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Friday 12th October 2018

Week 6 is always an interesting one in the first half term of a new academic year. It's the week where students are really beginning to feel settled in if they've just joined us… or like they've never been away if they were with us last year; the Summer holidays are now just a distant memory and half term feels just too far away… and it starts to get noticeably darker. Darker in the mornings; darker in the evenings. Apart from today however -it's been a glorious 2 weeks weather wise; so balmy in fact that the PE department have been on the school field like it's the Summer!

It's been another hectic week at Harrow Way and you will no doubt enjoy reading about the Cluster Year 5/6 Indoor athletics, the Careers in Construction Day, Design Museum visit and the tutor standstill on anti-bullying. I am just about to head off the Portway presentation evening to present some awards. It is always an enjoyable occasion to present awards for Year 3 to Year 6, and not forgetting our Harrow Way students returning to Portway to pick up some prizes.

Last week I put a link on a separate article should anyone wish to show their appreciation to any of my wonderful colleagues; with a few quick clicks, you can send a postcard free of charge to a teacher (s) of your choice. I do receive numerous emails and letters each year to this end and invariably share these with my colleagues but an additional metaphorical pat on the back such as this goes a long way. I know the teachers and support staff at Harrow Way are simply 'doing their job' but they do go that extra mile, and beyond, and I am constantly in awe and very much in debt of their seemingly infinite capacity to care and do their best by our young people. Anyway the link is still open, if you have a spare minute or two over the weekend… www.teachingawards.com/thankyou

Careers in Construction Year 10
An exciting and engaging day, hosted by Foreman Homes and VIVID. Following an initial induction onto site, all students participated in many activities, including: site plan identity, identifying roles available in construction, building construction towers, building a house, budgeting for large build projects, and many more. The day concluded with a tour of Goch Way building site (Charlton). A really successful day, inspiring many of our students. A big thank you to our hosts, and well done Year 10, for being ambassadors for Harrow Way.

Tutor Standstill - Anti Bullying
We set aside time for our students to explore and discuss issues relevant to them. This is carried out in their pastoral Tutor Groups. This term students spent the standstill with their tutors discussing different videos to see if they thought the scenarios were bullying or not. The videos were produced by our very own Harrow Way Students and were situations that the children created, organised, filmed and edited. This made the situations relevant for our school. We were very proud of the level of maturity displayed and the insightful comments shared by the students.

Year 11 Standstill
Year 11 had a productive hour in their progress groups during the tutor standstill this week. These groups are slightly different to their tutor groups to allow them a regular time to pause and consider how year 11 is progressing for them. This session allowed students to look at positive actions they can take to make year 11 as successful as possible. Activities ranged from looking at exam board websites for exam preparation materials to looking at college prospectuses and completing applications.

Year 5-6 Athletics
On Thursday 11th October, Harrow Way invited over 50 members of the local Primary School community to take part in the first Indoor Athletics event of the school year. Students competed head to head in field events and races under the encouraging eyes of Harrow Way's own Sports Leaders. When the dust finally settled after a long afternoon, Knights Enham Junior School stood on the winners podium but all schools competed extremely well. The future looks bright for Andover's budding athletes! A big thank you to all our Sports Leaders who did an excellent job in organising and running the event.

Performance of Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing
On Thursday evening, the Andover Community Theatre (featuring many former students and some current members of staff) gave a free performance of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado about Nothing' to students in the auditorium. Their final performance moves to the Landale Wilson Hall in Enham Alamein tonight (7.30pm free entry).

School Visits
Our Hampshire Book Award 2018 participants attended the award ceremony this week in Winchester and met the winning author, Tamsyn Murray. Tamsyn's book, Instructions for a Second Hand Heart, deals with the topic of organ donation and took her 4 years to write. It was voted for by 400 year 8 pupils in June 2018. Tamsyn stated that she, in part, owes her successful writing career to libraries and recommended that aspiring writers read avidly and keep a diary to be used for inspiration. Our pupils and Library Manager enjoyed meeting her and hearing about her inspiring journey in writing this title. The book can be borrowed from our school library and from our E-Book platform.

Design Museum Visit
This Monday, our year 9 design technologists had the opportunity to visit the Design Museum in London as part of an international competition they are taking part in called Design Ventura. The competition involves schools designing and prototyping a product that solves a design problem and which is suitable for visitors of the design museum. The winning school gets their product manufactured and sold in the Design Museum's shop...an incredible opportunity.

The students took part in workshops lead by industry professionals in graphic and sustainable design solutions with representatives from Deutsche Bank, the collaborative sponsor of the competition. Following the workshops, pupils were able to look around the exhibits to see how design has shaped everything from our built environment to the everyday objects, all of which have been party to the rigorous design process. Some pictures can be seen on our website here.

Back in the classroom, pupils have taken inspiration from the trip and begun to identify some excellent design issues, coming up with fantastic, creative solutions. Well done our Harrow Way burgeoning designers!

These visits for 2018/19 have currently been agreed by the Headteacher. Others will be added throughout the year. There is no guarantee that they will all go ahead as this depends on student uptake. Further details on each visit will be given out to the year group/classes involved by the member of staff organising the visit.

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