The Halley's Comment Issue 15

The Halley's Comment

Issue 15

Halley Achieves the Wellbeing Award for Schools

The Halley Academy is proud to announce that on Friday 25th March we achieved the Wellbeing Award for Schools. The award process started a year and a half ago, with the aim of ensuring that the wellbeing and mental health of our students, staff, parents and carers is at the heart of the decisions we make as a community. The Award provided us with a framework to reflect on the policies, interventions and feedback opportunities we already had in regards to wellbeing and mental health and to recognise where we could improve.

The Wellbeing Award verifier met with the Halley’s Wellbeing Team on Friday. He initially checked through the evidence they had provided to showcase the Academy’s approach to wellbeing and mental health. He then read through feedback from parents and met with students, staff and governors to ensure that the work we are doing positively supports all involved in the Academy. He made the decision to award the Academy later that same day.

The verifier spoke exceptionally highly of everybody he met on the day, as well as the support the Academy provides for its students. He praised the layers of support we have on offer, including the interventions we have in place, the work of the small schools, the tutors, support staff, counsellor, teachers and the SEND department. In the report sent to the Academy he noted that, ‘Pupils can point to a range of opportunities across the school to discuss EWMH, raise concerns and have their voices heard.’ He recognised the growing provisions we have on offer for our staff and our ongoing aim to create a positive and open culture where all feel able to support each other. He also celebrated our commitment to engaging with parents through our Parent Bulletin, Parent Voice and Parent Workshops. He noted that the Academy includes the voices of all stakeholders in its approach to mental health and wellbeing. We understand that a whole community approach is the most effective way of ensuring all feel cared for and supported.

The Wellbeing Team knows that this work is ongoing. We will continue to reflect on what we have on offer and consider how we can continue to grow. Look out for new parent, student and staff initiatives that will be shared with you.

Thank you to everyone for continuing to ensure that the wellbeing and mental health of students, colleagues and all involved in the community remains a priority.

The Halley Wellbeing Team

“Those who can imagine anything can create the impossible”

Turing School

The shift in seasons from winter to spring, and on towards summer, means the achievement of significant milestones for many of our Turing students. Our Year 11 cohort will shortly commence their GCSE exams, with these results supporting their future destinations. Our Year 7 students are now firmly established at the academy and have settled to form a fantastic addition to our Turing School community. Students in Year 9 will shortly be choosing their options, with both Year 8 and 10 students readying themselves to begin the final year of their Middle Years Programme and GCSE and Vocational courses in the 2022-23 academic year.

The Turing School team has continued to provide high quality support and care to our students, ensuring that they understand our expectations, but that we will also support and champion them throughout their time here at the academy. It was fantastic to see so many of our students representing the academy at our recent Open Evening for prospective students, including a number who have toured families during our normal academy day.

The Turing School continues to lead the way in attendance, with 7T1 worthy of a special mention due to their continued excellence in this area. The award card programme is a fantastic barometer of our students commitment to their studies and involvement in wider academy life. Ruby (7T2), Patricia (7T2) and Olawunmi (7T2), have all shown this during the last module in achieving over ten completed awards cards since the start of September. The Turing team continues to be incredibly proud of all that our students achieve.

On an individual level, Turing students also continue to inspire the Turing Senior Team with their attitude, commitment and willingness to go above and beyond our normal expectations. This is evident through: Ruby (7T2), Patricia (7T2), Olawunmi (7T2), Millie (7T2), Heather-Rose (7T2) and Nicholas (10T2) all invited to the Principal’s breakfast on the 31st March. A fantastic achievement for all students and their representation of the Turing School values.

I would like to conclude by also thanking you for your support and communication throughout this academic year. We rely on your openness and willingness to support us and your child during their school lives, with those firmly rooted relationships enabling each child to prosper. As always, we are here to support your child and will keep you, the families, updated as we travel through the course of this academic year. If you would like to contact someone at any point, please email us at Turing@thehalleyacademy.org.uk.

Matt Stevens

Head of Turing School

Easley School

As we leap forward into spring and begin to enjoy the lighter evenings and hopefully warmer weather, our thoughts move towards our Year 11 students. The comments of Annie Easley’s mother are never more important than at this point in the Year 11’s education; ‘ You can do anything you want to, but you have to work at it.’ With our Year 11s working hard as they approach the home straight we remind them to look after themselves, sleep and eat well and of course, talk to their tutors and teachers if they need further help, support and guidance.

Our Year 9 students will shortly be commencing the process of option choices and so an important time for them to be thinking about what they want to achieve in the future, what they enjoy and what they are good at. A time for reflection and excitement for the Year 9's educational journey. For many, the Humanutopia workshops provided an excellent opportunity to reflect and set out goals and aspirations. It was fantastic to see so many Easley Year 9 students opt to train as Halley’s Heroes and we celebrate the fact that our lead Heroes are Easley students. Well done Year 9!

