Embedded Files
Events this module:
During this module, students have continued to study and explore literature chronologically. Below are the time periods we have arrived at for KS3:
Year 7 - A study and comparison of Petrarchan and Shakespearean Sonnets
Year 8 - Romanticism with the second generation Romantic Poets
Year 9 - A study of pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria with Chinua Achebe’s 1950s Things Fall Apart
World Book Day
The English department thoroughly enjoyed the events that took place on World Book Day this module. We were so impressed with the dedication of the students (and staff!) to their outfits. It is always a lovely opportunity for students and staff alike to appreciate the power of the written word and come together to celebrate literature.
Book Club
Lexie Year 10, has continued to show her ambition and dedication to her English studies as she has brilliantly decided to set up a book club. Please see further details below:
Things coming up next module:
Year 11 intervention
Year 11 will continue to benefit from bespoke interventions every Thursday after school. Please see links below for revision materials.
How to Revise for English at GCSE
Pearson Lit in Colour Programme
Values champion/star students
We are very lucky to teach such wonderful students at LAB - students who are thoughtful, articulate and eager to learn. This module, we would like to celebrate the following students for their consistent eager attitude for learning and for going above and beyond during each English lesson:
Year 7 - Juliette
Year 8 - Femi
Year 9 - Vaanya
Year 10 - Emily
Year 11 - Suchay
Relevant ideas for the community
Young Romantics in the City - Keats House : Explore the diversity of writers and writing of the Romantic period, through the interconnected themes of Politics, Class, Gender and Race in this exhibition at Keats House, Hampstead, the home of Romantic poet John Keats.
The Romantic Movement - Tate Britain : The works at the Tate Gallery have been arranged to show the various ideas and themes which supplied the Romantic artists with their subject matter.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The British Library
The Orwell Archive: at UCL
LAB Literary Festival is back!
At Leigh Academy Blackheath, we place such a high importance on reading that each year, we celebrate literature in all its glory.
During Module 6, Leigh Academy Blackheath will be at the centre of all things literary!
Award winning authors, writers, illustrators and publishers will be coming into our school to deliver once in a lifetime sessions and talks with our students.
This is a unique opportunity for all to learn from the expertise of the best in the business - and hopefully pick up some valuable tips!
LAB Literary Festival Competitions
Leading up to and during the week, students will be required to prepare for the many competitions being held. A booklet will be provided in due course with information on how to be successful in competing in each event. The events will culminate in an awards ceremony and exhibition of the students’ work where parents and carers will be invited in to continue the celebrations.
We are pleased to announce that LAB has achieved the most improved score across the trust in Sparx engagement rates for the following year groups:
Year 7, 9 & 10.
Our current engagement rate across the academy is: 78.3%.
This is the highest of any school in the trust with a full cohort of students so a big congratulations to all students at LAB!
Last week, the tutor groups with the highest completion rate were the following:
Year 7: 7A and 7E
Year 8: 8A
Year 9: 9A
A particular well done to the following students who had the highest engagement rates in the academy last week:
Rafael - 7A; Subasna - 7E
Avina - 8A
Erin - 9A
Across KS3, here are the completion rates for each one:
Year 7: 93%
Year 8: 88%
Year 9: 84%
A special thank you to all our parents and carers for their support in this regard!
In maths club we have been getting ourselves ready for the UKMT challenge! We have been doing fun puzzles and activities in preparation for this. The dates of the UKMT are as follows:
Junior (Year 7 and Year 8): Wednesday 26th April 2023
If you wish to utilise Sparx further to support your child in preparing for module 5, they will be studying the following topics:
Year 7 - Coordinates, Area and Perimeter; Transformations; Prime Factorisation.
Year 8 - Bivariate Data and Circles; Compound Shapes.
Year 9 - Enlargement, Similarity, Surds and Trigonometry.
For comprehensive information pertaining to the Maths curriculum at LAB, please see here.
This term our students have been working incredibly hard to complete various assessments all across the key stages.
All Key stage 3 classes had completed Criteria A assessments, which required recall knowledge from various topics across the year.
