A Week at Winston

Supporting Chelsea Ladies!

Mr Hough organised a trip to watch Chelsea Ladies play Glasgow on Thursday evening.  The club donated the free tickets and the students were given free flags.

The students were excellent, as always, and enjoyed the game.

The Ladies won 1-0 against Glasgow Ladies and play them in the return leg on Wednesday.

  Making a Contribution

Hollie, in Year 8 participated in a Swimathon; this is her comment:

“I swam in a charity swimathon on Sunday and did 128 laps, I came second overall and I am still counting up how much money I raised.”

Well done Hollie!

9C1 in Food Technology

Mrs Vadi 9C1 class  were set the challenge to investigate the diet of a professional sports person. They then set out to plan and make a dish that they felt met the nutritional needs of a British Rugby player. The dish had to reflect findings within their investigation. The results include a soft Tofu Burger with tomato relish, herb crumbed cod with roasted vegetables and tomato salsa, Zucchini linguini with avocado salad and dressing, smoked mackerel salad, high protein low fat chicken curry served with basmati rice, Super food salad with blueberries, roasted chicken coated chicken with cous cous, and salmon teriyaki served with rice and spinach, to name but a few. The final step was to analyse the nutritional content of their dish and reflect on its suitability. The quality of written work seen was excellent as was the practical outcomes. Mrs Vadi was impressed with the pride that they had shown in all aspects of the task. The class wanted to produce their best and definitely did so, as the photographs below show.

Technical Challenge

All Year 11 Design & Technology Groups, as part of theory Thursdays, worked in a very hands on approach to complete a challenge. They were provided with a list of instructions, just like the 'Bake off technical challenge' and then the students weere able to work independently or in pairs to create a trophy. The joining methods or finishes to be applied were not specified, so students used the skills they have mastered since starting the course to create their outcomes. After 50 minutes the classes came together with their trophies, to be judged by Miss Blackman and Mrs Brown. The winners were then given the award of star maker!

The activity was fun but had a serious purpose as it prepares the students to answer an exam question, where they have to give the detailed manufacturing instructions of an item. 

Students Supporting SANDs

 Working Together

Our amazingYear 11 Senior Prefects organised a major fund raising event for the charity SANDs, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death charity.  This was initiated by Ally Munday and supported across the school.  The students, led by David and Rachel, our Headboy and Headgirl, have run assemblies so that our school community understood the importance of this charity and the work that they do to support families.  They then arranged a mufti day and a balloon release.  The whole school went up to the field at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon to watch the balloons and to celebrate the way in which the Winston community has come together to support such a important cause.  The final amount raised will not be known until the middle of next week but based on what has been collected so far it is likely to be in the region of £2000.

Well done Winston, you make a difference!

Enjoy the pictures and the film clip below!

The Senior Prefect Team

 

 

Did You Know...

Working Together With...

It is important to be outward facing as a school and to seek to extend the number of people we work with, to bring new ideas to Winston.  You may not be aware of all the partnerships and therefore, opportunities, that are available to our students and staff at Winston.  The following gives you a flavour of the developments that have taken place in the last two years.

Wellington College: Independent State Schools Partnership

Key Areas:

• Master Classes for our most able mathematicians, scientists and linguists
• Summer schools for our most able students
• Research opportunities for staff to enable the school to develop initiatives that make a difference to learning
• Building Resilience Project: Mr Drake is currently working with Birmingham University
• Working with partner schools on key areas of the curriculum
• Supporting the training of new teachers
• Leadership training at all levels
  
  

2015 Partnership: with Collingwood College, The Bishop David Brown School and The Magna Carta School

Key Areas:

• School support and development
• Sharing good practice across the partnership
• Leadership development
• Shared training opportunities
• Shared procurement, aimed at reducing costs
• Teacher Recruitment

The Goethe-Insitut: working with the German Embassy

Key Areas:

• To encourage the teaching of German in our primary schools
• To support primary schools with training, resources and teachers 
• Provides Winston students with additional resources and opportunities when learning German
• Opportunities in terms of careers
  

Reading University:

Key Areas:

• The recruitment and training of Maths Teachers
• Working together on research into enquiry based learning in maths

Surrey Chambers of Commerce:

A new partnership opening up opportunities to engage with the world of business, for the benefit of our students.

This Week at Winston

 Year 10 Supporting Younger Students

Frank Cowling has come to Winston to train students, Learning Support staff and Primary colleagues on the Toe by Toe reading scheme. The year 10 students are learning so that they can mentor year 7s students, who will be taking part in the scheme during form times to improve their reading skills. The year 10s will be able to use the experience for the Duke of Edinburgh’s awards. Frank is the grandson of the founder of the Toe by Toe Scheme which helps students to ‘decode’ and improve their reading age.

I am very proud of the mature way in which the Year 10 students handled the training,  and understand the importance of their role.  The training was also delivered to our LSAs.

 

WW1 in the Trenches

Whilst on tour with prospective parents on Friday we came across a history lesson where the students had created the trenches and were looking at the strategy of bombardment and analysing how effective it was.

 

 

Halloween in the LRC!

Will you dare to visit the Library this week?

 



 

 

 

Inspiring New Teachers

Eight trainee teachers from Glenthorne High School, Epsom visited The Winston Churchill School Maths department on Friday. They wanted to observe how the department focuses on student led learning, and creates an environment where learning is independent of the teacher.  Aa well as observing year 9 and 10 lessons, they were also able to find out more about our Harkness method of teaching by seeing one take place with year 8.  Trainees had the opportunity to take a look at the department's many boxed learning resources/games-all unique to the school and created by our teachers for our students.

We always look forward to welcoming visitors to our department, particularly when we are able to inspire teachers to teach in a way that will engage their students with the subject.



Music at Winston

Music at Winston

On Wednesday 7^th October Mr Drake and Miss Ashworth took seventeen GCSE Music students to the Anvil, Basingstoke, to see the Philharmonia Orchestra perform. The programme featured some well know works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky. It was an incredible concert and the students thoroughly enjoyed it. They were all a credit to the school and were complimented for their outstanding behaviour and enthusiasm by a number of members of the public.

 Music Keeps on Growing!

The pictures below are of the Winston Orchestra rehearsing in the Churchill Suite on Wednesday. We’ve had to move our rehearsals out of M1 because we’ve got too big (there were 34 students there yesterday and more that were unable to attend!). 

We’re getting ready for the Christmas Concert on Wednesday 16^th December which will feature more students than either of the two big concerts we did last year.

These are great opportunities for students to make high quality music together.