newsletter
April 2003
April 2003
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newsletter April 2003 |
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Dear Parents, As we approach the Easter break many things have been happening in school which you need to know about. Recently the school has gained three awards. Firstly, Investors in People has been awarded for the third time and is evidence of the training and career development opportunities available to staff. Secondly, as you will read elsewhere in our newsletter, our Year 10 Young Enterprise group has won the 2003 Innovation Award. Lastly, our website, the address for which can be found at the top of this page, beat off stiff competition from Darland, Bryn Alyn and St. Joseph's RC High School to be awarded the best Secondary Website in Wrexham. We are justifiably proud of these achievements. Please visit the website if you can, it gives a full flavour of many aspects of the school. There have been a number of important events which have taken place in recent months which have been notable moments for the school. Some are referred to elsewhere in this newsletter. In March a Science Festival for Year 6 pupils saw four hundred pupils from neighbouring primary schools taking part in a series of events hosted by our own science department. Earlier this term we held a Neighbourhood coffee morning inviting in residents from the surrounding area to meet staff and students as well as taking a peek at our new facilities. We plan to hold another one in the summer term. If you missed out last time and would like to pop in, please let us know here in school. I am sure you are aware that transport issues have continued to cause us difficulties this term and I would like to reassure you that the school, as always, is doing its best to rectify the situation with the Local Education Authority. I will, of course, keep you informed of developments. One initiative that we have undertaken has been a Safe Routes to School campaign, run by Robert Kendall, where students and staff were invited to contribute their thoughts on the daily issues which arise on the route to and from school. We hope for news soon of developments on the Offa's Dyke footpath. As I mentioned in our first newsletter our new facilities are a source of great pride and I am pleased to announce the official opening of these is to take place Thursday 10th April. The main guest of honour is to be Mark Hughes MBE, Manager of the Welsh National Football Team and a former student of the school. Your child will take part in a special whole school assembly also involving the Mayor and other local dignitaries in our new Sports complex on Thursday morning - it is sure to be a memorable event. The other major future event is the forthcoming Estyn Inspection of our school. This will take place week beginning May 5th and will be a four day inspection (Tuesday to Friday.) The purpose of the Inspection is for the Inspection Team to report upon the standards of education achieved by the school. The Inspection Team have already met with myself, staff and the Governing Body as well as holding a meeting for parents. In our summer term newsletter I will write further on the outcomes of the inspection. Lastly, I am pleased to inform you that provisional numbers for Year 7 pupils starting this September show a significant increase and now stand at over a hundred and ten. As I mentioned when I wrote to you in November the quality of teaching and learning in the school is impressive and I now feel a growing sense of community confidence behind Ysgol Rhiwabon. As always I am proud to be part of such a community. Peter Shaw, Headteacher |
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Owing to the forthcoming School Inspection it is necessary to put back the Year 10 examinations and the date of the Parents' Evening. The examinations will now take place for five school days beginning on Thursday 19th June. The Parents' Evening will begin at 4.30 pm on Wednesday 9th July. |
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Yet again the newest recruits to Ysgol Rhiwabon have shown their creative flair and skill and produced a marvellous range of advent calendars. Our thanks go to all the pupils who put in the time and effort to create a fantastic show of calendars as well as to our judge Mrs Evans. Congratulations to our prize winners:- Stephen Waring and Hana Kira Owen of 7 AC Gemma Jones and Daniel Cooper of lIB Christine Duncan and Charlotte Jones of 7PB. Mrs Aylward Teacher of RS |
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| Dr Khan was presented with a gift on Wednesday 2nd April, from the
staff of the school to celebrate her retirement at the end of the month. Dr Khan has worked in the school for fifteen years and we would like to wish her a long and happy retirement. |
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The Talking Newspaper recently received a boost in funds with a cheque for £100 from Ruabon Constitutional Club. Mr Brian Davies, Chairman, and Mr Alec Valentine, Vice Chairman, presented the cheque to Lucy Dean and Lindsey Griffiths who have been readers on the tape for four years. Mr Davies and Mr Valentine were welcomed by Mr Shaw, Headteacher, who took them on a tour of the school. If you know of anyone who would like to receive a copy of the Talking Newspaper tapes, please contact the school. We also have a page on the school website - so if you want more information please visit our page. Mrs. R Dean |
