Ski and Snowboarding
in Voss, Norway
Sporting Highlights
Parkside Academy
News in Brief
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Parklife
APRIL 2015 EDITION
A Show-stopping
performance
At the beginning of March, Parkside pupils took
their audience through a whistle-stop tour of the
'Super Swinging Sixties and Seventies' at the
Gala Theatre in Durham.
As ever, the evening was a great
success, filled with singers, dancers,
bands and even some game show
rounds for the audience to
participate in! As Bruce would say...
"Didn't they do well?"
The second
‘Multi-Skills
Week’ for Year 5
a great success!
Ni Hao Parkside
Year 5 joined us for the second time this
academic year. Year 5 pupils from all our
feeder primary schools joined us
throughout the week to help support their
learning in Year 5 and their progression
into Year 6.
Mandarin Lessons begin
This spring, pupils have been given the opportunity to learn Mandarin as
part of Parkside’s varied extra-curricular programme. Mrs Lane, who is
originally from China, has been coming to school weekly to deliver lessons
teaching the pupils about the language and culture of China.
National
recognition
for Georgia
Georgia O’Connor has recently been
crowned the British National ABA
Junior boxing champion for the under
70kg category.
It’s a fantastic achievement and
she has been getting some great
recognition from the local
media, with Georgia having been
interviewed for both ITV and BBC
North East recently. Many
congratulations to her for this
outstanding achievement.
www.parkside.org.uk
David Cameron said recently “By the time
the children born today leave school, China
is set to be the world’s largest economy.
So it’s time to look beyond the traditional
focus on French and German and get many
more children learning Mandarin”.
Pupils found their first lesson very
interesting and learned about the
characters and how to pronounce words
using varying tones. They were shocked to
find out that you need to know over 2000
characters to speak Mandarin fluently.
Science
Ambassadors
Our Year 9 pupils have attended a “Science
Ambassador” training day at Durham
University in conjunction with the Institute of
Physics and the Ogden Trust.
Pupils spent a day working with specialists learning practical and presentation skills and developing their
confidence in presenting Science. The pupils were a credit to Parkside Academy and worked well with pupils
from other secondary schools. Our Science Ambassadors will soon be putting their new skills to good use
when they deliver Science Sessions on the upcoming Year 5 days.
Pupils have had the opportunity to experience many of
the lessons and activities we offer at Parkside Academy
prior to them choosing us at the end of year 6.
Pupils had the opportunity to experience outstanding
lessons and learn new skills throughout the day.
At the end of the day, certificates were awarded for ‘Star’
pupils in each lesson. This was for those who made an
extra special effort and excelled during the day.
There will be a Year 5 Awards Ceremony in the Summer
Term for all pupils who received an award in the
previous skills days.
Parkside teachers look forward to teaching all pupils
when they join us in year 7.
All teachers would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to the
Year 5 pupils who worked hard to make the second
Multiskills week one to remember.
We look forward to seeing you all during the next
Multi-Skills week in the Summer.
Parklife
News in Brief
World book day celebrations
Staff and pupils have been taking part in a number of projects and
campaigns as part of World Book Day celebrations throughout Parkside.
We have been taking part in a campaign to raise
awareness, and money, for the charity organisation
Oxfam. As part of World Book Day celebrations, they
re-launched their ‘Message in a Book’ campaign. To
accompany donations of unwanted books, pupils
and staff have been writing a ‘message in a book’.
Year 7 were also given the opportunity to take part in
‘Twist in the Tale’ workshop. They worked closely with a
performance artist who taught them how important
imagination is when reading. The pupils were given a
classic fairy-tale and taught how to create a ‘twist’ so
that the story became something new and exciting. All
pupils used their imaginative skills to create funny and
engaging fairy tales, with some even taking to the floor
to perform their ideas. The workshop was a great
success for all and definitely provided some our
budding writers, actors and actresses with their time to
shine! Well done Year 7.
“Turn to Learn”
Year 9 History pupils had the opportunity
to enter a competition to win a free trip to
visit the battlefields of World War I in September.
Five pupils entered with some very impressive
entries however Niamh Blackett and Nathan
Gaskill produced some outstanding entries and
were therefore selected as the winners. Both
pupils are now looking forward to visiting the
battlefields with other schools in the country.
The English Department recently hosted an exciting
competition for Year 7 pupils to design a logo for a
new reading incentive.