Our key stage 4 both year 10s and year 11s had undertaken their mocks for the year.
Though the term was strenuous, we still managed to pack in lots of activities as always!
Due to popular demand, Science club commenced for the second term. This term was packed with snippets of physics engineering to DNA unravelling. Some of the activities included: observing sound waves via oscilloscopes, making indicators for red cabbage, making hovercrafts and extracting DNA from fruit!
Though the term comes to a swift end, we have some more exciting projects to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.
We're introducing STEMfest, a way to introduce engineering and football. Students learn everything that goes into designing a product, from brainstorming, to problem solving to pitching their ideas. This all culminates in a trip to Charlton stadium where the students will pitch their ideas for a new stadium building.
Events this module
This module, KS3 students have been preparing to enter The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators. The prize is inspired by the life and work of the great translator Anthea Bell. It aims to promote language learning across the UK and to inspire creativity in the classroom. This has been a wonderful opportunity for our students to see translation come to life. Many of our students have enjoyed decoding Spanish or French poems to understand their overall message. We have been impressed with how students have been creative in their choice of words and techniques, ensuring their translations truly capture the spirit of the original poem. The competition texts are now live on KS3 google classrooms. Teachers will be selecting the best translation to be entered into The Anthea Bell Prize by the end of Module 4. ¡Buena suerte a todos! Bonne chance à tous!
Things coming up next module
Next module, some of our Year 10 students will have the opportunity to meet Spanish students from the Secondary school Almunia, in the south of Spain, which will be hosting a visit to London in April. Our students will take part in an exchange day with Spanish students to practise their oral and listening skills, and put into practice what they have learnt over the last 4 years in Spanish.
Values champions / star students
Year 11: Rihanna Sunassee & Isaac Okine
Year 10: Evelina Paolini & Ridian Aliaj
Year 9: Riju (9B) & Maybin (9A)
Year 8: Lawrence (8E Spanish) & Julia (8B French)
Year 7: Juliette (7A French) & Janek (7F Spanish)
If you are a multilingual household, you may be interested in the event below on March 9th. Ute Limacher-Riebold PhD is a multilingual Intercultural Language and Communication Expert at Ute’s International Lounge and will run a webinar covering helpful tips and information about raising children in a multilingual environment. More information available here: Multilingual Families - Webinar
Check out https://teatromultilingue.com/ - a self-funded independent community producing a variety of multilingual and unique shows. All shows are created following a specific format so you don’t have to understand or speak all of the languages to follow the story and have a good time.
In order to consolidate students’ learning in Citizenship, and to enthuse them with a love of political intrigue in time for their Key Stage 5 courses, the Individuals and Societies department is taking 30 Year 10 students to the Houses of Parliament on 22 March. We are looking forward to taking part in the ‘People’s Parliament’ activity and hopefully seeing some famous faces. We will also make sure to take time to admire the beautiful architecture, designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, and to tracking down the controversial statue of Oliver Cromwell.
Don’t miss out on this exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands - Executions, 700 years of public punishment in London. 8 March - 16 April
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london/whats-on/event-detail?id=257408
This module, year 11 students have started their revision sessions in preparation for their final summer exams. In order to help our year 11 students achieve the best possible grades, intervention sessions are being held every Friday. These sessions allow students to work on any topics they may have struggled with using discussion, exam practice and live marking.
Year 10 geography students will be taking part in the much anticipated urban fieldwork. On the 17th March, they will head out to the Isle of the Dogs to showcase their fieldwork skills by conducting environmental quality reports, completing public and self perception surveys, using geographical equipment and consolidating their team building skills. This is a fantastic opportunity to engage with geography outside of the classroom and apply their prior learning to a real life case study.
For those interested in choosing geography at GCSE please check out this link which is full of useful information.
Extra reading opportunities can be found here.
Online lectures on various topics relating to human, physical and environmental geography can be found here.
Religious Education Escape Room: The Case of the Stolen Otsar
This month, as part of our preparation for exams, year 11 Religious Studies GCSE students will participate in an escape room.
