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Parent Newsletter

Inside this issue: 26.1.17

Headlines 1

Sporting

Celebrations and

Achievement

2

First Lego League 3

Biz School 4

E-Safety Day with

Sharon Girling

5

House Update 6

English Update 7

‘HEADLINES’

It’s a little scary how quickly time goes by, but this week we passed the half way

point of the school year! January has featured our first Lego League competi-

tion, an E-safety day and a series of Biz school events including the sale of a lot

of food that wouldn’t be on Jamie Oliver’s healthy schools’ menu. Sugar rushes

apart, the students did a fabulous job with lots of creative thinking going into

their fund raising stalls.

I’m delighted to feedback that last week after 63 applications, we appointed our

first Assistant Head teacher Nina Kyprianidis who takes up post in September.

She will join us from Bohunt Worthing School where she was Head of STEM.

Their role at Bohunt is to lead on Student Engagement, Enjoyment and Wel-

fare.

Recruitment continue to be a big focus this month, with another 3 appoint-

ments to be made and we also should hear more about student numbers for

September 2017.

The extra-curricular programme remains amazing and I dearly hope that every

student joins in with at least one club this term. We will be reviewing iPad use

with the student council shortly to get their views on use in and out of les-

sons. If you wish your child to attend the Boulogne trip please ensure you have

paid in full by 31 January 2017. This time we will not be able to take any pay-

ments after the deadline. There are a series of further events in the pipeline for

STEM later this term and in the summer. Watch this space!!

Panto Performances Panto Performances

Page 2

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BISI Badminton Tournament

On Wednesday 18th January 16 Bohunt Students

got their first taste of Leadership. 8 Boys and 8

Girls took on the role of Sports Leaders for the

annual BISI Badminton Tournament. 40 Year 3/4

students from local primary schools came to com-

pete for the opportunity to represent Wokingham

at the County tournament. 16 Bohunt students

were given 1 hours training by Wokinghams

Sports Partnership before taking on the task of

running 7 activities and the scoring table for the

qualification round tournament. The students in-

volved did a wonderful job and represented Bo-

hunt fantastically. Bohunt will now be hosting the

BISI tournament annually as well as the Sports

Hall Athletics.

Sporting Celebrations and Achievements

Berkshire Schools Cross Country

On Saturday 21st January Bohunt competed in

its first ever Cross Country competition with 14

students giving up their Saturday mornings for a

competitive run around Newbury Showground.

Close to 600 hundred runners competed on the

day from Schools all across Berkshire. For Bo-

hunt it was our first time coming across a num-

ber of schools, including, Wellington College,

Marist, Queen Ann's and Charters. Cross Coun-

try racing was a new sport for Bohunt, a sport

we had not practised for. The selection process

was based on effort and distance achieved during

the fitness testing last term. Once again all 14

students performed admirably, with Caleb Price

completing the course in an impressive 11.55,

finishing 36th from 150 runners.

Coming Up:

Lessons: Trampolining and Gymnastics will finish

at the Half term Holidays. Spring Term 2: Stu-

dents will begin Netball and Basketball lessons.

(All students must wear Polo, skort / shorts,

white trainer socks, trainers).

Fixtures: Football and Netball games will be in

full flow all the way to Easter, please keep an eye

on Twitter and

www.Bohuntwokinghamsport.com

Page 3 Enjoy Respect achieve

We arrived bright and early at the HP Centre

on a chilly Thursday morning, ready to com-

pete in Bohunts first ever Lego League tour-

nament. All the robots, presentations and

roboteers were ready to go!

The coach was buzzing with excitement and

the whole experience did not disappoint!

The teams worked so well together and they

continued to learn from all the expertise

around them.

First Lego League—12th Jan 2017

We were most definitely the youngest team

there, but this did not put the students off, and

they rose to the challenge. Each team contin-

ued to fight for points and increased their score

each round. Both Bobots, led by Jonathon

Dunn, and the Bohunt Brainiacs, led by Javier

Gorostidi, gave it their all and were a credit to

the school.

Each team achieved a fantastic end result. The

Bohunt Brainiacs finished 9th out of nineteen

schools (which is remarkable) and Bobots fin-

ished 7th which placed them one place away

from the semi-finals! Wow…what a day!