The Easley Year 7 students are now well established and have contributed significantly to the academy, with the Year 8 students proving to be excellent role models, whilst they prepare for the final year of the Middle Years Programme.

I am sure that our Year 10 students have noticed that soon they will be the oldest students in Easley and as such they are already demonstrating excellence in their commitment to learning and focus on their GCSE courses.

This academic year has already been one where our Easley students have continued to demonstrate the highest standards, through wearing their uniform with pride, outstanding attendance and punctuality and excellent attitudes to learning in all of their lessons. They have also acted as ambassadors for the academy and their small school by supporting at Open Evenings, touring prospective families around the academy or through representation at extra curricular activities and fixtures.

A number of students deserve a special mention. Edroy (7E1), Jane (7E1), Phan (7E2) and Vladlen (8E1) have been leading the way in the completion of award cards and Tomi (9E3) continues to represent Great Britain in Taekwondo.

A special mention must also go to 7E1, led by Ms Needham Bennett, for fantastic attendance throughout the course of this module.

I would like to thank our parents and carers for their continued support and ongoing communication with the Easley team. Working with so many committed and supportive families is truly a privilege and some of the lovely feedback the team has received from families this academic year makes the job even better! If you would like to contact a member of the Easley team, then you can do so via email at Easley@thehalleyacademy.org.uk.

Karen Cronin

Head of Easley School

“You can do anything you want to, but you have to work at it”

“All that is necessary is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success ..... is worth attaining”

Franklin School

The Easter season gives us the opportunity to reflect on achievements and successes of the year so far, whilst considering how we best want to chart our paths forward in the months ahead. The importance of family and community is also highlighted to us during this period - two important values which lay at the bedrock of the Franklin family and the work we are all committed to in ensuring our students' success and happiness.

Pleasingly, the Franklin office has been inundated with students completing and achieving their Reward Cards during the Spring Term, an illustration of students’ commitment to achieving the highest standards and working to the best of their abilities. In particular, we must applaud Sophia and Dorina in Year 7 who have completed 17 and 16 cards respectively. A large number of students also attended the Principal’s Breakfast with their families at the end of this module, a celebration of their continuing commitment to learning.

We have enjoyed seeing Franklin students explore the attributes of the IB Learner Profile in practice during our Cultural Capital Day at the end of March. For example, Year 9s took part in an Art and History project, ‘The Foundation Stones’, exploring how we commemorate and memorialise the Holocaust; Year 10 students enjoyed STEM projects and trips to cultural and artistic sites in London; and Year 7 students designed a new app during a coding project.

In the last month, it has also been pleasing to see that attendance and punctuality rates have noticeably increased, showing our students commitment to their learning. A particular mention should go to celebrate the achievements of 9F3, who have won our weekly attendance competition the most out of any Franklin tutor group, followed by 8F2.

A massive thank you must also be reserved for the Franklin team who work tirelessly and with passion to ensure that all students receive the care and support they need in order to excel at the Academy: Mrs Parsons, as Deputy Head of School, Mr Roques, as Director of Progress, Mrs Godfrey and Mrs Robson as Small School Managers, and Mrs Walder, as Small School Administrator.

Finally, all of the Franklin team would like to pass on our sincere thanks for your ongoing support at home during this term. We wish you a restful and relaxing Easter break with your family and friends, and look forward to welcoming your child back to the Academy for the start of Module 5.

Hawking School

Excited by our upcoming Employability Day

We are pleased to announce that our next employability day will take place on Friday 29th April 2022. All students in Years 8-13 will attend the event.

The event will support students to understand possible destinations including employment, standard and high level apprenticeships and Further or Higher Education. The academy is supported by the Tallow Chandlers and in preparation for this event the we held an employer engagement event at the Tallow Chandlers Hall on Monday 7th February.

Due to the pandemic, last year's employability events took place virtually, however, during the 2019/2020 academic year our employability day was attended by 27 employers, a range of universities and an apprenticeship advice organisation.

"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet"

UCAS Applications and Student Destinations

We are delighted with the high number of our Year 13 students that have received university offers and a number are still awaiting offers. The students also benefited from presentations regarding student life and student finance during our cultural capital day on Wednesday 30th March 2022.

Greenwich Sexual Health

Students in Hawking School benefitted from a number of sessions with the Greenwich Sexual Health team. These sessions support the schools Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) programme.

IBCP: Our Second Cohort

IB students are in the process of finalising their Internal Assessments, ready for these to be submitted to the IB by Wednesday 20th April. Reflective Projects are also entering their final stages, with students investigating and evaluating ethical dilemmas on a diverse range of topics including unemployment, assisted dying, capital punishment and the #MeToo movement.

