www.greneway.herts.sch.uk Fri 23 October 2014 The Greneway School News Printed every Friday. Articles may be written by our pupils, with editorial assistance from Mrs Piper What’s coming up October 2014 Inset Day Fri 24 Half Term Week Mon 27 Higher, Faster, Stronger House Challenge After school on Friday, a number of pupils took up the House Higher, Faster, Stronger Challenge. Pupils paid 50p to enter and raised money for the House charities. The chosen charities will be confirmed in assemblies after half term. Thank you to Mr Dowler and Mr Judge for planning this event. Congratulations to everyone who took part in this Challenge. November 2014 Term Begins Mon 03 5GD/JW to Duxford Thurs 06 5SB/TLi to Duxford Fri 07 Thought for the week “The hardest thing about exercise is to start doing it. Once you are doing exercise regularly, the hardest thing is to stop” (Jessica Ennis) Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education Day (PSHEE) This Thursday, pupils focused on safety for the first PSHEE Day of the school year. Year groups considered various aspects of safety including firework safety, e-Safety, road safety and pupils in Year 8 focussed on fire safety and now have an OSL brief to design a ‘Fire Plan’. Pupils readily engaged with this important theme. Staff will continue with this theme on Friday during the training day when we focus on ‘Safeguarding’ with input from County representatives. Your support Sunday 16th November is the Greneway School Christmas Market. The House Captains will be running stalls at the event and would like your support. Donations of prizes for these stalls (chocolate bars, jars filled with sweets/stationery/ toiletries) would be gratefully received. Donations should be taken to the office and clearly labelled ‘for the Christmas Market’. Thank you in advance for your support with this. We value the view of parents/carers and use it to inform our work. At the end of this half term, we would like to encourage you to share your views on the Parent View website www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk Parent View asks for your opinion on 12 aspects of your child’s school, from the quality of teaching, to dealing with bullying and poor behaviour. Last year, we received feedback from 136 parents (see Parent View results) and we would welcome your thoughts. Thank you. After half term, we will be introducing the ‘Greneway News Blog’ as an alternative to this newsletter – we will keep you updated. Mrs Rawlings Letter from Mrs Denise Graham, Chair of Governors Dear Parents/carers I am writing to update you on plans for Mrs Rawlings’ Maternity Cover. A number of options have been explored to ensure a plan which meets the needs of the school and continues to drive forward improvement. The following will be in place from January 12th 2015 when Mrs Rawlings begins her Maternity Leave: Miss Bowyer – Acting Headteacher; Mr Graves – Acting Deputy Headteacher; Mr Gee – Assistant Headteacher; Mr Hirst – Acting Assistant Headteacher; Mrs Susan Kennedy (Headteacher at Greneway from 2005 - 2012) – Representing Greneway at Royston Schools Academy Trust (RSAT) meetings. Our aim is to call on all the trusted expertise available to us to put together a structure that will ensure that Greneway maintains its strong leadership and management during this time. We are very fortunate to have an experienced leadership team and a committed and supportive Governing body who will all work together to ensure the smooth running of the school. Mrs Rawlings will keep in touch throughout the maternity cover until her planned return next academic year. If you have any questions about this proposal, please contact me via the Clerk to the Governors. Denise Graham, Chair of Governors Tubs4Tablets Scheme Creative cooking at its finest Tubs4Tablets is an exciting initiative from Flora and Stork, in partnership with Tesco, which will provide thousands of pounds worth of FREE touchscreen tablets to registered Primary and Middle schools in Great Britain. Last week, pupils in year 8 made their very own homemade ‘Low fat’ pizzas as part of their Food Technology lessons. One pupil took the low fat brief one step further. Charlotte Mayhead, 8AJ, created an outstanding homemade pizza box at home complete with healthy nutritional information and a rather quirky design to match. Tokens are available in special 500g packs* of Flora (Original, Buttery and Light) and Stork 500g which can be found in Tesco stores NOW! These tokens can be exchanged for incredible touchscreen tablets for our school! Well done Charlotte. Greneway are collecting the tokens so please drop them off at the office or hand in through registers to help us purchase some new Android Tablets. Coming after half term “Greneway News” blog, which will replace the Pupil Newsletter, and will be accessible via the home page on