ASPIRE The official termly newsletter of Langley School

ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2013

Inside:

Early examination success

Langley rocks the Cavern!

Learning outside the classroom

Sporting Superstars

This term has seen Langley students excel in a number of areas. Whether striving to be the best they can be through academic excellence, commitment to the Arts, supporting charity and community events, Langley students have represented themselves and the school superbly. It is on the sporting field, in particular, that we have seen a number of major successes this term. Here you can see the Year 7 cross country team who won the cross country Championship for 2013, with Frankie Austin winning the individual title. A fantastic achievement by all involved.

Aspiring to be the best we can be: Academic Excellence

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HEADS LINES

A warm welcome to the Spring edition of Head’s Lines, a round-up of everything Langley over the course of this term. Although the weather has been less than kind to us, I am pleased to say that it has not prevented a busy programme of events in our school in what has been a relatively short period of time. I hope that you enjoy reading through the pages below to gain at least a flavour of what our fine students have been up to. In addition to all of these activities, an extraordinary amount of work has been completed in classrooms this term, reflected in the fine progress made by so many of our young people. May I take this opportunity to wish you a happy and safe Easter break. Yours sincerely P Talbot Headteacher

Early examination success ICT Some ICT OCR Nationals results have just come in and they are very pleasing. 146 Year 11 and 19 Year 10 students have passed this core GCSE course, so far either at full or half award. Hopefully, there will be further success in the remaining modules of work between now and the summer and if all goes as expected, this year we will gain the highest number of ICT passes in the school’s history! Congratulations to everyone concerned. Maths Once again, we have received some super, early-entry performances in GCSE Maths. This term, all 30 of our top set gained an A*-C. They are now doing GCSE Statistics and some are doing Additional Maths [at AS level] after school. A new strategy challenged 51 of our set 3 Maths students to have a stab at early entry GCSE too, with the proviso that they could resit in the summer if required. You will be pleased to know that 24 of these students also gained an A*-C grade. Well done everyone!

The Year 10 Textiles group have been hard at work again. They created their own fabric to make a panel on a bag. They wove strips and created layers of old plastic bags that were then heat pressed to create a fabric. Some students printed and sewed over the top of their plastic fabric to add even more texture and detail. The plastic fabric was then attached in a variety of ways to cotton calico and webbing straps added. The results were some awesome reusable shopping bags!

Textiles: Plastic Fantastic

Here are some images from the trips. Students on a tour of the farm, making bread and calculating food miles.

Aspiring to be the best we can be: Academic Excellence

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Key Stage 4 Art and English trips Year 10 and Year 11 Art students visited the Tate

Modern in London in January for inspiration from the greats. Exemplary behaviour was reported. Also in January, a group of Year 11 students went to the Symphony Hall for the GCSE ‘Poetry Live’ event, listening to a range of authors, including Carol Ann Duffy, speaking about their work. Teachers and support staff said it was a pleasure to be with our young people. As always, our students are our finest advertisement.

Year 8 Geography Trip to the Farm 88 Year 8 students visited a farm in Worcestershire in

March as part of their Geography field work. They had a guided tour of the farm, including the 400 year-old farmhouse and learned about crop rotation, the importance of hedgerows and the encouragement of wildlife. They also had the opportunity to make their own bread [as you can see from the photo!] and also studied ‘food miles’, looking at the distances food travels to reach our tables and the pollution this causes. They all had a great time, learned a lot and their behaviour was exceptionally good.

Rocking in the Cavern Monday 4th March saw 4 coaches leave Langley, full of students, parents and teachers from all over the Borough to perform once again at The Cavern, Liverpool. Performers from Langley played on the historic stage where The Beatles once entertained crowds in the subterranean club, to members of the public and other students from Solihull. It was a fantastic day, culminating in performances from Solihull Music Service on the main ‘McCartney Stage’ in which many of Langley’s talented pupils were involved. Congratulations to the Year 7 Arts Award Band (run by Hannah Brooker and Cassidy Bailey), Nouveau Beau and Chris Jay’s Angry Band (both from Year 9) and two wonderful vocalists from Year 10, Gina Hollender and Adele Eade.

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Dance Festival The Year 10 BTEC Dance group represented Langley at the Alderbrook Dance Festival on 20th March. They were fine ambassadors for our school.

Aspiring to be the best we can be: Pupil Performance

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Year 7s performed their medieval mystery plays in January as part of their Whacky Wednesday/ Funky Friday programme. The costumes and at least some of the scripts are getting better every year!

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Aspiring to be the best we can be: Pupil Performance

Year 7 Medieval Mysteries

15 Year 9 students took part in the Magistrates Mock Trial Competition held at the Victoria Law Courts in Birmingham earlier this term. Pupils took on the roles of lawyers, witnesses, legal advisers, ushers and magistrates. Langley successfully won their first case against King Charles I School but unfortunately did not make it through to the next round. Our students enjoyed the experience and felt it helped them gain an insight into the world of law. They were fantastic on the day and it would not surprise anyone if these young people grew up to be lawyers themselves in the future!

Langley in court!

Year 2 Multi Skills Event The Year 10 BTEC PE

group, with the help of some Year 9 sports leaders, organised a multi skills competition for the Year 2 pupils at Kineton Green School. The Year 2 pupils really enjoyed the event and the class was very impressed with how enthusiastic and professional the Langley students were.