In Service Learning, our work with Kidbrooke Park Primary School has continued throughout the module, with a number of IB and non-IB students supporting younger pupils to hone and improve their reading skills. Meanwhile, other students have also responded to the ongoing refugee crisis in Eastern Europe by organising a collection of food, clothing and other essentials in partnership with the Lewisham Polish Centre, who have been coordinating humanitarian efforts across South-East London.

The Halley Academy has addressed the Ukraine Crisis in a variety of ways. Firstly, in tutor periods, we have been introducing our students about the history of the crisis, the portrayal of events on social media and strategies to manage the anxiety that conversations can lead to. The Academy has also had a cake sale to raise money for the Red Cross and our Year 12 service learners, as part of their IBCP studies, have been organising and collecting donations from our Halley community.

Year 6 Information Evening

On 10th March, we welcomed a record 103 families into the building to get a further insight into our academy. The main hall was buzzing with excitement as the prospective families circulated around the stalls, gathering information about what makes us unique. The staff and students that attended were great ambassadors for the academy, articulating with enthusiasm and delight about their own experiences at The Halley.

We also had some eager Year 7 speakers; Andesha, Fikayomi and Luna, who all spoke with great confidence and honesty about their learning journey so far, highlighting to the parents about the MYP, summer school, their favourite subjects and the most delicious chicken wings! The STEM display was also popular throughout the evening, showcasing the robots that have been produced by the STEM club amongst other experiments that also included dissolving Skittles!

The families and students that attended also had a tour of the new STEM centre, which looked incredible and impressed everyone. The highlight was when one of our Year 10 students, Khamani, walked in and said ‘WOW’, whilst jumping in the air. This moment and the way in which the students spoke about the academy was a true reflection of how proud they are to be part of The Halley community.

The feedback from the parents was outstanding and so many commented positively on our students and staff ambassadors. One family had also brought some friends with them who were so impressed that they are now wanting to change their own school place so that they can attend The Halley.

The talent and expertise of our amazing staff body made this event a true success and the students left feeling excited about embarking on their Halley journey.

DSP Sensory Garden Makeover

At the end of the last academic year, we were fortunate enough to be awarded a LAT grant to develop the existing garden area attached to the DSP, into a sensory garden.

After much discussion and deliberation, it was decided that the sensory garden would be an outdoor teaching/dining area that included a quiet outside seating space and a number of raised growing beds. The existing space was quite large, largely laid to lawn with a few shrubs and fruit trees around the margins.

The new plan involved building a paved area under a pergola, to be used as an outdoor classroom/social space, planting the perimeter borders with a range of perennial plants that have sensory benefits and the construction of four raised beds which the DSP students will use to grow vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers. Development of the outside space will also allow the DSP staff and students to complete all 5 levels of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening awards.

Before pictures:

Phase two of the DSP sensory garden project makeover involved the completion of the paving under the pergola, increasing the width of the borders around the garden and creating a willow half bower. This is a living structure constructed from willow whips which are planted directly into the soil and then woven together into the chosen shape. As the willow grows side-shoots, these are woven into the structure. This helps to further stabilise the structure, and produces a completely green, living enclosed space, which rustles gently in the breeze, but still provides a quiet sheltered space to sit and enjoy being outside.

The border running alongside the pathway outside the DSP garden boundary has been increased to around 30cm depth. This will allow us to plant more in the space, giving a gradation in height from the front to the back of the border and will hide any gaps created by the stems of taller plants.

Paving under the pergola is now all in place - the end furthest from the DSP building has been made slightly larger. Designs for the seating in the garden are going to be chosen by a competition open to KS3 students. Winning designs will be constructed in technology.

Progress so far:

Lead Practitioners

The Lead Practitioners have continued to provide further opportunities around the Academy to help support our staff, parents and students with the teaching and learning of our community.

Staff have had a regular diet of twilight sessions led by the Lead Practitioners, focusing on the teaching of reading and writing. The CPD twilight and CPD sessions have been supported with the staff bulletin that is produced on a weekly basis.

Our students have also had a modular focus on the teaching strategies that we deploy across the Academy. In Module 3, we had our ‘reading for meaning day’ where the focus was on encouraging our students to read and introducing them to a range of strategies that are useful in helping to understand texts. Our ‘Flex-it Friday’ meanwhile encouraged our students to stretch themselves further beyond their comfort zones.

Finally, our parental workshops have mirrored the CPD within the academy and have introduced our parents to the methods we use within our lessons. The feedback from those who have attended has been incredibly positive:

'Thank you for yesterday's workshop. It had a lot of content and personally I learnt a lot. The facilitators were incredibly good in articulating all the programmes which can help our learners to excel.'

STEM Club

STEM club this module has gained in popularity, with several members of Year 10 joining us. We have been working on completing our VEX IQ robots - once the build is finished, the next stage will be to write programs to enable the robots to carry out set tasks. This will allow us to hone our coding skills, as well as international and hopefully international robotics competitions.

