Key Notes: 14 November 2022

14th November 2022

Remembrance Day

Students assembled on the back field for a fire drill and remained in line to observe a 2 minutes silence for Remembrance Day. It was nice to see the whole school stand together to mark the occasion. Tom played the Last Post and Reveille in honour of the sacrifice made by so many men and women in all the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries. Ms Smith said “The round of applause at the end of the silence was started by Tom’s own year group and was very appropriate. We will miss this wonderful contribution to the life of the school that Tom has made for 4 years now”.

MVC Curriculum Information

Would you like to find out what your child is learning in their subjects? Well, you can - our year group handbooks for parents and carers have been updated and are now available to download from our website here. We aim to ensure that our curriculum:

• Provides an appropriate level of challenge for all our students, whatever their ability.
• Prepares them for the rest of their life by teaching them the skills and knowledge that will help them achieve in whatever they choose to do.
• Prepares them well for GCSE and other examinations by integrating rigorous monitoring and assessment throughout.

If you require any further information about our curriculum, please email office@melbournvc.org

Forthcoming Events

• 24^th November: Year 9 Parents’ Evening. For more information about the online process and Parents’ Evening dates, please visit the Parents’ Evening page on our website here
• 28^th November: Year 11 2022 Leavers’ Presentation Evening
• 30^th November: Year 8 HPV Vaccinations

Year Group Assemblies

On Wednesday Mr Bennet led an assembly for each year group with support from staff and Prefects from St Peter’s School, Huntingdon. This was a follow up to the visit by St Peter’s School students who met with many Melbourn Village College students last month to discuss their experiences at MVC.

The assemblies outlined some of the survey findings and highlighted the impact of students being unkind to each other. These assemblies are part of a number of initiatives taking place at MVC focusing on keeping students safe, examination results, and life beyond MVC as successful adults.

MVC Christmas Concert

Mandarin Teacher Wins Award

Congratulations to Mr Fan, Head of Languages, who was awarded the UCL IOE Confucius Institute Excellence Award in a ceremony on Saturday. Mr Fan has been recognised by the University College London Institute of Education for his work in introducing Mandarin, initially to the curriculum at Melbourn and more recently across The Cam Academy Trust, of which MVC is a member.

Mr Fan was the first teacher of Mandarin at MVC when we became the first school in Cambridgeshire to introduce the language into the curriculum from Year 7, seven years ago. We now have a total of 3 Mandarin teachers, and also promote the teaching of Mandarin across the Trust – students can now take A Level at Comberton Sixth Form – and to a wider audience.

Mr Fan believes he won the award for his contribution to Mandarin by sharing resources via the UCL IOE platform; working with the Institute and Oundle School to support teacher training as a PGCE mentor; developing the subject across the Trust; creating Chinese cooking videos for online teaching during lockdown, and making a number of videos with a group of Mandarin Excellence Programme students to ‘motivate Mandarin learners’, which he shared with UCL IOE. Last summer’s Mandarin GCSE results saw 55% of candidates from MVC gaining a Level 7 or above with eight pupils achieving Level 9.

He said: “I am extremely happy to receive the ‘Excellence Award’. It is an absolute honour that I will cherish for the rest of my career.

“The award caught me by surprise, but I will live up to the new standards drawn up for me. Because of the hard work of MVC students in the last six years with the excellent GCSE exam results, and the contribution from other Mandarin teachers, plus the support from the members of staff in the school, I had the chance to win the award. Therefore, I thank all of them for my unanticipated award.”

Teaching and Learning at MVC

This week staff have been considering how literacy is taught within our subjects. Mr Bacon from the English department shared some background on tiers of language:

• Tier 1 – high-frequency words in spoken language (eg table, slowly, write, horrible)
• Tier 2 – high frequency in written texts (eg gregarious, beneficial, required, maintain)
• Tier 3 – subject specific, academic language (eg osmosis, trigonometry, onomatopoeia)

It was interesting for staff to reflect on how we often explicitly teach Tier 3 within our specialist subjects, but tier 2 words may sometimes be a challenge for pupils. Staff will be asking pupils to speak in full sentences to improve their everyday literacy, as well as trying to ensure Tier 1 and Tier 2 words are understood by pupils.

Enterprise Day

On Wednesday we welcomed visitors from Form the Future to deliver our Year 9 Enterprise Day.  Jen Wilby, the facilitator, led a team of volunteers who worked with students to help them learn about the core principles involved in starting their own business. The students worked in small teams to identify a problem and solution, then apply business basics to turn that solution into an enterprise idea. Each team then pitched their idea to their class, with the best pitch going forward to present their idea to the rest of the year group in front of guest entrepreneurs in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style finale in the Hall.  Well done to the winning team from tutor group 9 Lewis (Izabel, Aliyah, Amelia, Frances, and Laura) for their fantastic idea called “The Future” which was about how a funeral process could help the environment by planting more trees. The winning team may have the opportunity to take part in the Cambridgeshire County Final at Newmarket Racecourse next year.

Mobile phones in school Just a reminder that the rule “On site, out of sight” applies to mobile phones. If a student is seen using their phone, or with earphones in, these items will be confiscated and taken to reception. The behaviour will be logged on Go4Schools and students can collect their phone from reception at the end of the day. There is a new ‘Walkie Talkie’ App which makes a loud bleep and students then talk through the phone like a walkie-talkie. This is causing some disruption in lessons and students have been reminded that this will result in phones being confiscated.

