Newsletters

PASTORAL SUPPORT ASSISTANT – FIRST AID, HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Starting as soon as possible, we are looking for an outstanding candidate to join our Pastoral Team who has a passion for supporting young people. You will be skilled and experienced in working with young people and have excellent interpersonal skills. You will be responsible for supporting the health and well-being of students through the provision of first aid and associated tasks. In order to be successful in this role it is essential that you have a current First Aid at Work qualification.

Information for post of First-Aider

Year 11 deadline for Sixth Form Choices is Monday 14th December.

If you haven't already made your choices, please do so this weekend.

Lost Property

We are holding a substantial amount of unnamed lost property. If your child has lost an item of clothing, please can they see Mrs Lee in reception or should you wish to pop in then please email reception@jogschool.org to arrange a convenient time. 

Face Covering Exemption Cards for dedicated school bus travel

Should any student be exempt from wearing a face mask on a school bus due to a medical condition, we can issue them with an exemption card.

Please contact snichols@jogschool.org if you wish your child to have one.

Supporting Catch Up in Maths

Ensuring students' confidence and academic progress has not been impacted by the experience of lockdown is a priority for all schools at the moment.  We are pleased to announce the appointment of Louise Diaper as a new maths teacher in the school.  Whilst Miss Diaper is a qualified teacher, until now she has been working as a Higher-Level Teaching Assistant.

This appointment means that we can create an extra class for students in years 9, 10 and 11.  This means that many students will benefit from being taught in a smaller class, and further support their progress.  To enable this, some students will have been moved from their current class.

Year 8 Events for Charity

Year 8 are raising money for 2 charities:  MIND and Storehouse Food Bank.

Year 8 students are invited to bring in packets, tins and toiletries that are in date from now until the end of term.  Please take these items to D19.  We will pass them on to Storehouse Food Bank.

On Tuesday, 15th December Year 8 PE lessons will involve a charity run/walk. Students can make a donation of £1 which you can give to give to your PE teacher at the start of lesson.

On Thursday, 17th December Year 8 will be in non-school uniform, ideally wearing a Christmas jumper or something festive.  Voluntary donations of £1 can be made through ParentPay, please see ParentPay for more details.

We look forward to raising resources for these 2 charities.

This year we have been fortunate to have our Christmas tree sponsored by MHA Monahans of Trowbridge.

We would like to thank them for their generosity. All visitors, students and staff have enjoyed seeing the tree in reception.

Parentpay for School Meals

Please can we remind parents/carers to check the balances on their children’s school meals accounts and top up where necessary.

Please contact the finance office if you have any queries with payments.

Thank you.”

Year 7 Charity Events Next Week

Year 7 students are fundraising for Cancer Research UK in the last week of this term.

There are three activities to participate in:

• A creative competition with the theme ‘everyday heroes’. Students can submit a story, poem, piece of artwork or anything else creative.

The suggested donation for entry is 50p - £1 and all work must go to either Miss Wood or student leadership representatives in a sealed  envelope with both the donation and a name on.

Winners get prizes, points and names will be published in the newsletter.

• The final week student representatives will be selling raffle entries to win big boxes/selection packs of sweets and chocolate.

Entries cost 20p. Students won't buy raffle tickets but will instead submit their 20p in an envelope and we can draw the winning envelopes.  This will avoid the need to handle lots of money. The envelopes will need to be named and to have the tutor group written on them. You can enter as many times as you like.

•  There is a non-school uniform day on Thursday, 17th December.  Ideally students will wear their Christmas jumpers or something festive.  We're asking for a voluntary donation of £1 for this event.  All details are on ParentPay.

Any questions, please ask Miss Wood

The last week of term

During the last week of term, each year group will be raising money for a charity of their choice.  Money will be raised through a variety of activities that students are organising in their year group bubbles during lunch and break times.  The week will culminate in a non-school uniform day on Thursday 17^th December. 

If students have Christmas jumpers we’d like them to be worn on 17th December so that we can create a festive feel for our last school day of 2020.   We ask for a voluntary contribution of £1 per student on the non-school uniform day which should be paid via ParentPay. Details will be on that system.