There were some fabulous and imaginative entries
from all pupils but the overall winner was Abigail
Farrell; with her fantastic ‘Turn to Learn’ logo. Millie
Archer and Leah Chester were very worthy runners up
Pupils engaged in a variety of captivating
activities during tutor time and produced an
excellent selection of work. This yearly
commemoration to reading saw pupils participating in reading quizzes,
creating acrostic poetry, understanding the charitable aspects of World Book Day and also creating an alphabet
project. Additionally, Years 7, 8 and 9 were given the opportunity to partake in a competition creating bookmarks
relating to their favourite book and why they love reading. Amazingly there were over 200 bookmarks to judge
and it was an extremely hard decision to whittle it down to just 3 winners,
well done Grace Blackett, Cassie Hammell and Becky Wall.
‘Brilliant Club’ launched
in Durham
Year 7 and 8 pupils attended the
Launch of the Brilliant Club at Durham
University recently. The aim of the
programme is to widen access to
Britain’s top universities.
The Brilliant Club is an award winning
charity that recruits, trains and places PhD
students to deliver programmes of university
style tutorials to small groups of students.
Our pupils will be completing an assignment
on “Can terrorism be justified?”
‘Turn to Learn’ endeavours to create a life-long love of
reading, and ignite pupils’ imagination, by presenting
all Year 7 pupils with a £10 Waterstones ‘birthday’
book voucher.
Several pupils have already been given the exciting
opportunity of visiting Waterstones book store to
spend their vouchers; with more visits taking place
throughout the year.
‘Rewarding
Attendance’ £100
Prize Draw prize
Here at Parkside, we appreciate the effort that
parents make to support us, particularly those
who encourage excellent attendance for their
children.
As a thank you, we’re continuing with a termly prize
draw for any parent whose child has achieved over
95% that term. The prize will be a fantastic £100
worth of High Street shopping vouchers.
In addition, there will be another fabulous prize draw for
parents of any child with 100% attendance for the year.
So, parents, when your child wants to turn over in
bed or complains of a snuffle, remember the £100
prize that could be yours!
The Spring term winner is Elliott Thompson in Year 10.
Netball
Well done to Year 7 & 8 Netball teams for
making it through a very tough season this
year. The last few months have shown the
teams at their best with challenging matches
against teams from across the district. Keep a
look out for overall season results in the next
few weeks. Well done again girls!!
Basketball
The Year 9 basketball team played in a Level 2
Games competition. In all of their matches
they played with great spirit and endeavour and were justifiably rewarded as they were won
4 of their 5 matches - and finished the
competition in second place.
Norwegian Ski trip
proves outstanding!
During the February half-term break a party of
forty adults and pupils made a short trip to Voss in
Norway, for a ski holiday.
Voss is a hidden gem of a resort – it is located in a
very picturesque area and has excellent ski
facilities, together with exceptionally friendly and
accommodating ski instructors and staff. The resort
is a quiet resort which means there are only ever a
sprinkling skiers and snowboarders on the slopes at
any one time - and lift queues are very rare.
In addition to the daily skiing / snowboarding
lessons, pupils engaged in a busy programme
of evening entertainments which proved very
popular.
Based on the enormous success of this trip, we are
pleased to announce that the school will be
running a further ski trip to Voss at February halfterm, 2016.
PAL Award Finalists
Year 9 Cup Winners!
Our Year 9 football team played in the final of the Bishops Cup at Heritage
Park Stadium, on Thursday 16th April. Our opponents were St John’s.
On a big pitch both sides worked tirelessly to generate an opening but the scoreline remained goalless
for a large part of the game – this was until Jac Crocher weaved his way through the St John’s and rifled
a shot into the bottom corner of the goal.
From that point in the match we dominated proceedings and in the last few minutes of the game Liam
Dunn drove a well executed free-kick past the opposing goal keeper and in doing so opened up a 2-0
lead. St John’s never threatened to pull a goal back and so we eased to victory witha 2-0 score line.
Jac Crocher received the official man of the match award whilst Liam Dunn received Mr Gray’s man of
the match award.
www.parkside.org.uk
All players deserve much credit – the squad
consisted of: Ellis Wymer, Beth Montgomerie,
Holly Goldsborough-Pike, Naomi Green,
Andrew O’Brien and Aaron Renwick.
Gymnastics
We have established a club link with Nova Aces
Gymnastics Club, and they will be coming after
Easter to start an after school club. All pupils are
welcome to attend this. See Mrs Chilton if you would
like more information.
A group of Year 11 pupils were put forward for
Northern Echo Schools Award in Active Community
School and were finalists. This included them
fundraising to put a Xmas lunch, bingo, raffle, choir
and nativity play on for the older community. They
also involved the local primary school, and organised
a carwash to help raise funds for other children in
school who are going to South Africa. They have
worked with the local council and primary school to
provide planters for the older residents to put outside
their homes to make them look brighter. Money
raised from the raffle was gifted to the Salvation
Army to buy toys for local children.
Parkside Academy, Hall Lane, Willington, Co. Durham DL15 0QF Tel: 01388 746 396