Physical Education

The Year 7 hockey team travelled to Bassingbourn VC for their first fixture. We were able to take a strong squad of 19 eager students, who played in 2 teams and rotated against the opposition. Both squads played some excellent hockey; they demonstrated enthusiasm and perseverance to score their first-ever competitive goal. The team went from strength to strength and ended up winning 2-1.

 

It's not often we thank the rain clouds, but the recent deluge of the wet stuff has meant we have restarted our rugby fixtures as the ground is no longer bone dry! On Wednesday our Year 8 and 9 students hosted Comberton, and on Tuesday 15^th we host Bassingbourn. 

Our Year 11 boys football team are now in the last 120 schools out of 500+ in the English Schools FA Cup. Their next game is Tuesday 22^nd November against Samuel Whitbread School from Bedford. We wish them luck.

Fixtures timetable:

• Tuesday 15th November: Year 8 rugby matches v Bassingbourn at home
• Wednesday 16th November: Year 8 hockey matches v Comberton at home 
• Tuesday 22nd November: Year 11 boys football v Samuel Whitbread School at home
• Wednesday 23rd November: Mixed Year 7/8 hockey and Year 7 boys B team football at home, both 7 a-side
• Wednesday 23rd November: Year 7 and 8 boys A team football at Cambourne, both 7 a-side.

Panathlon Games

KS3 students travelled to Comberton on Wednesday to take part in the Panathlon Games.  They competed in a variety of adapted sports against other local schools. Congratulations to team MVC: Mark, Lizzie, Issac, Jake, Rosie, Charlie, Ollie and team leader, Addi, for achieving 3rd place in the competition. All the students came away with a bronze medal and certificate to show their achievement. 

Year 10 Sports Leaders 

Following on from the success of our ‘Introduction to Football’ refereeing course on Monday night, the tutor has offered to host a full referees’ course for our leadership academy students if he has enough interest. You can find out more details about the content of the course here:
FA Referee Course (thefa.com)

The cost of the course is £110, however once qualified as a referee (after their first 5 games), students will be able to charge teams for their service. If this is something your child would be interested in finding out more information about, please complete the expression of interest form linked below. If your child plays football with a club, they may be able to help with some funding towards the course.  Cambridgeshire Football Association Referee Course - Expression of Interest Form

Operation Sceptre

Cambridgeshire Constabulary would like to draw your attention to the forthcoming National Knife Crime week of action – Operation Sceptre: w/c Monday 14^th to Sunday 20^th November 2022. This operation is designed to educate Children and Young People and to raise awareness of the consequences of knife crime.

Spanish

Students from 7XM and 7YA have been writing in Spanish, using what they have learnt so far this year (and the occasional addition of Google translate). They are very imaginative! These will go up on the wall and will make a beautiful display.

Student Wellbeing This half term the theme for Wellbeing Wednesday is linked to the environment and COP27. During form time, students have been learning about biodiversity, food waste, energy, fast fashion and climate change. Research shows that engaging with the environment can have a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing.  Care and kindness towards each other and the environment are good and can make people feel better!

Centre 33 Wellbeing Talks

There are two online wellbeing talks this month:

• Social anxiety – Tuesday 22^nd at 5.30pm
• Managing anxiety in autism – Monday 28^th at 5.30pm

These talks are free and aimed at young people aged 13-25 years old. Both talks will have a question-and-answer session at the end via Zoom chat. You can find out more information and sign-up via our posters below, or the links above.

Recordings will be made available on our YouTube channel and website afterwards. You can view recordings from previous talks here.

Post-16 applications

Y11 pupils have all been shown how to log on to the www.mychoice16.co.uk website to continue with their applications to post 16 centres. Pupils can access this from home, and can find their password from their school email account (an email dated 18/10/2022 from noreply@eprospectus.co.uk). The deadline to complete all applications is Tuesday 13^th December.

Cambridge Regional College has an upcoming open event about apprenticeships on 24^th November from 18:00 – 19:30 at Cambridge Campus, Kings Hedges Road, CB4 2QT. Details can be found here.

As our Year 11 students start to think about their next steps, some may be considering a career in performing arts and might like to consider the Level 3 Performing Arts (Dance) Course run in Royston. See Stage Right website for more details here.

The FREE online ‘Insights: Your Guide to Construction Careers’ event is open to all students from Year 8 and above as well as parents/carers. Cambridgeshire has excellent construction career opportunities and this event will give students a chance to listen and put questions to career professionals in the construction sector.

To register a place, please click this link: bit.ly/FtFInsightsConstruction

Year 9 Art

Year 9 students are currently working on the topic Day of the Dead.  They have been creating colourful compositions practising core skills including colour blends and fades.  At present they are researching Leonardo Da Vinci, an artist, scientist, and inventor during the Italian Renaissance. They are using their observation skills to work on ‘The skull sectioned’ 1489. Da Vinci was particularly interested in human anatomy.

Vacancies

We are currently advertising the following vacancies on our website:

• Teacher of English
• Teacher of Computer Science
• Senior IT Technician
• Food Technician
• Chef Manager

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