Friday 20th of March 2015

F1 in Schools Competition 

March 18th saw our inaugural GIS F1 in Schools event. All year 9 students have been working hard in their Design Technology lessons in an attempt to be crowned the GIS champions and get the chance to represent the school at regional and National finals later in the year. F1 in Schools is an international design and engineering competition where students have to form teams and design and race a scale wooden F1 car. Alongside this they learn about business plans, marketing, design and presentation skills.

 

On Wednesday we had a fantastic showcase of their work. 29 teams raced, presented, displayed and spoke to a range of judges about what they had learnt over the previous months. With special visitors from Sepang circuit also popping by to see all the hard work, everyone who attended was thoroughly impressed by the quality of work and enthusiasm showed.

 

The winners were announced during assembly on Friday:

 

1st place:  Neon

 2nd place: Alpha Eaglez

3rd place: Phantohm Riders

 All teams now get the chance to represent GIS in the regional events later this year.

The link to the winning video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlSXWQA9b94&sns=em

Friday 13th of February 2015

IGCSE Options Forms!

Well done to the vast majority of Year 9 students and parents! Following all of the IGCSE options events that have taken place over this past half term only 2 forms were not handed in before the deadline.... Mr Wellings now has the rather tricky job of putting the information together and start constructing the time table for next year. Over the next half term, we will be interviewing students about their options choices and checking some of the chosen combinations. Thanks for your support with this process.

Photochase!

This week at school we also had a photo-chase challenge that was shoe-horned into a 20 minute PM registration time. The idea behind this was to encourage students to work as a team to take as many photos from a list that I came up within the short time frame. This could have resulted in absolute chaos with students running all around the school but actually the Year 9's were brilliant and really came together in form teams. After the photos had been taken, uploaded and shared with me, one form came out triumphant! 9P managed to get all of the listed pictures and took 10 points towards the weekly inter-form competition that we have been running since term 1. Here are a few of the pictures:

 9P in register order

 5 students from 9G with an MFL teacher

 9W pointing to the clock at 1pm

 All of the 9M boys next to their lockers

 4 students from 9G with an English teacher

 9S students with an MFL teacher

9I tutor group stood in a circle

Friday 6th of February

Year 9 Options Parent Teacher Conference

We have pleasure in inviting you to our next Parent Teacher Conference. This is an important time to develop the partnership between school and home and is an opportunity to discuss your child’s IGCSE subject option choices and academic progress.

The date and time of the Parent /Teacher Conference afternoon is:

Date:                    Tuesday 10th February 2015

Time:                   2.45pm – 4.45pm

All teachers will be located in the Grand Hall and rooms C4, C5 and C6. Please note that this is a no appointment PTC with a less formal drop in format.

Please do sign in with our Student Leaders on your arrival. As a reminder, the deadline for the options form is Friday 13th of February, 2015.

We very much hope you can attend this PTC and look forward to seeing you there. Thanks, Dr. Browning

Monday 26th January 2015

Year 9 Inter-house Update

Over the past couple of weeks the Year 9 Inter-house activities have started to gain momentum and it is great to see so many pupils taking the opportunity to take part in some healthy competition. As always the Inter-house dodge-ball saw a great turn out from all houses. After some hard fought battles it was Mr O'Neil's Queen house that came out triumphant. His passion and enthusiasm on the sidelines was reminiscent of the legendary Mrs Bisby!

More recently, the Year 9 house teams took part in the hugely anticipated soft-ball competition. After the preliminary games, I believe that the final will be between Crest and Queen this Friday. No doubt Mr Finch (Head of Crest) would like to reaffirm his grasp on the house trophy again, although the new Head of Queen, Mr O'Neil, is certainly making a big impact with his supremely competitive Year 9 team....it is sure to be an interesting game!

 

Friday 23rd January 2015

Important Dates

IGCSE Options forms have been given out this week at school and now that pupils have had their subject taster sessions, tutor time activities, career sessions and options assembly, I am confident that they have all of the information needed to make the right choices for themselves. There is one more major event before the options forms need to be returned and it is absolutely fine for pupils to hold onto these forms until after the Options PTC where each faculty will be on hand to answer questions about their subjects. Please note that it is an open PTC. This means that we do not schedule appointments but all of the Year 9 teachers and Heads of Faculty will be available for you to drop by and discuss IGCSE Option choices as well as progress in particular subjects at school. 

Tuesday 10th of February: Options PTC

Friday 13th of February: Deadline for Option forms to be handed in to form tutors.

Please do not hesitate in contacting me if you have any concerns or questions. Regards, Dr. Browning

Monday 12th of January 2015

IGCSE Options Information Booklet

Please use the link below to access the new Year 9 IGCSE subject options iBook. This should provide insight into the all of the courses available for next year and answer any questions that you might have about the process:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1I5bAMjrTiEakN6elNhVTFCTjA/view?usp=sharing

For any parents that were unable to attend the discussion evening on Thursday 8th of January the slides from the evening can be found using the following link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1I5bAMjrTiEci1DWGFZaGdmT2c/view?usp=sharing

Please contact me if you have any concerns or further questions. Regards, Dr. Browning

Friday 9th January 2015

HUMAN RIGHTS ENQUIRY

This week at school the Year 8 and 9 pupils were teamed up in house groups to research about different human rights. This is clearly a massively important topic for pupils to know about and is in line with the idea of developing empathy that is embedded in our positive education and school focus this year.

Pupils essentially had 2 days to prepare a concept and pitch to raise awareness of one particular human right. It was great to see all of the pupils really getting involved in these projects and the final products this year were very impressive. We have had professional photographers in school taking pictures this week and so plenty of great photos will become available soon. For now, here are a few from me from the free flow activity on Thursday in which pupils were learning about the right of privacy.