Specialist School News March 2008

This term has been a very exciting time for Specialist School’s activities.

As part of their preparation for the Key Stage three examinations in May, all Year 9 students attended a revision/study skills seminar. During this workshop they were all shown a range of revision skills that will support them with their examinations coming up in May. Revision materials are still available from the Science, Maths and English departments. Do not forget the BBC bitesize and sam learning websites to support revision.

Two groups of Year 8 and 9 pupils made it through to the Rocket challenge finals that took place on March 28th. Team 1 managed second place, a fantastic achievement, despite the poor weather. Well done to the teams and and many thanks to Ms. Tiltman for all her hard work in this project.

Mr Hiscock is also working hard on the Mars Rover Challenge with a group of Year 9 students. They have to design a vehicle that will go over an obstacle course but will also have detection sensors. This project is linked to EADS Astrium a Portsmouth company.

Training sessions with Portsmouth University teachers continues to be successful and our third session was about levelling, we were please to be joined by a group of Year 9 students that worked alongside our trainees.

Specialist School News December 2007

Crofton School has now entered its third year of Specialist College Status, building on the work of the last two years we aim to have a successful year.

The school is proud to be supporting the Jeans for Genes day charity. This charity supports the development of genetic science. Not only are they working on looking for cures for some genetic conditions but they also support children in improving the quality of their life if there is no cure for their condition.

On Friday 19th October the school wore their blue genes and contributed £1 towards the charity. It was very successful and is an event that will become part of Crofton's specialist college work.

The school website has been updated and many additional pieces of information have been placed on it. We hope this is now a much more informative and useful site, particularly for our new parents. Our Year 7 School Life videos are available to view now. If you have any comments or suggestions about how we could improve the website further then please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Badesha at the school.

As part of our Specialist College work on transition we will be holding our annual Year 6/7 Tea Party. This is an opportunity for our Year 7 students to showcase all the excellent work they have been doing over the last half term and to discuss their transition with their Year 6 teachers. This has helped our feeder school colleagues to have a better grasp of our expectations at Crofton but has also allowed some of the issues to do with effective transition to be dealt with.

This year due to specialist school's work we have introduced a new information management system. This will help us to monitor and track more effectively the achievements of pupils and allow the school to put appropriate strategies into place. The system allows electronic registration throughout the school day so any issues related to lateness or attendance can be picked up quickly. It also allows all communication about incidents, both positive and negative to be logged electronically so any member of staff in the school can track and monitor the actions of each pupil.

Your child's reports will also be produced using this system and we hope you will now receive much more detailed information about their progress in the full reports. Target grades and levels will also appear on your child's reports so you can support the school in monitoring the progress towards achieving these.

Our link with Malaysia is developing well. Year 11 are working on projects in PDL lessons and during tutor time. We are hoping to share the experiences of students at Crofton and to find out more about the different cultures and traditions in Malaysia.

Year 7 students are producing Christmas cards to send to Malaysia. These will explain the meaning of Christmas and inform them of the traditions we have in the United Kingdom. In return we will receive cards from Malaysia telling us about some of their traditions and celebrations in their country. Later this year we hope to apply for the International School's Award.

At Crofton School we value our cross-curricular work as it allows pupils to use skills learnt on separate subjects but also allows them to develop a wide range of other skills that are useful in the world of work. Our very successful rocket challenge will continue this year. Last year the School came in second place, so we are keen to try to better that this year.

We are also very excited about working with the computer company Microsoft to set up a small business venture selling 'bath bombs'. The company has given the school a budget of £1000, from this starting point a group of students must run their company and try to make a profit. To support them in this project the group have had support from a local accountant who has shown them how to track their expenditure and profits. We will keep you informed of their progress.

This innovative project was represented by Miss Tiltman at a worldwide Microsoft conference in Helsinki in October 2007 where she reached the semi finals - read more on the Business Links page.

Crofton School is always looking for ways to develop links with local businesses. If you would like to support the school in any way then please contact Mrs Badesha.

