The Flagpole

Firstly I wish to thank you for all of the support for the home learning programme that you have been providing to your child/children.

I am writing to let you know about a new home learning support resource we have put in place for all of the pupils at Princethorpe College in order to help them to make the most of home learning and to be able to use our home learning platform, Microsoft Teams, as effectively as possible.

This new resource is the Pupil Home Learning Guides channel, which is available on our internal video service, Microsoft Stream, and contains a wide range of support videos, explaining how to use a number of features on Teams and Office 365 on both PCs and mobile devices. As an internal service, the pupils must be signed into their Princethorpe accounts to access this, but for your reference the link to the channel is below. I have also attached a contents list, with links, of the videos currently available. The pupils were informed of this new resource on Friday afternoon, and so already have access to this.

Pupil Home Learning Guides channel (requires pupil Princethorpe account sign in)

I hope that you and your children find this a useful resource to help with the technical aspects of home learning. We will be adding further content to this channel over the coming days and weeks, including providing videos specific to accessing and completing online tests for the upcoming assessment week. 

Please also be advised that many other useful documents and resources are available via the Home Learning 2020 section on My School Portal, available here.

Kind Regards

Andy Compton
Assistant Head (Director of Digital Strategy)

This week home learning has continued apace with a positive and dedicated work ethic being demonstrated by pupils across the school. The College is incredibly impressed with pupils' engagement in their learning and all staff are enjoying seeing the fruits of their labours.

Mathematics

Mr Scoutas shared some of the on-line lessons in which pupils had participated. They begin by watching a pre-recorded video of their Maths lesson as if they were in class. Pupils then complete their work and upload it for marking. There is also the opportunity to ask any questions. Pupils have been working incredibly hard and have engaged well, taking responsibility for their learning.

Theo Scoutas (Teacher of Mathematics)

Art

Eloise Keil in Year 9 has been studying the work of Wayne Thiebald, a colourful, American artist. She has drawn an ice cream in his style - it certainly looks delicious!

Sue Harris (Teacher of Art)

Religious Studies

Year 8 were tasked with researching and presenting information on one of the Five Pillars of Islam. They really used their imagination!

Theo designed a board game on Zakat (the duty to give 2.5% of your income to charity)

Krystina created a guide to the Hajj (the duty to go on pilgrimage to Mecca once in your life)

Harry baked a cake and designed a guide to Zakat

Alice created a sculpture on Sawn (the duty to fast for the Holy month of Ramadan)

Cyp Vella (Head of Religious Studies)

Geography

Jamie Smith in Year 9 has completed his Geography work on coasts to an incredibly high standard. He put a lot of effort and detail into his work by extending his answers and Miss Butler was really impressed with how well he responded to the home learning that has been set.

Lucy Butler (Teacher of Geography)

History

Tiernan Chapman-Apps in Year 7 has earned a Da Vinci for his recent castle project. All pupils were given a choice of ten castles to choose from. They then conducted independent research and presented their findings to include the history and development of the castle, architectural features including diagrams and primary sources, and an aspect of life in the castle. 

Take a look at his superb project here.

Julia Lindsay (Teacher of History & Politics)

English

Year 8, Emma Eastwood produced an outstanding piece of descriptive writing. English teacher, Lisa Challinor tasked her class with imagining a moment in the past and writing descriptively as if they were actually there. Emma chose The Great Fire of London. She used sensory imagery and descriptive details particularly well to evoke the atmosphere as well as showing excellent control of pace and sentence structure.

You can read Emma's piece here.

Lisa Challinor (Teacher of English)

Design Technology

Well done to Year 10 pupils, James Maclean and Edward Mitchell, who both produced excellent detailed responses to a research task investigating materials for their NEA (non-examined assessment). Mr Walton was most impressed with the boys' work.

You can see James' work here and Edward's here.

Tom Walton (Teacher of Design Technology)

Year 8 pupils Georgina Barnes and Isabella Cunnington impressed Mr Scopes. They were asked to upcycle an item in the home and design and make a product using any wood available at home. Their creations were superb and included a chicken coup, a teapot stand and a pen holder.

Paul Scopes (Head of Design and Technology)