School Update - 17/03/2020

This Week

Assembly This Week

Mr Parsons delivered a thought provoking assembly, based around human behaviour and used examples from the current corona-virus situation to encourage further understanding.  Students were asked to consider why all the toilet paper had disappeared from supermarket shelves, what had caused people to panic buy?

 Mr Parsons and two families; the greedy family and the thoughtful family.

 The greedy family were busy panic buying.

 The thoughtful family ended up buying more in case nothing was left for them.

 Lunch on Thursday!

                                          Lunch on Thursday looked and tasted delicious!

New Building Project

You will be pleased to know that the plans for our new building, Performance Space, were sent in to the planning committee this week!  We are all very excited to see how this progresses over the coming weeks.

Mr Collins!

The Value of Penguin Classics

We were delighted to support Speakers4Schools, when they asked if our Head of English, Mr Collins, would share his views about the use of Penguin Classic Books in school.

The film also includes some of our students in an English lesson!

Thank you to everyone involved in this production.

World Book Week; Chapter 2

Winston Loves Reading

Book Week continued on Wednesday with Mrs Smith being our staff reader at break time. She read one of her son's favourite stories: The Dinosaur Who Lost His Roar. The students enjoyed listening to a nostalgic story that some of them may have enjoyed when they were younger. Thank you Mrs Smith!

Thursday was World Book Day which could only mean one thing... Teachers dressing up! The English department really got into the spirit of World Book Day by dressing up as various book characters such as Gangster Granny, Tin Tin and Lay Macbeth. See which teachers you can spot!

Aside from the teachers dressing up, Thursday was a busy day involving a World Book Day breakfast for invited Year 7 readers and lunchtime author masterclass videos. The Year 7 students invited to the World Book Day breakfast enjoyed pastries and hot chocolate as they chatted about their favourite books. KS4 book club started after school on Thursday, with a group of us chatting about what we like to read and deciding on our first book to read. We will be meeting every other Thursday to chat about what we have been reading!

 

The Book Week celebrations came to a close on Friday, but not without an author visit. Ele Fountain, the author of Boy 87, spoke to Year 7 in their assembly, before delivering 2 creative writing workshops for selected Year 7 students. It was interesting to hear how living in Ethiopia for a period of time with her family had inspired her to write the book about a story of one refugee. Ele encouraged the students within the creative writing workshops to think outside the box and use their imagination to make their story come alive. The stories they came up with were fantastic - from Salt Pig to Evil Vegetables!! 

Ele was then able to stay over lunchtime for students to come and say hello, ask any questions they had and even get their copies of Boy 87 signed! Waterstones in Woking brought along some World Book Day books for students to purchase with their tokens, along with some other books that students could buy. It was a great way for students to get a free book without even having to go to the shops!

 

I hope all of the students enjoyed book week. I know I had lots of fun planning it and taking part in the activities too! The feedback from students was definitely positive and it was great to see them engaging in books that they wouldn't normally pick up.

Congratulations Ms Dodds!  Thank you for a fantastic week.

National Careers' Week Part 2

National Careers Week

Mrs Smyth has complied the stats for this week's events and they are impressive:

• Visitors – 42
• Presentations/workshops – 28
• Lunchtime stands – 6  Open to all students
• Activities (incl the Army/Merrist Wood) – 14
• Student included in workshops/presentations – 1299

This does not include all the activities that went on in class and the lunchtime stands which were available to all!

Thank you to all our visitors, you have helped to inspire the students of Winston and a huge thank you to Mrs Smyth, who has worked hard to provide opportunities for all of our children.

  

There will be more images next week!

Year 9 Science

Mr Weale was really impressed with the effort from his Year 9 science class with their work on Organ Systems, in their Biology lesson. 

The class had to create life size drawings of their bodies and insert the main organs. They had to consider size and scale and use their mathematical skills, to ensure that they were as lifelike as possible! The idea was to understand the placement and functions of the the organs and the enzymes that are produced around the body to assist with digestion! The detail in the work is exceptional.  Well done Year 9!

World Book Week Chapter 1

World Book Week 📚

Our librarian, Miss Dodds, decided that a World Book Day was not enough for Winston and she has planned a full week of activities that help us all to celebrate the joy of books and reading.

The first half of Book Week has been jam packed full of different things going on in the library. On Monday, we started off with Mrs Alexander reading an extract from Becoming Michelle Obama as this is someone who has inspired her. It was interesting to hear a little about Michelle's childhood and how she always stood for what she believed in. Thank you Mrs Alexander for sharing this! 