our website: www.greneway.herts.sch.uk School Jumpers We have a number of second hand school jumpers available. Please contact the school office if you would like more information about available sizes. £2.00 donation per jumper Did you know that all pupils took part in a PSHEE Day this week that had a focus on safety? Talk to your child to find out what they have learnt. Meet the 2014/15 House and Vice Captains Kathryn Ealand Josh Leighton Owen Wood Mackenzie Cramman Freddie Ball DaisyNeedham Hadyn Morgan Emily Pendrick Year 8 have been writing on the theme of 'Nightmares' linked to the work being undertaken presently with the text 'King of Shadows' by Susan Cooper. Friday 13th That terrifying night on Friday the 13th, I was shaking with fear, gritting my bare teeth. My Mother is dead, my Father was out, he locked me in and locked himself out. The house was eerily quiet, I played on my phone, I thought I was safe, all on my own. At least I hoped I was, until I heard sounds, Then I got worried so had a look around. The moonlight is a torch, scribbling out my path, another sound I heard, perhaps an evil laugh. I felt I was being followed, so had to look back, nothing scary behind me, nothing at all like that. Just a pasty white girl, who looked like a ghost, she didn’t say a word, just smiled at the most. A breeze whispered past me, through the window crack, it was calling out my name ‘Daisy, come back.’ Come back where? I thought just as I heard a piercing scream, and at that point, thank goodness I woke from my dream! By Daisy N Nightmares, dreams gone wrong in the factory of your mind, horrors taking over, infecting like bacteria. Instead of your happy colourful world where whatever you wish for happens, it turns into death and gore, filled with monster like creatures merging out of whatever they can; walls, trees, plants, waking children all over the world, kidnapping them, murdering them, doing anything they can to obey their unknown masters . You’re always trapped inside mazes, haunted houses, cages, unable to escape, suffocating, being pulled in by the darkness, doing whatever you can, but you’re always trapped. They frighten you until you want to give up, even though you know there’s one way out in the back of your mind, waking up, but no one can remember. Back in the real world, you sit up in your sleep, eyes wide open, sweating more than you would if you sprinted a marathon in the Sahara desert. Your parents come and check on you worrying what’s going on in your head, knowing full well if they wake you up you will fall ill for weeks on end with no cure. Suddenly you wake up in a jump, full of fear. You look out of the window, down onto the lamp light street, raining, looking at puddles the moonlight scribbles through them, wondering if you’ll ever defeat you nightmares. Nightmares, feasting off of your fears, growing stronger and stronger with each day, waiting for the day it can finally take over your mind forever. By Tom T On Monday 20th October, Year 7 experienced a trip to the centre of the galaxy and back. Mr Peter Basset FRAS came with his mobile Planetarium to show the children how to recognise the constellations (voted very popular), take a quick trip around the solar system, introduce us to the latest missions in space at the moment and generally enthuse the pupils with his own love of space. We learnt that there will be a supernova fairly soon (astronomically speaking), when the International Space Station will fly over and where to look for the current meteor shower. Pupils overwhelmingly voted it as a brilliant way to learn and found it a most enjoyable experience. “Thanks for a great time, and thanks to the man who presented it – it was AMAZING!!” “I was very interesting and I hope you get a chance to do this next year.” “I think it was brilliant and we learnt loads about space.” “I wish it was longer.” If you want to see which stars can be seen at the moment or find out more about space go to http:// astronomyroadshow.com/ To find out when to see the iSS go to http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/ #.VEduG7DF-uI To get your boarding pass to Mars http://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-yourname/orion-first-flight/ “I loved the bit where the comet ( Shoemaker -Levy) crashed into Jupiter – epic!” Tuesday 11th November The Greneway School Canteen will be serving a Remembrance Day themed meal. CHATTERBOOKS READING GROUP AT ROYSTON LIBRARY “Are you aged between 8 and 12 years? Do you enjoy chatting about books? Then come and join our group! We will be meeting once a month at Royston Library on a Monday from 3.45 to 4.45. If you would like to join this group and chat about books with friends, please contact Royston Library.” Tag-Rugby Double for Greneway North East Herts U11 TAG Rugby Tournament @ Royston RUFC Royston Rugby club and