The charities we are supporting are as follows:

Year 7 – Cancer Research UK

Year 8 – MIND and the local Food Bank

Year 9 – Trowbridge Future and Wiltshire Air Ambulance

Year 10 – Barnardos

Year 11 – Trowbridge Future and Trowbridge Lions

Post 16 – Trowbridge Food Bank

2020 has been a very difficult year for charities and their fundraising so we’re hoping to do our bit to support these worthy charities and to end 2020 with a note of kindness.

On the 17^th December, we’ll have lessons as normal for the first four periods and then everybody will be in their Tutor Group for some festive activities during the last period of the day.

Year 9 Charity Events

Next week, Year 9 will be raising money for Trowbridge Future and Wiltshire Air Ambulance. In an effort to raise as much money as possible, they will be taking part in a Virtual Raffle, participating in various Christmas Fete style games on Tuesday lunch time in the Sports Hall and challenging their powers of deduction in a Cryptic Phrases quiz and Guess the Little Teacher activity during their tutor sessions on Monday and Wednesday (a special thanks to the Year 9 team for providing some very cute photos of themselves as babies or little kids!).

All games and competitions will be 20p or 50p to enter. Let’s try our hardest to raise as much money as possible for these wonderful causes.

Thanks from the whole Year 9 Team

To all our Year 10 Parents/Carers ...

We thought it would be nice to send you a quick update as we approach the end of another busy term!  We would like to thank you for all your continued support and praise the students for their resilience during such a challenging time for them at school.  

This term we have enjoyed lots of 'virtual' assemblies on topics including :

Black History Month

Attendance

Remembrance Day

Student Leadership

Tolerance

Being a life saver & first aid

We are very much looking forward to our end of term Christmas celebration assembly at the end of term.

We hope the students have enjoyed the regular updates from Mrs Lynch, our Careers Adviser.  She has been sharing lots of useful information & links with the students.

We are working together with the Year 11 team to collect donations for the local food bank.  In the past, our families have been incredibly generous.

Miss Beer and our student council representatives are planning an end of term fundraiser to raise money for our chosen charity which is Barnardos.  

By the end of term you will receive our first tracking data for this academic year.  This will give you the predicted grades for all your son/daughter's subjects.  These grades are what the teachers currently believe they will achieve based on current progress.  You will be able to compare them with their target grades & look at which areas may need more focus moving forwards.

We would like to wish you all a peaceful, safe & relaxing holiday.  We look forward to seeing our students return to school on Tuesday 5th January.

The Year 10 Team ??

Year 11 are very keen to support local charities this Christmas and have opted to donate to Trowbridge Lions and Trowbridge Future.

All students are invited to take place in JoGVoice UK, an anonymous singing competition!  Everyone welcome to enter - £1 entry fee.  Record yourself singing your favourite song and send the recording to 16mellis@jogschool.org by 5pm on Wednesday 16th December 2020.  20p to vote for the winner.  Everyone who votes for the winner goes into the prize draw for a £5 Amazon voucher!  Further details from your tutor.

In the planning - a charity Christmas egg and spoon race!  Bring your change to pick the winner and go into the draw for another £5 Amazon voucher!  Further details next week.

Huge thanks to the wonderful Year 11 Council who have come up with and organised these ideas!!  Happy Christmas. 

Year 12 and 13 Charity Fund Raising Next Week

In the final week of term we have decided to raise money for the local Food Bank.

To raise funds we're having a Santa Dash.  We're selling, via ParentPay,  Santa hats and Christmas glasses at £1 per item.  All profits from these sales will go to the Food Bank.  

Students are also invited to contribute suitable food items.  In the photo you'll see Callum Duncan, Joe Smith and Ben Goulding who took it upon themselves to buy and bring into school over 120 tinned goods and cereals - an amazing contribution.

We're also taking part in the Christmas jumper day on Thursday.  All donations can be made on ParentPay.

We're looking forward to having fun whilst we raise money for such a good cause.

Deforestation Debating in Geography!