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Many thanks to Lisa Wilkinson, Wrexham Community Warden who joined Year 7 during assembly this week. Lisa gave an interesting and informative talk on the dangers of dropping litter and the effect it has on local wildlife. On the 22nd of May, Lisa, will join us again and together with Year 7 will undertake a major clean up of the local area including Offa's Dyke. It is hoped that this experience will encourage our pupils to take more care when disposing of litter and also promote a keen interest in the environment. Mrs S Hughes Head of Year 7 |
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Robert Kendall from the Groundwork Trust has spent several mornings in school recently consulting with pupils about their route to school. Questionnaires were filled in and giant maps of the area were used to identify areas which cause problems to our pupils. Pupils from Years 7 - 10 had the opportunity to spend time discussing the problems and possible remedies with Robert. At break and lunchtime Robert held consultation sessions where anyone could go and express his or her views and nominate problem areas. Anyone who took part in the consultation was entered into a grand draw. Stacey Price in Year 9 was the lucky winner and she will soon be able to collect a brand new bicycle as her prize! Robert has collated all the data and will be providing a copy of his report to the school. It is hoped to use his findings to encourage improvements to the roads and paths that our pupils and parents use on their way to and from school. Mr Leather Assistant Headteacher |
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Pupils of Ysgol Rhiwabon celebrated St David's Day by paying to arrive in school out of uniform and to wear something red on the Friday before their national Saint's day. They were also entertained by staff, including headteacher, Peter Shaw, who demonstrated their varying degrees of mastery of the Welsh language. The 'Go Red for Wales' day started with a special assembly led by teacher in charge of Welsh, Catrin Pritchard. She introduced a number of colleagues, some fluent Welsh speakers and other Welsh learners, who said a little about themselves in Welsh. Star performer was Headteacher, Peter 'ap' Shaw. A true-blue Evertonian, he swallowed his pride by wearing a red shirt and marked his first St David's Day Assembly in a Welsh school by delivering an impressive speech in Welsh, personalised with his own inimitable scouse accent. However, the biggest winners were the three nominated charities, Maelor Hospital Shooting Star Appeal, The Children's Therapy Centre, Wales and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. Each organisation received £87 and the distribution fits in with
the school's charity policy of donating to local, national and international
charities. |
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| Year 11 Food Technology receiving Basic Food Hygiene Certificates from the Mayor of Wrexham, Rodney Skelland, during an assembly earlier this month. |
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An annual event for the Expressive Arts Department is to provide some musical and dramatic entertainment for the local community who are associated with our talking newspaper for the blind. Unfortunately, due to the building programme in 2002 we were unable to proceed as usual last year. This year, 20th March, saw the return of the event which involved approximately sixty residents from our local community being invited to our new Expressive Arts suite. They were entertained with musical and dramatic items; this was followed by our pupils serving tea and Cakes. Many thanks to all
pupils who participated and to Mrs Ros Dean who organised the event. |
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Mr Baverstock and Mrs Beaton are very proud of their Year 10 Young Enterprise group. Despite competition from older groups from other Wrexham schools, one of them a sixth form group, they managed to win the 2003 Innovation Award. This award is for £250 which has to be re-invested into the company to further their sales. The company is called "Rhiwabon Jigs" and started off by making traditional wooden jigsaws of pop stars and scanned family photographs. They then had the idea of making magnetic jigsaws that would fit onto metal surfaces such as fridges. With the help of their excellent business adviser, Mr Savage, Managing Director of Mako Creatives, and Tony of APH signs they designed and made magnetic jigsaws. It is a chance to have a dry picture of some of the group. They are usually drenched selling their goods in Queen's Square! Mrs Beaton Head of Sixth Form |
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Miss McKay has recommended her 'After-school Spelling Club' for students in Years 7 and 8. She has invited students who are good readers but find poor spelling hampers their written work. So far, very few have taken up the offer! The club takes place on a Tuesday in F3 from 3.05 pm to 4.05 pm, when a late bus is available for students in PI as Madoc and Cefn Mawr. In the sessions, strategies to remember spelling rules are taught in a fun way; spelling games are played, alongside worksheets and self-assessment. Miss McKay trains students to use the 'ACE' Spelling Dictionary which enables them to find any word they need by using phonics (letter sounds.) If older students would like to improve their spelling, please contact Miss McKay (a note can be left at the school office) or if parents wish to make enquiries, please phone school and leave a contact number. Miss McKay is also willing to run Spelling Workshops for parents and their children to work together on spelling rules. She emphasises that being a poor speller does not equate with low intelligence, some of the most brilliant people have been Dyslexic ego Albert Einstein and Hans Christian Anderson. A read through the following poem will only reaffirm that English spelling has many anomalies but once mastered opens the door to achievement across the curriculum. |
