to express ourselves by simulating them.

 

written by Harris

Prior to half term all of the children were invited to submit a design for a mosaic to be created to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. A high standard of creative designs were submitted and the final design was created from a combination of four lovely ideas, one from each Year Group by Freddie, Ross, Jamie and Isabella. We had a mosaic specialist come to school and every child and member of staff contributed to the creation of our mosaic. We are really looking forward to seeing the completed mosaic and to proudly displaying it in our school hall.

We have had a wonderful last day of half term as we all enjoyed our Platinum Jubilee Celebrations in school with our ‘street party’ lunch on the playground, accompanied by music from across the decades of the Queen’s reign, traditional games and some very royal looking guests! 

What a lovely end to a busy half term. 

The Queens Platinum Jubilee was a great experience for our children. They enjoyed a picnic and ice lollies on the field.
The weather was wonderful and everyone had a lot of fun.

Well done to everybody at Skyswood for their fantastic efforts in our Think Pink for Cancer Research Day. The children all wore something pink and enjoyed some creative pink activities, such as a Pink Maths Treasure Trail.

The idea for our Think Pink for Cancer Research Day was originally put forward by our Year 5 class, who had produced some beautiful pink clay hearts back in the autumn term. The suggestion was then taken to our School Council and Claire (Year 5) designed a brilliant poster. We must thank our Year 5 class for organising the cake sale, and we’d also like to thank Daisy, who was so keen to promote this event and do something positive after mum had been diagnosed with cancer.

We are delighted that mum is doing well and are once again very grateful to our wonderful school community for the way that everybody pulled together to make it such a special day.

International Mud Day is celebrated on June 29 of every year. This is a day to connect people with nature. The main aim of the day is to connect children around the world through the earth, by playing in the mud. You can see how much our children enjoyed this in these photos.

Well done to our talented artists in 9A who have created this wonderful Artwork Puzzle entitled Cat among the Corgis to celebrate Her Majesty the Queens Platinum Jubilee.

The artwork was enlarged and displayed as part of the St Albans Platinum Party in St Peter’s Street St Albans. Well done to the artists for their fabulous collaborative work.

We enjoyed a fabulous assembly shared by Beech class. They demonstrated how to safely build and light a fire, they chronicled the life of Queen Elizabeth II, and presented their D&T, Jubilee Floats and beautifully stitched bunting  This was all interspersed with performances of Street Party, Trooping the Colour and Wonder. It was lovely to see how confidently all the children spoke and sang in front of everyone. The children have also been creating floats celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.as part of this term’s house challenge .

We welcomed Mr Thomas into school to join in our celebrtions and sit on our new Buddy Bench that he kindly donated to the school. School council chose a new rainbow coloured buddy bench.

Small tasks such as extending the life of clothes, reducing energy usage, cutting food waste, and switching short journeys for physical exercise such as walking or cycling, to name a few, are simple and effective methods to contribute to this cause. Assemblies at Verulam, led by Mr Woodville and Mr Emsley on this topic, outlined the view that it is a collective effort to tackle climate change and to adapt our lifestyle patterns to become more sustainable.

One main initiative we encouraged was ‘Switch the Car for Exercise’; each form throughout the week collected points for sustainable journeys into school, providing an inter-form competitive edge. However, it is important to explain that the importance of sustainability within our school should indeed be an ongoing process

WALK TO SCHOOL WEEK 16th MAY to 20th MAY

Our New Sustainable Ambassadors Alby and Carissa from Maple, Roham and Isobel from Ash and Oliver and Jack from Beech challenged the children to walk, scoot or cycle to school. Everyone was encouraged to walk, wheel, cycle, scoot or ‘Park and Stride’ for the whole week to see the big differences between healthier and happier children, less pollution and fewer cars outside the school gates. Our Sustainable Ambassadors have been talking about the benefits this will bring and decided that if you take part

❖ You will save money on petrol

❖ You will save time as you don’t have to wait for your car to charge

❖ You will get your heart beating faster

❖ You will get big muscles in your legs

❖ You will help the environment

By taking part in Walk to School Week we can all enjoy reduced congestion and pollution and the children will be well on their way to meeting the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day to stay fit, healthy and happy.