Teams will have to work together to complete a series of puzzles, all based around Religious Studies knowledge and skills. Each team will need to use knowledge from English, Maths, Science, History, Geography and Spanish. However, they will also need to draw upon their Arabic and Hebrew linguistic expertise to solve the case.
To get it seek what you find, and find what you seek
No clue is disguised in Latin or Greek
Like roots of a a tree, that start with one seed
Three branches have grown, each flowering it’s own creed
One blooms in the west, one blooms in the east
The oldest of flowers somehow blooms the least
Each radiant with beauty, and colour and song
But though similar flowers, they won’t get along
The west blooming blossoms, state three equals one
The east blooming flower, says there can be no son
The oldest of blossoms says be patient and wait
Pour out wine for a guest by the seder plate
Back to Business….
Continuing with the success of Business at LAB, we have since had a few new students join Business Studies, growing the classes. This only goes to show that the subject is very popular amongst our cohort. Since the last NewsLetter, the students have learnt about Breakeven, Profit, Loss, Cash Flow and so much more.
Events this module
Students have also pitched their business project ideas, and now will be entered into the Peter Jones Tycoon competition! Fingers crossed!
Things coming up next module
This module, we have held our open evening for Business Studies! Already, there has been a number of students in year 9, and even year 7 and 8, asking about Business. We look forward to having a high proportion of students picking Business so it can become one of the most popular subjects here at LAB.
Values champion/star students
Over the course of the academic year, there have been a number of students that go the distance and always perform well in their end of topic assessments. Most notably, Emil has received the highest marks and grades in the past 2 assessments. However, just this week, he has been pegged at the top spot by Mohammed, who obtained a grade 9. What has been amazing to see is the passion and drive that the students have to be the best and always perform. This has built an environment where pushing each other is the norm, which encourages all to perform well.
At LAB we have invested in Touch Typing Reading and Spelling (TTRS) for all our KS3 pupils to help them type on a keyboard without looking at the keys (relying, instead, on their muscle memory and knowledge of the layout of the keys). TTRS helps pupils develop good hand-eye coordination which helps develop their speed and accuracy. It has many benefits such as improving pupils' communication skills, as well as their productivity skills when working with computers. This module we have had an amazing level of pupil interaction with the platform: with certificates to be handed out to the below for their outstanding levels of engagement:
Cruz in 7B
Award: Fastest typer: typing 84 words per minute.
Bethanie in 8D
Award: Most Progress:
Spending an hour and 32 minutes trying to cover as many levels as possible in the most concentrated period of time.
Freddie in 8C
Award: Highest score
Getting a score of 99% in the shortest time.
Leonardo in 9A
Award: Completing the most modules:
Completing 31 modules in less than an hour
At the start of Module two, we were excited to host the Thales Cyber Forensics Challenge Day, in which sixty selected students were invited to take part. Thales is a global technology business operating across aerospace, defence, digital security, transport and space.
Finally, each student who took part in the day has been awarded CREST Accredited discovery award from The British Science Association. https://www.crestawards.org/
The event involved a range of hacking style challenges with a competition element to each. It was quite a day as Erin has commented on here:
I was invited to attend a Cyber Security day hosted by Thales and the SmallPeice Trust. Throughout this day we built on our teamwork and cyber skills simultaneously as we approached different cryptic challenges that we were faced with. We put our (legal) hacking skills to the test to find the missing rhino. Throughout the day we were given hints and curveballs and educated about the importance of cybersecurity and engineering in our ever changing society. I feel incredibly privileged to have attended this event.
Y8 have been working on Music for Video Games and creating Mario Bros inspired tracks on Soundtrap. Lawrence had the creative idea of making his own video game background out of cardboard that he is going to video and create a Soundtrap track for. Well done Lawrence!
Year 11 GCSE Music working on their compositions (using Soundtrap) that are due at the end of the Module! Every student in Ks3 and GCSE Music has access to Soundtrap (soundtrap.com) so please encourage them to use this programme in creative ways at home!
