Key Notes: 26 September 2022

23rd September 2022

Open Evening

Our Open Evening will be held on Thursday 29^th September from 6-8.30pm. There is no need to book – just turn up!

Many of our current students are looking forward to helping out on our Open Evening.  If your child has brought home a letter about helping, please return the permission slip as soon as possible.

Dr Wilson, our Head of Science, and Mrs Mayhead, our Second in Science, have been doing some really exciting chemistry experiments in preparation for Open Evening.  They’ve got some amazing demonstrations and hands-on practicals lined up for our year 6 students to experience.  There will be lots of flashes and bangs … all planned and safe, of course!

MVC Science students are leading the field in Seneca learning, with an amazing 133,000 points this week, placing them ahead of all our Trust schools and ranking 10^th in all of Cambridgeshire!

Forthcoming events

• Wednesday 28th September, 6-7.30pm: Post-16 Parents and Student Information Evening
• Thursday 29th September: Open Evening 6-8.30pm
• Friday 30th September: school closed for Teacher Training Day
• Friday 30th September: Deadline for GCSE Art students to order their art packs 

Teaching and Learning at MVC

Learning can be defined as:

• The long-term retention of knowledge
• The ability to transfer this knowledge to different contexts

This short 4 min video is helpful: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zkpj96f. It touches on the link between “working memory” and “long-term memory”. In school, all subjects are aiming to start lessons with a retrieval practice task to help pupils practise recalling information from previous lessons, topics and even previous years! This is to try to increase the chance of knowledge entering into the long-term memory. We would encourage parents to watch this short video and discuss it with their child – the approach of revise, test, revise, test in spaced intervals is a really effective way to revise!

Y11 Post 16 Parents and Pupil Information Evening

A reminder to all Y11 parents and students to attend on Wednesday 28^th September, 6pm to 7:30pm at MVC. Information about options after Y11 will be available along with a chance to speak to local college and sixth form staff. If you can only attend part of it then please still come along. The first talk will take place in the hall from 6-6.30pm, and from 6.30-7.30pm pupils and parents will have a chance to visit post-16 college staff in a variety of rooms.

Y11 Apprenticeship Talk

During assembly on Monday 26^th September, all Y11 pupils will receive an apprenticeship talk, with guest speakers from Astra Zeneca, the NHS and the British Army. It is a great way of pupils finding out about the apprenticeship option after Y11, with the huge range of opportunities available. Whilst apprenticeships are still offered in more traditional trade sectors, they have really extended into other sectors, as demonstrated by our guest speakers.

Comberton Sixth Form to visit Y11 pupils

On Monday 3^rd October, all Y11 pupils will hear about the fantastic opportunities at Comberton Sixth Form for post 16 study. David Clarke, the Head of Sixth Form, will deliver a presentation. A levels, including A level Mandarin (currently taught by MVC staff Mr Fan and Miss Titmuss), and BTEC courses (Sport, Business, Health and Social Care and Science) are offered at Comberton. There is even a bus to and from Comberton which starts in Royston and goes through local villages.  

Physical Education

Well done to our Year 10 and 11 badminton and table tennis teams as they started a busy term of extra-curricular sport at MVC. They travelled to Comberton on Wednesday for a range of singles matches; many students perfecting their skills for their GCSE PE course.

A special mention to Gethin and Jake in Year 10 who, amongst other boys in that year group, have been making use of our outdoor table tennis facilities at break and lunchtimes. They stepped up against older boys at Comberton and gave an outstanding performance. Jake, in particular, defeated Comberton’s top-rated table tennis student.

Year 10 will feature again next week in the English Schools National Football Cup. Team manager, Mr Barlow, is under no illusion that a cup run will be tough as many of our year groups won’t be eligible to compete in the small schools competitions as numbers on roll continue to increase! The Year 10 team had a positive first enrichment session on Tuesday and are hoping to make a good account of themselves against Freman College, Buntingford, kicking off at 3.15pm on Tuesday. Good luck boys.

Drama

In drama, our Year 10 students have been working together on building trust and collaboration.

Cambridge School of Creative Industries - Anglia Ruskin University will be running a thirty-week Art and Design Club from October 2022 through to June 2023. The sessions will take place on a Saturday morning at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge, during term time from 10 am - 1 pm each week of term time.