We are pleased to be building a strong partnership with Portsmouth University and our local secondary partner schools. The Science and Maths teams are offering and delivering CPD to trainee teachers and Newly Qualified Teachers. We believe that by sharing our good practice we can help to support the quality of teaching and learning of many new teachers.

Mrs Callen and Mrs Matthews are building up the range of CPD and activities with our feeder schools. Anne Dale have already been into Crofton this term to teach their students.

If you would like to find out more about any of the work of Specialist school's then please contact the Science team or Mrs Badesha at the school.

Cross Curricular Projects

Healthy Life-style day

Over the past year pupils have been introduced to many projects which have been extended to cross curricular work. Two of these involved a day where particular year groups have been taken off time table and worked around the school in different subject areas on a related topic.

At the end of last term, Year 8 pupils had a day where they did a healthy eating project. They spent the day working in Maths, Science, Food Technology and ICT. In Maths, pupils had to predict which tutor group would win Sports Day from data they had to interpret from their results in a bleep test in P.E.

In Science, poems were written about the main foods required and explaining how they help our body. In Food Technology, fruit smoothies were made and the sources of energy were taken in to account. Finally, in ICT, pupils produced informative packaging for their smoothies.

The day was extremely busy and the pupils worked extremely hard. At the end of it pupils presented their findings to the rest of the year group. The work which had been produced by the pupils was fantastic, informative and the prediction made by the whole year for the 8WH to win sports day was the correct one!!

This will be repeated in the summer term with our current Year 8 pupils.

Specialist College Community

Science in the local Primary Schools

Well what can I say, this half term has got off to a flying start I have been invited into Crofton Anne Dale Junior School to support the Year 6 teachers in delivering Science with three classes learning all about how they breath and taking part in an experiment to show how they produce carbon dioxide when they breath out. They enjoyed taking part in the experiment it has help them understand the concepts of breathing.

I was also asked to go into Lee Junior School to support their Science lessons with year six. They are learning all about the different types of rocks and how they are formed. Again I have supported three year six classes and we have been classifying rocks and observing and testing their permeability, they all enjoyed their science lesson. I look forward to continuing to support the local primary schools with their Science lessons.

Mrs T Callen

Malaysia Project

After our visit from two schools in Malaysia, Crofton students are working hard at keeping our links with the pupils going. Crofton has extended the project which was initially with Year 9 pupils to Year 11 and Year 7 pupils.

As has already been mentioned, Year 7 pupils will be producing informative Christmas/ traditional cards informing Malaysian pupils of their beliefs and the religious festivals which we celebrate in our country. We believe this project will be informative and provide pupils with a wider knowledge of different traditions and beliefs with the pupils in our partner school in Malaysia.

Year 11 pupils have begun a project about all different aspects of living in England, in particular their lives in Stubbington. In an assembly, tutors randomly picked out a topic for their tutor group to work on during tutor times. These projects were varied and ranged from sport to family life. Pupils will be working on presentations which will be posted on the schools website for our Malaysian partners and the community to see. We hope to be able to find out more about pupils in Malaysia when they have produced their presentations too.

Mr Sykes is working with Year 11 PDL groups. Pupils are evaluating their lives in Stubbington, Hampshire and the UK and in the world to see how they see themselves on these small to large scales and how much they differ. The students are then going to send their evaluations to Malaysian students to allow them to see the difference in how they see themselves compared to that of our pupils.

The work produced will be showcased on the school website and we hope to disseminate this at the Specialist School's Conference as an example of excellent practice. We also hope to use this work as evidence to achieve an International School Award.

Miss A Tiltman

On January 26th 2006 the school held a celebratory day. All pupils were invited to take part in some activities including: a morning with Sir Isaac Newton, a Sport's science show, the magic of Nitrogen gas.

Our very special guest speaker was TV broadcaster Adam Hart-Davis, he engaged us with his stories of how science has shaped our world. He also informed us about the work he has been doing in Africa, using scientific principles to improve the quality of life.