Dear Families,
We hope students all had a lovely half term break, and you all managed to find some time to recharge and catch up with family and friends.
We've had a positive and productive first week back, with lots of great things happening across the school.
Assemblies
Assemblies this week were delivered to students by the Royal British Legion. We welcomed Paul and Lynne to Rushden Academy who talked about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and the topic of Risk and Reward. Students demonstrated our value of respect, asking important questions to our visitors about the work, and life experiences.
Trips and Visits
We have had several trips out this week where we have been incredibly proud of our students demonstrating our #TeamRushden values. On Tuesday, four students attended the Royal Society in London to present their work on eco and sustainability projects at Rushden Academy. The students did incredibly well and our school has been invited to further meetings to showcase the work we are doing and to help shape future policy and practice in schools.
Several students also visited Waterstones at Rushden Lakes this week as part of our rewards programme to celebrate those students who are doing incredibly well with their reading journey and literacy work. Students had a group lunch in the library before spending time at Waterstones to choose a book of their choice.
On Wednesday, two students supported the Service of Remembrance for Schools in Rushden Town. Our students contributed to the service by reading a poem and it was lovely to receive some wonderful feedback from the Royal British Legion who arranged the event.
Thank you so much for allowing your two pupils to attend the Service of Remembrance for Schools today, which was so successful. They read the poem beautifully and with such feeling, they did your school proud.
Assessments
This half term students will be completing their Progress 1 Assessments. For students in year 11, these will be mock exams sat in the hall. Some year 11s have completed some final exams as part of their BTEC courses, and will continue to work on submissions for parts of their course. Students in all other years will be completing assessments in lessons. You may notice that your child is a little anxious about these assessments, or that they are worried about how they perform. We want to reassure you that these assessments allow us to check your child’s understanding, and it enables teachers to plan future lessons to address any gaps in learning, or signpost students to further interventions or support from other school staff.
To support your child at home, it is important to ensure that they have a quiet space to complete any revision or homework, and it is important to ensure that they take regular breaks and have downtime between revision sessions or home.
Parent Engagement
Following up on our last newsletter, we would like to run sessions for parents to meet myself and other leaders over the course of the year. It is important that these sessions focus on the areas that you want to hear more about so I would like to invite feedback via a very short survey so we can address the most pressing issues first.
Please click on the link below to select your top three topics that you would like to hear more about, and question leaders on. We will then arrange these sessions over the remainder of the academic year.
I will share the details from this survey with you next week.
We hope you have a great weekend, and we look forward to seeing all students on Monday!
Mr J Firth
Principal