HINTS ON MASTERING ENGLISH I TAKE IT YOU ALREADY KNOW OF TOUGH AND BOUGH AND COUGH AND DOUGH? Others may stumble, but not you On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through Well done! And now you wish perhaps To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead: it's said like bed not bead For goodness sake don't call it 'deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat They rhyme with suite and straight and debt A moth is not a moth in mother Nor both in bother; broth in brother And here is not a match for there Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there's dose and rose and lose Just look them up - and goose and choose. And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword And do and go and thwart and cart Come, come I've hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive I'd mastered it when I was five. (From: Alpha to Omega) |
Miss B. McKay SENCO |
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School fixtures started again during the Spring term and our school teams have continued their successful season. Teams have played regularly at all age groups and, at the time of writing, our Under 13 team and Under 15 teams have lost only once each all season. Several boys from school have been selected to attend trials, extra coaching sessions and represent Wrexham and District Schoolboys at different age groups. The boys involved are Gareth Williams, Ben Hinds, Michael Pugh, Nathan Pugh, Craig Roberts, Stefan Edwards, Andrew Roberts, Stefan Jones, Andrew Dexter and Tom Partridge. Basketball coaching sessions have taken place during lessons and at extra-curricular level during the Autumn and Spring terms. A Basketball Club is held in school every Monday evening. Any students who are interested should contact the PE Department for further details. Teams at Under 13 and Under 15 level recently competed in an interschool tournament held at Ysgol Rhiwabon. Both teams did extremely well and were runners up in their respective tournaments. Congratulations to all players. The new Sports Hall at Ysgol Rhiwabon is ideal for indoor cricket and our students have been able to take advantage of the new facilities. We even have two bowling machines which can deliver a cricket ball at speeds of up to 95 miles per hour! Several boys from the school have been attending cricket practice sessions and Ian Hall, Stefan Burns, Andrew Roberts, Andrew Swarbrick, James Hughes and Tom Partridge have been competing in the Indoor Cricket League on Tuesday nights against teams from across North Wales. The school has organised a cricket coaching course to be held during April. It will be run by the North Wales Cricket Development Officer and is open to anybody interested in gaining a cricket coaching award. For further details contact the PE Department. Teams recently represented the school in the County Cross Country Championships. There were many successful performances. Dean Machin won the Years 10 and 11 race whilst Michael Jones was second in the Year 12 and 13 race. Our Year 8 and 9 team were runners up in the County Championships for the second year running. Dean Machin, Michael Jones, Gareth Hill and Michael Kirk have since represented Wrexham and have now been chosen to represent North East Wales in the National Championships. A very successful Badminton Club has started on Tuesday evenings at the school. The Club runs from 3.15 pm to 4.15 pm for pupils from Ysgol Rhiwabon and is then open to all members of the local community from 5.00 pm to 7.00 pm For further details contact the PE Department. As part of the badminton promotion a 'Badminton Roadshow' was held at the school during January. Several top Welsh International Badminton players visited the school including the current Welsh Men's Champion and the current Welsh Women's Champion, Kelly Holmes, who is also Commonwealth Champion. The players passed on several tips to our students during coaching sessions and played a highly entertaining demonstration game. Practices have continued all year and netball matches resumed in February. Teams from Years 7 - 13 have played against the following schools:- Morgan Llwyd, Dinas Bran, Bryn Alyn, Darland, Bryn Offa The Years 7 and 8 netball teams played in the Wrexham Area Tournaments. Year 8 were runners up in their section but unfortunately were beaten in the semi-finals. Football coaches have been invited in to provide taster sessions for girls in Years 7 and 8. Extra coaching sessions have also been organised during the Easter break on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April. After the Easter holidays a football club will take place on Wednesdays, led by qualified coaches, from 3.10 pm to 4.10 pm in the Sports Hall. If any girls in Years 7 and 8 wish to attend these sessions see Mrs J Williams for further details. A ten week self defence course has been arranged for girls in Years 10 - 13. The course will begin on Monday 28th April in the Aerobics room in the Sports Complex. Each session lasts an hour and is being led by Amanda Taylor, a qualified instructor. If anyone is interested, please see Mrs J Williams. |
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| The above is a record of progress so far in our Thursday lunchtime league.
There are provisional plans for a cup competition later this term and maybe
even a tour in Year 11. Watch this space for further details. Well done
to all the lads concerned. Mr Shaw Headteacher |
Do you CARE about your community? Do you LIVE in Plas Madoc? If you can answer YES to both questions we need YOU!! We need voluntary members to help regenerate PLAS MADOC Training and Creche facilities are available |
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