Saracens played host again to the annual North East Herts Tag-Rugby tournament. This year’s new format saw two separate competitions with schools seeding their two representative teams. The competition was yet another great advertisement for the fantastic work from School Sports Partnership with over one hundred pupils involved from year 5 players to year 13 leaders and with Jan Wood, MBE overseeing the proceedings. Following a number of training sessions and an intra-School competition the Greneway teams were keen to get started. Year 8 Sports Leader Jono Adam was leading the Greneway Blue team on their campaign and they got off to a strong start with a 5-0 win against St Thomas B side. Could the Greneway Red side now match this impressive result? Their first opponents were Edwinstree School and it was a very close first half with both teams scoring some impressive tries. However, Greneway had enough strength in place to pull away in the second half for an 8-3 victory. The second round of fixtures saw Adam’s team up against a very competitive Ralph Sadlier team. Both teams made the most of their possession and were making very few errors. As a result of this the game was won by just the odd try with Greneway clinching it in the dying seconds. The Red team then played St Edmunds who had got off to an equally impressive start. This game was also close throughout with neither team able to pull further than one try ahead. The game eventually finished 5-5 which in the end seemed like a fair result. All teams were assessing their league positions leading up to the final group fixture hoping to make it through to the semi-finals. The Blue team knew a win would ensure them top position in the group and they achieved this with another flying performance this time against Edwinstree. The Red team had a slightly bigger task following their draw. If they and St Edmunds both won it would then come down to tries scored to see who finished top of the group. Greneway Reds had this in mind as they stormed to a 14-2 win against St Thomas, to ensure they claimed top spot. It was now time for the semi-finals. The Blue team continued their impressive run with another win this time by five tries against local school Roysia. The Red team found themselves 5-0 ahead at half-time and then controlled the second half enough to win 8-2 to book their place in the final. Greneway now had both teams in their respective finals, would they be able to claim both titles as they did the previous year? It was the turn of Jono Adam’s side to get underway first of all. They looked in control from the start with two early tries. This was then followed by a number of well-timed interceptions to increase the lead further until they eventually ran out comfortable 8-0 winners to claim the title. The Red team were now under a little more pressure to try to match their classmates. They started a little slowly but once they got underway St Edmunds found it very difficult to contain Greneway as they lead by two tries at half-time. This lead was never cut down as they finished the game 6-4 winners to claim the District title and an impressive double for Greneway. As an event it had again been a huge success with all pupils working hard to demonstrate their rugby skills, but even more importantly playing in the right spirit of the game and enjoying themselves. Greneway’s two sides had retained their titles and again booked their place in their county finals. Greneway Squad: Jamie Smith, Matthew Depetrillo, Emer McAuliffe, Sian Herbert, Emma To, Katie Ballam, Jaedon Campbell, Dominic Jaunzens, Sam Lynn, Adam McCormack, Tom Finch, Megan Bonley, Poppy Davison, Alex Moss, Eryn Sherratt, Nathaniel Depetrillo, Harry Yates, Billy Mottram, Will Blair, Natasha Todd. Year 5/6 Girls Football Play Valiantly in Two Tournaments Year 5/6 Girls football team at the North Herts Schools' U11 Finals. These players (plus Katie Ballam) then represented Greneway in the NE Herts U11 Finals this week. Playing well and scoring four good goals against Edwinstree school (4-2). They also played well against St.Mary’s, where they had good chances to score, but lost 1-0 to a goal in the last thirty seconds! They also narrowly lost (2-0) to eventual winners Ralph Sadleir. 'This team are a 'work in progress' and have already improved significantly each match to the extent where we could have won all three matches with a little more luck. They can also sing!' (Terry Graves, Assistant Headteacher). Old Sports Kit Donations Thanks once again to parents/carers and pupils who have donated old/outgrown athletics spikes, trainers, rugby shirts etc. Please continue and we are keen to receive old/outgrown but still usable football goalkeeping gloves! Gymnastics Balances of the Week: This week, we have Year 8 girls paired rope counter balance and Year 5 girls five rope balance: