Weekly Update - 13th May 2022

We have enjoyed another busy and productive week at the academy.

With the full exam season fast-approaching, we have been providing subject specific exam preparation lessons to ensure that students are well-equipped to sit their examinations and achieve the best possible outcomes.  We have also held a Year 11 assembly this week on the topic of coping with exam stress and introducing strategies to support students in this respect.

On Tuesday, year 8 and year 10 students enjoyed an interactive workshop entitled “Friends”, focusing on gangs and knife crime delivered by N’Act.  The workshop sessions were well-received and thought-provoking, providing students with a safe environment to consider and discuss these important topics.

The OAT “Make yourself heard” annual competition was launched on Wednesday, offering students the opportunity to create and deliver a speech on a topic of importance to them, with the chance to win individual prizes as well as additional resources for the English department.  The academy has had previous success in this competition, so we are looking forward to hearing this year’s entries.

We also have two competitions running internally by our Learning Resource Centre.  Students in years 7 and 8 can participate in the “Ocean Voyage Challenge”, sailing the oceans by reading and quizzing on books of their choice, whilst students in all year groups can take part in the “Picture This” competition, choosing from 3 different excerpts from books and creating an illustration based on the paragraph.  I have included full details of these competitions below, and hope that many of our students will be encouraged to participate.

On Thursday, 16 students from years 8-10 attended the mid-Essex Athletics Trials where they competed for a place in the County Championships later in the summer.  Many personal bests were broken in a range of events such as the 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500m whilst our Year 9 girls performed well in the throwing events. J. Wood finished in third position in the javelin with a throw of 23.05m, just 85cm off the school record.  Special mentions also go to B Winfield who ran his 800m race in 2min 18 to finish third, C Clarke with a 4min 51 1500m time and to O Smith and F Pateman who both ran 57 seconds in the 400m. J Aldous was also fractions off the school’s 100m record with a sub 12 second 100m time. A Meeten also missed out on the school’s 800m record by 1 second!  A record did go however in the junior girls 200m with E South running 29.18 seconds – many congratulations to her. She ran an incredible bend and finished in second position in her heat. We’ll now wait to see if her time was quick enough to take a spot in the district team.  Training is every Tuesday and Thursday after school for any students wishing to improve their athletics.

We ended the week with our regular fire drill, which I am pleased to report was carried out very smoothly with students displaying excellent behaviour and sensible attitudes.

As always, I wish you all a lovely weekend.