From the Head of Secondary 04.09.2021
Key Stage assemblies are again becoming a regular feature of Secondary life, with the Years 7, 8 and 9 students having their assemblies every week on Wednesdays, Years 10 & 11 weekly on Thursdays and Years 12 & 13 every two weeks on Tuesday. Getting everybody together in this way is an excellent way to support community ideals and convey vital messages. On Wednesday this week Ms Colley spoke about being respectful and in this newsletter you can see what she talked about and also watch a video which was shown in the assembly. A range of colleagues spoke about what lockdown has meant for them whilst they keep the school organised and ready for when we all return to the building.
Some of our new Secondary teachers are flying into KK today and tomorrow and we are very pleased to welcome Mr Gant, Ms Dobbs, Ms Beresford and Ms Tretter; I am looking forward to meeting them in person in school next week. Hopefully it will not be long before we are also joined by Mr Grant and Dr Dickinson. We wish our new teachers the very best of luck in settling into their new lives here.
The vast majority of our students continue to work well. Whilst we may all have now become familiar with home learning and have adapted well, there are undoubted stresses and strains which would probably not exist if we were in school and seeing each other face to face. A major factor in how well students are coping is related to how supportive our parents are in ensuring, as far as possible, that their children are able to cope. At this point I would like to reiterate how important it is to let us know here at school if there are any issues or difficulties that we can assist with. We cannot control the internet and understand that it may suddenly ‘go off’ in your household, but we can perhaps support your child in not getting stressed when this happens. For example, if we know what is happening, what the problems are, we can undoubtedly help, whether that is through a chat with a subject teacher or with a form tutor or with Ms Siti, our school counsellor, who is already ready to listen.
Year 7 may not, as yet, have had the pleasure and excitement of working in our science labs here at school, so as a good alternative Ms Service turned homes into labs this week so that the students could carry out practical experiements using handy household equipment. Read on to see how they did!
News and Reminders
As we have had to make some adjustments to our tutor team, Mr Celestial has now taken over 9S and will be the group’s form tutor moving forward. Thank you to Mr Celestial for stepping up into this role.
If you have yet to return text books from last year, please bring them to school as soon as possible so that Mrs Colbeck can reissue to the current year groups.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Margaret Renshaw
Deputy Principal / Head of Secondary
Key Stage 3 Assembly
In this week’s Key Stage Three assembly, we talked about respect which is Year 7’s pastoral focus for the year. After Eloise Audy from 7S and Miss Milligan shared some of the ideas they have been discussing in PSHE and tutor time, we talked about how our school isn’t simply made up of the teachers and the students. The KIS community is much broader than that and I wanted everyone to think about all the people who are coming into school to work tirelessly every day to ensure everything is running smoothly and will be ready for us when we return.
In the following video you will see not only how hard everyone is working but also how much they miss the students. They deserve our respect just as much as our teachers do and, when we finally return, I hope that staff, students and parents are able to show the ground, IT and office staff just how much we appreciate all that they have been doing on our behalf. Enjoy!
Ms Emily Colley
Head of Key Stage 3
YEAR 7 EXPERIMENTS AT HOME
Last week Y7 started their Science curriculum with the topic of Scientific Questions. It is important for students to consider why we ask questions in Science and how we ensure that the question is relevant and answerable. One of the ways of finding the answer to our questions is by doing an experiment. We ask students to think about a Fair Test and take careful measurements and observations. We had a range of experiments starting with looking at the effect of adding salt to ice, to see if it melted faster. Abraham managed to have it melt slower, which I cannot explain with Science?
Jaxon dropped ice cubes into different liquids to see if they melted faster. Apparently, it melted more quickly in Cola and much more slowly in water. His research explained that this was due to the bubbles in the cola mixing the liquid.
Taylor followed my suggestion of shaking a bottle with different volumes of soap being added. He then measured the height of the foam with a ruler in centimetres.
We recorded all the results in a table and then used Google Sheets to draw an appropriate graph.
Finally, Amanda produced Oobleck with different volumes of water being added and timing how long it took to drop from a spoon in seconds. She found that the more water you added, the less viscous the Oobleck would be.
It is a challenge to keep lessons at home interesting and fun and I would like to thank all of the parents and guardians for their imagination, patience and assistance with this practical work.
Ms Laura Jane Service