Our first Criteria A assessment was to create an information pack all about the voice and how actors act by solely using their voice.
Above you will see some work from Oliver, Bethan and Connie. Well done!
Y8 have been studying Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, and for their first assessment they needed to create an information pack based around the context, the playwright's intentions and the theatrical themes in Noughts and Crosses. We would like to congratulate the following students for creating amazing presentations: Sam, Elsie and Freddie.
Y9 have been studying Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers and for their first assessment they needed to create an information pack based around the context, the playwright's intentions and the theatrical themes in the play. We would like to congratulate the following students for creating amazing presentations: Millie, Joshua and Cindy.
Year 7
Over Modules 3 & 4, Year 7 have been investigating Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
Drawing upon knowledge learnt in M1, they have explored mark-making. Like the Impressionists they have studied, they have spent time carefully recording how light has fallen on Blackheath Ponds. We have had some beautiful and sensitive responses.
During Module 4, Year 7 developed their knowledge of mark-making through the study of Post-Impressionism. They consider how much the movement evolved - particularly the recording of colour!
,Year 8
During Module 2 Year 8 created their final responses to two modules of study: their Art Deco Wallpaper designs for Eltham Palace!
We are so proud of the extraordinary understanding of the period evident in these prints.
This was Year 8's first experience of printmaking but not their last - we build on this in Year 9 when they explore monoprinting and lino printing! Investigations of the decorative period informed their wallpaper designs. Year 8 studied the Architecture of the period and cam to understand how the intricate patterns typical of Art Deco are seen in the design of iconic structures such as the Chrysler building in New York.
Year 9
Building on from the tints, tones and shades in Y8, Y9 currently are developing their control and manipulation of painting through the lens of Fauvism.
As you can see, Year 9 have embraced the texture and colour of the period in their investigation pages.
We are so excited to see how responses to the period develop. As they work towards their Fauvist portraits, we are asking them to consider how they will choose to communicate their uniqueness and individuality through the use of colour and texture.
GCSE Fine Art
Year 10 have completed their first mock timed assessment. They spent 5 hours working to resolve their ideas.
Although we can not show you the outcomes as it is ‘live’ work, do have a look at the processes!
Millie’s (9A) Rowing Success
A success on the water, with Millie winning 1st place in the Women J14 Double at the Cambridge Champs Junior Sculling Head.
Volleyball Update
A convincing 3-0, straight sets win, for our LAB Volleyball Team against Shooters Hill College
A huge thank you to Shooters Hill College for hosting this fixture; we look forward to the reverse game later in the year.
Our Volleyball Programme is supported by Coach Elsa and the Wildcubs Volleyball Club. Should your child, regardless of ability, wish to play volleyball outside of school, please use the link below to register your interest with them. They run both beginner and intermediate/team sessions at the academy.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScl9Jd9pVXS0sGeRpnIZfB8pNY_Q_P9j14-izsVPjdp8uKplg/viewform
Rowing Success at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships
Both Edward (11C) and Charlotte (11F) placed in the top ten at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships.
Kerem’s (8E) Swimming Achievements
Kerem is a member of the Saxon Crown Swimming Club and currently trains for eight hours per week. This level of dedication is clearly paying off as he placed in the top three in six of his seven races, achieving personal best times in the process!
400m Freestyle - Bronze
200m Backstroke - Gold
200m Breaststroke - Bronze
200m Individual Medley - Gold
200m Freestyle - Gold
400m Individual Medley - Silver
PE Uniform
A polite reminder about your child’s PE uniform. Pupils should wear:
LAB Polo Shirt
LAB Sweatshirt/Jumper (Fleece Material)
LAB PE Shorts or Skort
LAB PE Tracksuit Bottoms or a plain navy blue equivalent (no large logos)
Trainers (any colour)
Please also ensure your child carries a water bottle as part of their everyday equipment.
A huge well done to the performers above. Please continue to share your child’s sporting successes with Mr Tebbutt (jordan.tebbutt@leighacademyblackheath.org.uk).
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