FAWCETT COLLEGE

Dear Fawcett Parents and Carers,

Modules five and six have been a fine example of the values and progress that Fawcett students continue to make. Yet the term also comes with mixed emotions as we say goodbye to our year eleven students. These founding students have paved the way for younger year groups and been consistently fantastic role models of the values and morals we hold in such high regard here at Leigh Academy Blackheath.

We would like to take this opportunity to say a particular thank you to our prefects who have worked hard to support the college: Ivy, Fred, Rihanna, Ismay, Anna, Alex , Tomaz and Ephraim. An additional thank you also to our year eleven tutors, Ms Cameron-Smith and Ms Wood, who have offered invaluable support to their tutees across the year and throughout their GCSE exams.

Looking forward, we would like to congratulate our new year ten prefects - Olivia, Serkan, Niamh and James - who we know will take on the mantle and responsibilities of their role admirably.

Merits

We would also like to offer congratulations to all of those who have strived to attend every day and shown resilience in this regard. Fawcett college has a huge number of students who demonstrate continual scholarship by ensuring they are in lessons and working hard. This can be seen through the fantastic 35,031 merits achieved by the college over the course of this academic year. In light of this, we would like to give a special mention to our students with the top five highest merits:

Eliza, Sophie, Juliette, Lois and Isabelle.

Attendance

As we all know, strong attendance is vital to ensuring great outcomes and a good school experience. We are pleased with Fawcett’s overall attendance and the ever present incremental improvements being made in this regard. A huge well done to 7A who have the highest attendance in Fawcett!

LAB Literacy Fest!

Other highlights worth noting include the huge number of Fawcett students that had work shown in the Summer Exhibition last Wednesday, and who also performed in the Summer Showcase. Well done to Mia H (8A) who won the Spelling Bee!

We also held our first ever Year 9 Graduation to celebrate the completion of the MYP 3 year programme. This saw our very own Erin O win the coveted Certificate of Ambition in Year 9.

And finally, our Year 10 Work Experience launched incredibly well with almost all year 10s securing placements to experience the world of work for 2 full weeks. We cannot wait to hear how their time in placements have gone!

With the long summer break looming, it is important to be mindful of the ‘summer slide’: meaning the potential for academic decline that can occur when students break for the holiday period.

As we discussed last summer, research suggests that one of the best ways to interrupt this is to sustain habits of daily reading throughout the summer break. We would, therefore, like to set your child a challenge - to read 30 pages each day, every day over the course of the holiday. If they were to be successful in this regard, by September 2nd, when we return, they will have read 1230 pages: the equivalent of, on average, 3-4 classic novels.

We have also included below recommendations for a summer reading list, made up of suggestions from our students of the books they enjoyed most this year:

Key Stage Three:

Rebound by Kwame Alexander

First Class Murder by Robin Stevens

It ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

It starts with Us by Colleen Hoover

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Murder most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

Demon Apocalypse by Darren Shan

Shoe Dog by P Knight

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Burning Maze by Cassandra Clare

Concrete Rose By Angie Thomas

The Ruby in the Smoke by Phillip Pullman

Matilda by Roald Dahl

The Cousins (Series) By Karen McManus

Key Stage Four:

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson

The Noughts & Crosses series by Malorie Blackman

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Girl In Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer

Dune by Frank Herbert

If you would like to further support your child’s reading development at home, please see below for some tips from the Book Trust: the UK's largest children's reading charity, dedicated to getting children reading:

Ensure that your children sees you reading. It doesn't matter if it's the newspaper, a cookery book, romantic novel, detective mystery, short stories, computer manual, magazine - anything!
Encourage children to join in - ask a child to read out a recipe for you as you cook, or the TV listings when you are watching TV.
Give books or book tokens as presents (and encourage others to do so!);
Encourage children to carry a book at all times so they can read on journeys or in spare moments – you can do this, too!
Encourage your children and their friends to recommend books to each other. This will encourage them to talk and think about the books they are reading.

Fawcett Goodbye's....

To close, as we come to the end of this academic year, with Ms Parker now on maternity leave and myself now heading to a new school and a new role, we wanted to say that we both feel blessed and fortunate to have led Fawcett College this past academic year. It has been wonderful to be a part of our 300 students’ educational journey.

It is always bittersweet to leave a place of work as wonderful as LAB. I have been with the school since it first opened its doors at Victoria House. I have never worked at a school with such dedicated leaders, teachers and staff. LAB is a truly unique place. The students here are kind, considerate and interesting. They truly live our values and we are confident that they will succeed in their future endeavours!

The college will be welcoming Mr Crawford as Fawcett’s new Head of College and Ms Joy as the new Deputy Head of College: both of whom are very excited to join and lead Fawcett into the next academic year.

We hope that you will enjoy the remainder of the term and the Summer holidays.

Stay safe and all the best for the future.

Ms Parker and Mr Cowie.

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