Year 10 GCSE RE Explore is a registered educational charity that enables young

people in schools, colleges and prisons to explore the experience of couples and, through this study, to appreciate the skills and emotional literacy that produce healthy and enduring relationships, family life and marriage. This was the first time Explore had been involved in a classroom session at Langley School and they came in for two ‘taster’ sessions ‘to enable young people to explore the realities of marriage and lasting relationships in our society today’. Natalie from Explore came in with one couple per session and pupils were able to ask any questions they wanted with regard to relationships and marriage. Our students really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Comment from Explore about our groups: “With the students there was such maturity and depth in their questioning it was honestly the most effective classroom session I have been involved in so far working with Explore.” Well done to the students in year 10 full course RE.

Aspiring to be the best we can be: Sporting Achievement

Year 7 Trips In January, Year 7s went on a year group trip to the local pantomime while Year 9s went to the Snowdome in Tamworth. Everyone had a good time, and most people came back in one piece!

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Badminton Success Langley has done extremely well in badminton this year and

although the season is now officially ended, Langley Badminton is not finished yet! We still have the Centre Parcs National Schools Competition. Langley’s KS4 Boys team are already county and regional champions and have qualified again for the national final - for the fourth year in a row! In the past three years, they have finished 7th, 4th, and 2nd out of 2,000 schools. This year, for the first time, Langley’s KS3 girls team entered the same tournament and became county champions only losing out at the regional finals. Considering that the girls have only been playing as a team since September, it was a magnificent achievement. Congratulations to everyone. Langley has proved that it deserves to be called the home of GREAT badminton! Langley is very grateful indeed to Mrs. Smith who works passionately to bring out the best in our young people.

Indoor Athletics

A Year 7 boys and girls team along with a Year 8 girls team went to Solihull College to take part in the Solihull Championships. A big thank you to Louis Dale and Charlie Fennel of Year 10 who helped train and select the teams. They all managed to come 3rd - again a massive achievement.

Netball Trip

In March, a group of our girls, from Years 7 to 11, attended a residential weekend netball tournament at Condover Hall in Shropshire, competing against many private schools teams.

Although they did not win, their behaviour was superb and during the awards ceremony the organisers made special mention of our girls’ camaraderie, team spirit, sportsmanship, highly-developed social skills and willingness to cheer on and support other teams

Cross Country

In the Relay Championships the Year 7 girls team came first and we had a number of other good performances. The Year 7 girls team also won the League with Frankie Austin winning the individual title - an amazing achievement! Cross Country club ‘runs’ at 7:30 am on Friday mornings with plenty of milk available for the runners after training! You can see a picture of our superb cross country athletes on the front cover of this document.

Aspiring to be the best we can be: Sporting Achievement

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Rowing We are officially the top rowing school in Solihull! Many thanks have to go to Mrs Prichard for her tireless effort and dedication in introducing this new sport to Langley, selecting and training the team and for her ability to ‘acquire’ a couple of rowing machines for the students to train on. We entered the Regional Finals and the Key Stage 3 boys finished 4th, Key Stage 3 girls finished 3rd and the Key Stage 4 girls finished an amazing 2nd!

Football Just a few days after the Year 10 Solihull Schools’ Final against Smith’s Wood and there is still disappointment around after our 2-1 defeat. However, this was the first final that we have reached in 4 years and much credit must go to Mr Cox and the squad of players. Before the final, Mr Cox even managed to secure the England schoolboys’ kit for the game and Mr Hartshorn cooked them all a pasta and chicken pre-match meal with meringue for dessert!

Aspiring to be the best we can be: With our community

Year 10 Business Studies We have been delighted to welcome three parents as external speakers to work with the Year 10 BTEC Business Studies class to help with their work. These speakers have come in to talk about their companies to the students so that they could write about ‘real world’ businesses in their assignments, rather than ones from text books. Thank you to for Mr Allaway for talking about business ownership, Mrs Haynes for talking about business objectives and Mr Rhodes for talking about business structure. All of these talks were of great benefit to the students.

Careers Guidance As part of new and exciting developments within the vital area of careers advice at Langley, our older students have visited BMW and Deloitte Accountancy to give them a real taste of the world of work. These visits were very well received by our young people, and employees at both organisations were very impressed by their mature attitude. As a result, more visits of this type are to be planned soon. Year 10 students also recently visited Solihull College at an Apprenticeship Fair and represented the school superbly.

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Holocaust Memorial Day In January Hannah Brooker, Alicia McInnes and Kieran Avery, all in Year 9, attended the 2013 Holocaust Memorial Service held at Solihull Library. In front of a large crowd including the Mayor of Solihull, these three students represented Langley School by reading poems in remembrance of those who lost their lives during the Holocaust. They were a real credit to our school and themselves.

Aspiring to be the best we can be: For charity

Comic Relief We held a non-uniform day in aid of Comic Relief and many students really rose to the challenge by wearing fancy dress, selling cakes and competing in a range of competitions. Ella, a very brave, young lady in Year 7 had her hair shaved, raising over £400 on her own for this worthwhile cause. She even featured on Radio WM on Comic Relief evening. In total, we have managed to raise around £850 so far, with some IOUs still pending!

Year 7 LEPRA Workout The Year 7s took part in a highly successful workout session for LEPRA this term, raising £1354.70 for a very worthwhile cause. LEPRA is a health and medical development charity, fighting diseases of poverty and working towards a world without leprosy. Congratulations to everyone involved for being the best you can be!

Langley admissions still going strong Despite the current Year 6 having the smallest number of pupils both locally and nationally, we are pleased to report that we had 664 families apply for one of our 190 places at Langley for September 2013. We still have a waiting list of 80.

Langley School | Kineton Green Road Olton | Solihull | West Midlands | B92 7ER

office@langley-sec.solihull.sch.uk www.langley-sec.solihull.sch.uk