Recently as part of our rainforest study, Year 7 students have been debating deforestation. Students worked in groups representing different stakeholders – these ranged from Greenpeace to Indigenous Tribes to the Brazilian Government, and together had to decide on and persuade their teacher to agree to one of three options:

1. To clear an area of rainforest for a cattle ranch and meat processing factory.
2. To designate an area of the forest a national park and develop tourism, restaurants and activity centres among the remaining areas of forest.
3. To fence off an area for local people to continue their traditional lifestyle, allowing only small scale harvesting of plants for scientific research and use in new medicines.

Not content to be defeated by the marvellous meat makers of 7I Caleb Farquharson wrote an impassioned defence as a Professor from the School of Tropical Medicine.

‘The rainforest, a beautiful suppliant place, but yet close to disappearing, Why, you may wonder? For our human needs.

Did you know that 70% of the world’s medicine supply comes from rainforest ingredients, but can only be supplied whilst the plants are alive.

Now, let’s move on to the magnificent meat makers and their thoughts on the rainforest. They argue that the Amazon needs to be cut down in order to build cattle ranches, where they can breed cattle and meet human demand. However, eating red meat is not an essential, inf act, red meat is high in saturated fats and when eaten in large quantities can contribute to certain types of cancer,

Surely these medical facts show us that cutting down trees in the Amazon to provide space for cattle farming has more serious effects on us than we realise? We do not need the rainforest removed because we want something or crave a burger, in fact, red meat has a higher chance of giving someone a heart attack than you do of experiencing a shark attack.

As well as that, certain species of animals are endangered and almost extinct because of deforestation. For example, the Golden Lion Tamarin monkey or the Amazonian Jaguar which have fewer than 15,000 left. Why do humans think that it is okay to take these homes away from these animals for their own needs?

In conclusion, I think the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest is purely for human satisfaction and we should look at the consequences of our actions.’

Well done to Caleb for going above and beyond but also to the following students for their other valuable contribution to their debate in lesson.

Holly Jones

Cameron Nash

Brooke Le Page

Joe Offield

Hattie Sargeant

Toby Wallis

Betty Hill

Sydney Taylor

Miss Wood and Mr Mirza

New KS3 data reports

Next week our KS3 students and parents will be receiving our first new data report. The idea of this is to give you a lot more information about recent topics covered as well as progress in these topics. There will also be GEM activities identified by each subject area to help further the progress made.

These reports will be sent out via school comms and will include hyperlinks for these extra tasks.

We hope that you find this informative and look forward to receiving your feedback on this new system.

Supporting careers education, information, advice and guidance at JoG

Careers in the videogames industry

Now worth £5.2B to the UK economy and growing, there has never been more interest in the video games sector. Having seen jobs actually rise during the pandemic, it's proven to be a resilient and buoyant industry with exciting career prospects for people with both technical and creative skills. The IntoGames website provides a lot of useful information for young people, including a searchable database of job roles, interviews with people working in the sector, an opportunities database and a regularly updated list of game design tools, sounds and graphics.

https://intogames.org/

Many high profile companies (e.g. Bank of England, PWC, SKY, BBC, Land Rover, Jaguar, etc.) are now recruiting Degree Apprenticeships, which is a great option for young people. Dale Willis, founder of 'My Great First Job' is giving a number of talks to help young people and their parents work their way through the post-education maze. This session will cover:

• How Degree Apprenticeships work....and there's more than one type!
• Where you can find the opportunities
• When you should be applying
• What can an application process look like?
• Your Money! How does the student loan/maintenance/salary all work?

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/degree-apprenticeships-so-what-are-they-all-about-tickets-131167763311?aff=CEC

Blog: Engaging students with the construction sector

Flannery Skills Development Director, Paul Skitt, discusses what the construction sector has to offer and why it offers a sustainable career pathway for all. Paul is keen to inspire young people to join the construction industry and  shares why Flannery is a great choice for anyone interested in a career in plant hire.

https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/news/engaging-students-construction-sector

Blog: Steps to starting your own business

Aimee Higgins?, Director of Employers & Partnerships, The Careers & Enterprise Company shares her passion for climate change and some steps you can try when thinking about starting your own first business?.

https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/news/steps-starting-your-own-business