I would like to thank everyone who help us get

to the First Lego League and we look forward

to next year’s challenge.

Mr Williams

Page 4 Enjoy Respect achieve

Biz School

All students are taking part in this enter-

prising programme, which enables stu-

dents to learn more about real life busi-

ness skills. Normally only available for

students who are academically more able,

students will be preparing business ideas

with their notional budget of £250. The

winning three groups will be given up to

£250 to start up their business idea.

Fantastically, all student groups made a

profit through their ‘pop up’ market

stalls. We have seen such imagination,

with stalls offering: candy floss; raffles

tickets; sweet kebabs (which Mr Godber

particularly enjoyed); a chocolate foun-

tain; lucky dip and a football target chal-

lenge.

All students were really engaged with the

pop up markets and it was amazing to

see their innovative ideas and developing

entrepreneurial skills. We saw students

haggling prices and lowering their costs

in the final 10 minutes. Advertising was

taken to the next level, through the use

of the electronic display boards and

posters displaying great artistic skills,

(utilising both traditional artistic skills

and iPad technology).

Page 5 Enjoy Respect achieve

On Tuesday 10th January we were lucky to welcome E-safety expert Sharon Girling to Bohunt

Wokingham. Sharon spent the day working with students, teachers, staff and parents about keep-

ing ourselves and children safe online. Sharon delivered sessions to the students an though some

students initially felt a little worried about e-safety most left feeling more confident in their ability

to keep themselves safe online.

Key messages Sharon shared with the students:

Make sure Instagram is set to private as in December all profiles were made public.

Think about what apps you use. Snapchat has permission to sell on images.

As a person under 18 they have the right to be forgotten. Therefore, any content that ap-

pears online that they are not happy you can contact the company and they must take it

down.

After school all staff received training on e-safety and many of us spent the evening review-

ing our own / family permissions. Staff also received further training on how to keep our

students safe online in and out school.

In the evening there was a session for parents. I think all parents who attended felt it was

time well spent.

Key points shared with parents:

You can change settings through BT or broadband provider to limit what different people in

the household can access.

Think about age ratings of games especially on iPads. Use of these games can expose stu-

dents to inappropriate content, adverts and other online players.

On the Xbox there is an option called voice changer where adults can sound like children

and children sound like adults. It is best to not allow them to play online with unknown play-

ers.

Be aware of in-app purchases. Turn it off or it can cost you.

Though some of the points explored over the day were a little scary Sharon Girling really empha-

sised the point of how great the internet is and what a wonderful tool it when used well. We hope

that after attending the day students feel they can now enjoy the fantastic online world safely and

can teach others to do the same.

E-Safety Day with Sharon Girling

Page 6 Enjoy Respect achieve

After much consideration all the houses have now chosen charities that they are going to start

working with. These are: Nightingale - Knight's Foundation, Bolt - Mind, Einstein - Dementia

UK, Turing - Macmillan Cancer, Madiba - Shelter

Student leaders will now work with their houses to present ideas for fundraising, aiming to form local

links with these charities.

House Update

English Update

Page 7 Enjoy Respect achieve

English Update

Accelerated Reader Well done to the students who have engaged fully with the reading scheme. In particular, Ben Symes who has read over 500,000 words since November, Alfie Jackson who has read over 300,000 and Max Davies who has read six books and passed all of his quizzes since November! Keep up the good reading!

Library Books We have recently received some new books for the library and the students are loving them! We also now have more non-fiction reading in the library in the form of: "The Week Junior." Thank you also to those parents who have kindly donated books to our library.

Upcoming National Competitions

Please look out on Show My Homework for the two upcoming national writing competitions. The first is: Radio 4's 500 words Competition and the deadline for that is 23rd February. The second is The National Literacy Trust's Wicked Young Writer's Competition and the deadline is 13th March. We encourage all students to take part. Please see the links below for more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3M7PTxp3qJ0jk2FQbDJng9p/500-words-what-story-will-you-write. 2017. http://www.wickedthemusical.co.uk/london/news/seventh-year-of-wicked-young-writer-awards-in-support-of-the-national-literacy-trust