LAR Newsletter Module 4

What's

Welcome

To Leigh Academy Rainham Roundup!

We are delighted to welcome you to the 'Leigh Academy Rainham Roundup'! This is our unique magazine that is published each module to celebrate all that we achieve in our highly inclusive setting, where tradition and innovation combine to create leaders of tomorrow.

At Leigh Academy Rainham we promote an ethos of uncompromising high aspirations and expectations for every young person in terms of both their academic success and personal growth as caring, respectful global citizens who act with purpose and integrity. Within this magazine we share with you the wonderful ways in which we work towards our values of Dream, Believe, Achieve.

Enjoy!

What's

INSIDE

CONTENTS

04. Principal's Piece

06. Events at LAR

10. Learning at LAR
Year 7 Curriculum

16. Learning at LAR
Theme of the Fortnight and Healthy Minds

18. Learning at LAR
Curriculum Learning & Co-Curriculum Sports

22. Learning at LAR
Co-Curriculum Activities

26. Digital Learning at LAR

28. LEIGH Learners

30. College Community Corner

40. Wellbeing at LAR

42. The Last Word

Principal's
Piece

Visits to

In our next recruitment window we are recruiting for Maths and Geography and our support staff roles. All new staff are in the process of writing introductions so that we can share these with students prior to September.

We have offered 180 places to new year 6 students for September, all of which have been accepted and the transition process will begin for them next module. The Academy had over 640 applications for year 7 2022-2023 and it is testament to the hard work of our staff and the outwardly positive celebrations from our current families in the community that we are already so over subscribed. Thank you for your ongoing support and for publicly championing Leigh Academy Rainham as a truly special place to be.

Our students grow from strength to strength in terms of their respectful and mature behaviours which they consistently model both within and beyond lessons. Every single candidate who has visited the Academy for interviews has commented on how delightful our children are to teach. We have had a busy recruitment window since January successfully appointing a number of new staff for the next academic year. I am pleased to share that from September the following staff will be joining us or moving into new roles:

Mr S Blinkhorn - Vice Principal (Promoted from Assistant Principal. Head of Turing College)
Mr R Silvester - Vice Principal (Head of Kingsley College)
Mrs J Plant - Assistant Principal (Promoted from English Curriculum Leader. Head of Angelou)
Mr J Finneran - Assistant Principal (Assistant Head of Kingsley College)
Mr B Smith - Director of Learning for Humanities (Leader of RE, Geography and History)
Mrs L Lawner - Design and Technology Teacher
Mr M Clark - Performing Arts Teacher
Miss K Thomas - Humanities Teacher (RE and History)
Mrs S Williams - English Teacher
Mr G Childs - PE Teacher
Mr K Lawrence - Science Teacher
Mr E Forson- Maths Teacher

Visits to

LAR

Coding Session

Chris Tasker, a software developer from London, delivered some coding sessions for students, giving them an introduction to python coding. He will be returning to deliver the coding with the remainder of students later in the year. He also delivered an assembly highlighting careers in computer science. He enjoyed showing and explaining to students how computer science skills can be applied in reality and careers, something that was of interest to a number of our students. The blog post from the software developer company can be found here.

Oliver Nelson, a member of the Medway Music Association visited us at the end of this module to talk about how he came to be a musician and to showcase stringed instruments in the hope that we can inspire more students to have viola and violin lessons.

Violin Assembly

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Events at

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LAR

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Drug Detection Dog Visit

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We welcomed Steph Howes, our Schools Police Officer and Sam from the Dogs Drug Detection Unit. Students asked insightful questions about how he had come to be a dog a handler, the dog training process and were curious to learn about how Steph applied for the police force and what the application process was like.

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Rainham News

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Employment Lawyer

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Madeline Thomas, a governor for LAR, is a discriminatory lawyer and she visited the academy in module 3 to talk about her role and what it entails. She shared her experiences of sexism when she first started in law and how this was challenged and the sorts of cases and training she has experienced in order to become so successful in her field.

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Sandy Flemming from Rainham News delivered a session for students interested in journalism. She talked about her experiences throughout her career as a news reporter and gave relevant and helpful tips to students on how they can create their own recorded news reports. She has tasked students to find and capture their own news stories from our local community, recording interesting pieces for her to review.

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Cambridge Visit!

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Since January we have had a number of guest speakers with a particular focus on introducing our students to a range of careers, with opportunities to ask questions.

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Students from Queens’ College Cambridge have visited to discuss all things related to university life and in particular Cambridge University. They spoke to our students about the academic, social and monetary aspects of university life.

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Rainham News

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Sandy Flemming from Rainham News delivered a session for students interested in journalism. She talked about her experiences throughout her career as a news reporter and gave relevant and helpful tips to students on how they can create their own recorded news reports. She has tasked students to find and capture their own news stories from our local community, recording interesting pieces for her to review.

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Learning

LAR

LEARNING IN LESSONS
YEAR 7 CURRICULUM

at

At Leigh Academy Rainham one of our goals is that students feel as though they have had the opportunity to travel the world through their studies with us, both figuratively and literally. Whilst we are planning visits for students in the future we have already begun our virtual visits.

International mindedness is one of the key drivers of the MYP and our students are now seeing that whilst knowledge of Rainham, Medway and the UK are essential, being able to enhance this with a knowledge of Europe and the World only furthers their learning and depth of understanding.

Learning

at

Teachers outline to students explicitly how the curriculum in different subjects overlap and how they differ, we refer to these as interdisciplinary links. Students are developing a rich knowledge of how for example art, history and RE all play a role in the development of culture and how through study, we can attempt not to repeat the mistakes of the past and build a brighter future.