The programme is delivered totally free of charge to students and applications are open to all! The Club will start on Saturday 1^st October. If your child is interested in applying for a place, please go to https://saturday-club.org/join-a-club/ and fill out the form.

English

Last term, some of our Year 8 writers contributed to the Young Writers Twisted Tales creative writing competition. This is a national competition which attracted over 9,000 entries from primary and secondary schools. We are delighted that 15 of our students have been successful. Their work will now be published in an amazing story collection called Twisted Tales 2022 – Behind Their Eyes.  It’s wonderful to see that their creative work is being rewarded. Well done Scarlett, Tommy, Oliver, Annabel, Harrison, Holly, Zach, Carmen, Molly, Emily, Grace, Ella, Alfie, Riley, Vicky!

Meanwhile, Year 10 students have been focussing on language analysis of Macbeth and have produced some lovely creative representations about what they've discovered. Well done!

Science Club

We got Science Club off to an explosive start this week and enjoyed welcoming students from both KS3 and KS4. Our students had a great time making predictions of what would happen during our group experiment and finding out who was the closest afterwards! 

Our experiment for the inaugural session was – Mentos and coke!  We got a range of different full sugar and diet cokes and put them to the test. Groups of twos and threes had the chance to set off their own bottle by placing not 1, not 2, but 7 Mentos into each bottle before making a hasty and tactical retreat.  Measurements were then taken of how high the resulting explosion went, before comparing results back in the laboratory. Needless to say great fun was had by all and we look forward to welcoming even more students next week for even more crazy and wonderful science experiments!

Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award

This year we will be offering students in Years 9 and 10 the opportunity to enrol in the Duke of Edinburgh Award (DofE) scheme. All this week during their assemblies, Mr Kennedy has been been introducing students to the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award and hopefully inspiring them to want to take part and enrol.

If you would like your son/daughter in Year 9 or 10 to enrol on the Bronze DofE then please pay the enrolment fee via ParentPay. 

Cake Sale

On Friday 7^th October prefects will be organising a cake sale in aid of the Macmillan Cancer Support charity.  Every year Macmillan hold the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning and this year, MVC are taking part.

We will be selling cakes and snacks at breaktime to raise money – any donations of items to sell would be warmly welcomed on the morning – and students can bring some money if they would like to purchase items. Also on the day the prefects will be running a decorated cake competition.  Entries for this competition will also be sold at breaktime, after taking photographs of them, of course!  More details will follow, so watch out for posters around school.

Props for Art

If you have any old newspapers or magazines with good pictures in them, the Art Department would like to receive these. In addition, they would like any interesting items that you might be throwing out that would be good for drawing such as:

• Shells, natural objects, feathers, skulls, bones, skeleton, fake flowers, framed insects.
• Unusual vases, jugs, pots, tiles etc.

Please bring to reception any items you are able to donate. Thank you.

Year 10 Sports Leaders 

Year 10 Sports Leaders are invited to attend a launch event on Monday 3rd October 3-4pm at Melbourn Village College. This event will bring together the new Leadership Academy workforce and give students the opportunity to learn from their peers and further develop their skills as a leader; each leader will also receive their leadership uniform. Any leaders who are unable to attend, please speak to Miss Evans. 

Also on Monday 3rd October and Monday 10th October there will be a BEE netball officials course. This course is free of charge to all leadership academy students. It will give students the necessary skills to umpire at our BEE netball leagues, which will be taking place over the next term. This course is a great introduction to netball officiating and is a good stepping-stone to completing the umpiring qualification with England Netball. If any students would like to attend one of these sessions please complete the application form by Friday 30/09/22. If you have any questions please email jscarboro@combertonvc.org or cevans@melbournvc.org  

Thinking about fostering?

You can make a real difference to the life of a child or young person by becoming a Foster Carer for your local authority. Foster for your local authority and you will receive:

• local training and development
• generous pay and benefits
• 24/7 support from a Supervising Social Worker
• local support groups and networking opportunities

If you're over 21, have a spare bedroom, and can provide a safe, stable environment in which a child can thrive, please get in touch: Tel: 0800 052 0078, Text: FOSTERING to 60777, or visit cambridgeshire.gov.uk/fostering

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