On Tuesday, as part of Careers Week, we were lucky enough to have visiting author Marisa Noelle doing a talk in the Discovery Space, coinciding with Book Week! She spoke to mainly Year 8's but some other students also, about the process of taking a book from first idea right through to it being on the shelf. It was incredibly inspiring and the students had lots of questions for her. We're hoping Marisa will come back later on in the school year as her teen horror/sci-fi books are sure to be very popular with the students! Our staff reader on Tuesday was Mr Parsons, who decided to read a short extract from Pax - a moving story of the extraordinary friendship between a box and his fox, and their epic journey to be reunited. Thank you Mr Parsons!

Tuesday also saw the start of Manga Club after school! We created manga inspired posters to promote the club and looked at some 'New In' manga books for the library. We are hoping to expand the club over the next couple of weeks so if you are interested in reading and enjoying manga, come along on a Tuesday after school in the library.

The Aspire Carnegie reading group met again on Wednesday morning to decide which would be the first book from the Carnegie shortlist that they would read. Some of the books were more popular than others within the group, but the students are encouraged to push themselves out of their reading comfort zone. Each student chose a book to take out from the list, and went away with the idea of trying that book, ready to discuss when we meet next Friday!

It's been a busy week already in the library, so be sure to come along and choose something to read, take part the book week activities or decide on what career path you might want to go down. Watch this space for more Book Week news at the end of the week - including World Book Day pictures, more staff readers and another author visit!

National Careers Week

National Careers Week

2^nd - 6^th March 2020

Mrs Smyth has produced a packed week of events to support our students by raising                awareness of the opportunities that they will have moving forward into the world of work.

Students have either signed up or been invited to the special events, some of which are outlined below.

Today students were in a session asking questions about careers in bio-medical sciences 

and what its like to work for the NHS.  There are further sessions later in the week.

Woking College came in to give a presentation to all Year 9 students.

Programme of Events

Monday 2 March

Lesson	Workshop	Location	Staff	Students involved
Period 1	NHS:  Diversity of working in the NHS.  The NHS is the UK’s biggest employer and many different opportunities exist.	CCS	JSI	By invitation / sign up
Period 2	Woking College – Presentation to Year 9 students	Hall	Yr 9 teachers	All of Year 9
Period 2	WSP Engineering – Learn about different types of engineering and different careers with WSP, who were involved with the Shard – tallest building in the UK	CCS	REX / LSM	By invitation / sign up
Period 2	Royal Aeronautical Society – learn about the breadth of opportunities available in the world of aerospace and aviation, including engineering.	DSP	SAW	By invitation / sign up
Period 3	British Airways – get an insight into the aviation industry and business	DSP confirmed	MDO	By invitation / sign up
Lunchtime stand in hall	Brooklands College - Brooklands offers both full and part time education and training across a broad range of subjects and course levels.	Hall	LSM	All

Tuesday 3 March

Lesson	Workshop	Location	Staff	Students involved
Period 1	Exposure Digital Marketing – learn about careers in the marketing of products or services using digital technologies on the Internet with Exposure	CCS	JSI	By invitation / sign up
Period 1	NHS:  This talk will be about what it is like to apply for a job at the NHS and how you should prepare for an interview.	DSP confirmed	MDO / LSM	By invitation / sign up
Period 2	Foundations Estate Agents – learn about working for an estate agency that deals with sales and lettings.	DSP confirmed	MDO / JME	By invitation / sign up
Period 2	Construction Industry – come and see BMF and learn about the varied opportunities in the construction industry where there are no barriers to entry and careers available for women too.	CCS	REX	By invitation / sign up
Period 3	Author Marisa Noelle will be here to talk about the author path/career.	DSP confirmed	MDO RRO	By invitation / sign up
Period 3	Construction Industry – come and see BMF and learn about the varied opportunities in the construction industry where there are no barriers to entry and careers available for women too.	CCS	JME	By invitation / sign up
Lunchtime stand in hall	Woking College - the College provides an outstanding learning environment in which every student is valued and encouraged to achieve their very best.	Hall	LSM	All
Period 4	Construction Industry – come and see BMF and learn about the varied opportunities in the construction industry where there are no barriers to entry and careers available for women too.	CCS	JSI SWA	By invitation / sign up