Over the last two modules students have been learning about Dynamic Places, such as hot and cold deserts and have been studying conflict in the Middle East. During the Dynamic Places unit, students looked at the characteristics of the different types of deserts, how animals and humans have adapted to the extremities of the different deserts and have also looked at the different threats to the different deserts. During this Module on the Middle East, students have looked at a range of historical and modern conflicts within the region, analysed why they took place and assessed the impacts of the different conflicts. Students have also looked at the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East and have used Google Earth to look at the journey they have taken in getting to safety. Students were also able to make comparisons from the Syrian refugees with the current Ukrainian Refugee. Next module students will be looking at sustainability in the module of Wasteful World.

Learning at

LAR

KINGSLEY COLLEGE

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GEOGRAPHY

Over the last two modules students in History have been exploring different minority groups: Muslims, Jews and Medieval women. In Module three students examined the extent to which: money, religion and power caused conflict and events such as: The Crusades and arguments over the holy city Jerusalum. Within this module students also compared how these three factors caused events such as: Jewish persecution, Barons and Peasant rebellions against kings and why people strapped a chicken’s bottom under their armpit to treat the Black Death! In recent weeks students have been studying the Wars of the Roses-a civil war that divided England for almost 30 years! Students have been examining the roles of: Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort. It has been a real pleasure to see students engage in this topic by highlighting key problems women experienced such as: sexism and patriarchy (male-dominace) in society. Next module students will be entering into a new time period in History: The Renaissance and will be studying Reformation and Rebellions under the Tudor monarchs!

SPANISH

HISTORY

Over the last two modules students in History have been exploring different minority groups: Muslims, Jews and Medieval women. In Module three students examined the extent to which: money, religion and power caused conflict and events such as: The Crusades and arguments over the holy city Jerusalum. Within this module students also compared how these three factors caused events such as: Jewish persecution, Barons and Peasant rebellions against kings and why people strapped a chicken’s bottom under their armpit to treat the Black Death! In recent weeks students have been studying the Wars of the Roses-a civil war that divided England for almost 30 years! Students have been examining the roles of: Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort. It has been a real pleasure to see students engage in this topic by highlighting key problems women experienced such as: sexism and patriarchy (male-dominace) in society. Next module students will be entering into a new time period in History: The Renaissance and will be studying Reformation and Rebellions under the Tudor monarchs!

During Modules 3 and 4 in Spanish, students have been exploring the topics of school and hobbies and sports to be able to talk about what they do in their daily lives. In Module 3 they got to experience a virtual tour of a Spanish school and during Module 4 students undertook various short research tasks that allowed them to discover how different cultures enjoy their free time. Students formulated very insightful inquiry questions and discussed the impacts that our free time activities had on our mental and physical wellbeing and also on our environment.

ANGELOU COLLEGE

MUSIC

Learning at

Over the last two modules, students have been learning and developing their keyboard skills. We have looked at two completely different styles of music.

Last term we were looking at The Greatest Showman, particularly the meaning and significance of the lyrics. The students have been taught how to identify keys on the keyboard and use a guide to help them navigate how to play the songs. Most students know The Greatest Showman and so they were incredibly enthusiastic about listening to and learning the songs.

This term we have been looking at Classical music. Students have been taught about the elements of Classical music and the 6 historical style periods, understanding what inspired and influenced music from the year 450 all the way up the modern day. Students have studied Mozart and Ludovico Einaudi. Students have even started to compose their own piece of Classical music on the keyboards, mostly inspired by Ludovico Einaudi’s compositions.

LAR

ART

In module 3 and 4 in English, students have been reading “Oliver Twist” and learning about the context of Victorian England. Students were able to use what they had learned about prejudice and inequality from the novel study “Roll of Thunder” at the beginning of the year, and apply this to how the poor were treated in Victorian society.
In module 3, students focused on writing in “real life” contexts such as newspaper articles, reports and fact-files. Using their own research, students were able to apply their writing skills to persuade readers that more needed to be done to help the poor - just like Charles Dickens’ did in the 1800s! We also learned some fascinating facts about life in the Victorian era - did you know that a person could face the death penalty for stealing a sheep?
In module 4, students worked on analysing how Dickens’ used his descriptions of characters and settings to force his readers to confront how badly the poor were treated after the introduction of The New Poor Law. We considered how Dickens used language techniques such as imagery, metaphor, juxtaposition, personification and sensory language in order to make his readers feel like they were in the workhouse. We have also started to consider how an author’s viewpoint can be affected by their own experiences and using the MYP skill of empathy to understand how Dickens’ own childhood is reflected in his novels.

The art room was abuzz with printmaking practicals, introducing this creative process as a new way of making for many of our students. They designed a tile using plant based lines, motifs and patterns inspired by and responding to Islamic Art. They used a polyblock and ink to produce a repeat print using rotational symmetry. The resulting surface patterns are aesthetically beautiful and are adorning the school.

Having been inspired by Islamic design from the Mediaeval period, our Art curriculum next took us into The Renaissance and to an investigation of one of the masters of both Art and Science: Leonardo da Vinci. Students analysed Leonardo’s anatomical drawings and developed their written communication skills through the critique of Leonardo’s art. Students revisited drawing skills as the fundamental building block of art and have been drawing from primary sources skeletons inspired by our investigation. We have been using pen and ink and mark making as students continue to experiment with different drawing media and techniques.

We have travelled to Syria and Greece this term as we learned about refugees - why they leave where they are from and how they are treated when they arrive in a safe country. Students showed great maturity whilst they debated whether the way countries support refugees is fair. Students used their improvisation skills and non-naturalistic drama techniques to create an advert aimed at encouraging people to do more to help. In light of the current situation in Ukraine, pupils were able to sensitively and maturely discuss the UK Government’s response to refugees and use flashbacks to perform how people’s lives might have changed as a result of the conflict.