Members of STEM club have also been busily engaged in helping to design a busy board for the DSP sensory garden project. A busy board is a collection of interactive stimulatory equipment that helps students to focus, chill and improve their fine motor skills.

Currently the STEM club members are preparing entries for the Ceres REIMAGINE competition. This is a contest designed in collaboration with STEM learning UK to inspire the next generation of innovators and creatives to tackle the mission for net zero. The competition asks students to come up with an innovative way to produce clean energy, and then to make a 3 minute video which explains their concept.

After Easter STEM club will be starting to build our formula 24 racing car: once completed, we will form a racing team and take part in national race events.

Values

The focus in the last two modules has focused on ‘Yourself’, which has been providing our students with the statutory sex and relationships (SRE) lessons. Whilst the majority of these topics have been provided by our great team of tutors within the Academy, all students in Years 9 to 13 have had a couple of sessions delivered to them by Greenwich Health Services. Meanwhile, Years 9 and 10 have also had the opportunity to view a Little Fish production, ‘To Be Continued’, which was focused on relationships, sexism and misogyny. The attitude and maturity of our students was commented on by all of our external facilitators:

‘Everyone said how welcoming the academy made them feel and we all thought the students' responses were wonderful’.

Our values sessions next module will focus on ‘Your Future’ and will allow our students the opportunities to look at a range of topics including the world of work, CVs, interviews and future aspirations.

News from the farm

The chickens are still confined to their inner run due to the high numbers of bird flu cases occurring in the UK. Despite this long confinement, the girls are all happy and are now starting to lay with more regularity. Egg laying is dependent on day length, so as the sun rises earlier, the frequency of laying increases. We are hopeful that before too much more time has passed the restrictions will be lifted and the girls will be free to roam in the larger enclosure again.

As the days warm up, our bees are starting to leave the hive with more frequency. Honey bees will not fly if it is raining, very windy or the temperature is below 10℃ . As spring establishes itself, it's time for us beekeepers to start on the weekly hive inspections. We look for the amount of food available for the bees, signs that the queen is present and healthy (eggs and young larvae should be present) and any signs of disease. Strangely, at this time of year it is often necessary to feed the bees too - they are given sugar in the form of bee fondant (this is almost exactly the same as the fondant icing you get on cakes) and extra protein in the form of pollen or pollen substitutes. Feeding is necessary to replenish the winter stores and to cover the period between the days lengthening and there being sufficient suitable flowers out for the bees to feed on. If you are planning on doing any work in your gardens over the next few weeks and months, please consider planting some pollinator friendly plants, especially those that flower early or late in the season to help our bees survive.

Sports Leadership Programme

Starting in June, 20 students from Year 7 to Year 10 will participate in the new sports leadership programme named Your Time that will provide them with an accredited award. This is an inspirational programme designed to encourage girls in schools to participate in competitive sport and sports leadership opportunities. The Your Time Leaders will be able to develop their confidence in five key skills: communication, teamwork, self-belief, self-management and problem solving.

Your Time leaders will complete a series of six online learning modules which focus on skill development and engaging with their peers, followed by leading at least one competitive sports event to their peers. working towards achieving this accredited award.

Your Time leaders will have the opportunity to reflect and identify negative associations and barriers to female participation in PE and sport and, consequently, feel more empowered to address these challenges through the design of their event, seeking to meet what girls from their school care about and find engaging. The leaders will then share their findings with the academy's PE department and help shape the extracurricular offer and leadership opportunities for girls in the future.

If you would like to be part of this engaging and exciting new programme, please express your interest to Miss Quintino.

Introducing SOCs - for all our Extracurricular Activities

Module 3 saw the introduction of SOCs, which allows students to choose their preferred extracurricular activities via a web-based platform. It also offers the Academy a central mechanism to promote, document and analyse our extracurricular activities. Students have the opportunity to participate in over 30 in-school activities, which run five days a week from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. The uptake of SOCs by disadvantaged and SEND students has grown throughout the year groups since its inception, but we are still keen to increase participation.

Throughout Module 4 we saw more students involved in clubs by signing up through the academy SOCs website. This enables all students to:

Engage and develop current interests & skills
Develop their leadership & interpersonal skills
Try something new to discover new potential interests & skills
Learn commitment, respect, integrity & tolerance

Teachers at The Halley Academy are as eager to introduce more interesting clubs and activities to engage and feed curious minds, as students are to sign up for them. There are always a variety of extracurricular activities available, and the doors are always open to as many students as want to participate. At The Halley, we seek to develop students holistically. The vibe at extracurricular activities is uplifting, with an inclusive approach and an emphasis on enjoying life.

During Module 4, we launched our first chess competition, where participating students were entered for the grand prize.

Pictured here are some activities from the STEM club to give an insight into our extracurricular offer.