"Be Your Best"

This week two members have staff have the honour of sharing this award. So many students have nominated Mr. Pindar and Mr.Spence for helping them with their ICT qualification that I have been inundated with emails from year 11 students. Well done to you both!

The student of the week is Peter Askew who has managed to acquire his platinum award. Peter you must have worked very hard to get all those merits! Well done!

I wrote to you a short time ago telling you that the schools pastoral system was going to change. Essentially the changes can be described thus

• The current house system will continue until early July
• The four houses will be replaced by 3 faculties
• The faculties will be named after people from Lincolnshire (or are associated with Lincolnshire) and relate in some ways to the schools specialism(s)
• All students will stay with their current form and form tutor

Details of the change can be found under the parent tab on the website.

New Appointment

We are delighted to announce that we have appointed Gavin Warnock as Lead Practitioner for Mathematics. Gavin is a superb teacher of Maths with a great track record of raising achievement. He will be joining us in September or possibly even earlier. As Ian Pindar mentioned earlier the fire will give us a chance to create superb facilities for Maths and ICT that are the envy of the County. I am confident that with out recent appointments in this area aligned to some excellent teaching that already occurs we will become a national centre of excellence for Maths.

Hiya All

This week the Head teacher's weekly Blog comes from Mr. Pindar.

This week’s staff member of the week goes to Mr. Simpson, Mrs. Maxwell and Mrs. Myers for the outstanding work they have all ready done and are currently doing to ensure that the school gets back up to full speed in the shortest possible time, a big thank you from all of us.

Alice Paige and Jessica Lee get joint student of the week. They were nominated by Mr. Fitzpatrick for the amazing designs they produced for the new Math’s block. Both girls who are in Year 7 saw the task on the Website and used their time out of school to complete the task. Well done girls.

As well as the people named above I would like to take the opportunity to thank all staff for going the extra mile to ensure that pupils were back in and working to a normal timetable, pupils have taken the disruption in their stride and are to be congratulated for the way they have settled back in and dealt with changes to their routine. Finally thanks to all of the outside agencies who have pulled out all the stops to support us and continue to support us during this challenging time.

Once again it is Business as usual @ Cherry, today all lessons to place as usual, the Gideon’s did a really nice assembly for the Year 7’s, drama moderation took place and as I write this some outstanding Mathematics teachers are being interviewed for the new Math’s post. Considering the fact that 2 weeks ago we didn’t even have power its pretty amazing the progress made.

Now we have things up and running again we can start to look forward to the future and the good things that will come out of the fire. It will give us an amazing opportunity to design a new block which meets the needs of 21st Century learners and as an IT teacher I am particularly looking forward to getting brand new IT and Math’s facilities.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Mr. P

Monday 3rd of May

Hi everyone

Well we are not quite back to normal but we are getting there! Tomorrow students from all years should return to school at 8.40. We will be holding a full school assembly for all students in the Sports Hall at 8.40 so we can ensure years 7 and 8 students update to about how to get around the site safely. The students in years 9, 10 and 11 were brilliant last week so we are expecting years 7 and 8 to behave in a suitably mature fashion.

End of the school day.
Because of the mobile classrooms having to be sited on the car park we have limited car parking spaces and even less room for vehicles trying to move around the site. We have carried out a thorough risk assessment and have decided that students who make their own way home (on foot) will leave school at 3.05. Students who get buses or who are picked up will have to wait in the Sports Hall until their usual pick up time of 3.25. Lunch time will therefore be reduced to 40 minutes (12.25-13.05) to ensure that no vital learning time is lost. I would also respectfully ask that parents do not bring their cars on the school site as we have a lot of contractors on site. If parents could drop students off in the vicinity of the site (a reasonable walking distance) this would help ease congestion and help safety. I will be sending a letter home early next week explaining the current state of play about the schools information systems.

Structure of the school day.
Whilst we have been running our emergency timetable we have operated a four hour morning session and a one hour afternoon session. Students have been telling us they prefer this structure so we conduct a trial of this structure to see whether it meets the needs of all years. We have also been working without bells this too has proved popular so once again we may trial this over the coming weeks to see whether we adopt this as a permanent feature of the school.

School Badge
We will be adding a new image for you to vote on in the next day or two because of the large scale disruption we have faced we will not close voting until the 14th of May.

Please be patient with regards to contacting us at school we are trying to re-establish phone lines but because of the extent of the damage we have to be patient.

Have a great week

Ed Fitzpatrick

School Closure Update – Thursday for Friday

Hi everyone

Apologies for the lateness of today’s blog this is due to some important strategic discussions I have been conducting that have proved very fruitful in getting the school back to full working order.

Years 7 and 8
As we stated on yesterdays blog we are confident that all students will be able to return on Tuesday. All students should report to the sports hall for a full school assembly on Tuesday. We would ask parents to provide staff with emergency numbers. If our computer systems are restored before Tuesday we will let you via the blog or the schools facebook page.

Exams
All the GCSE exams have gone really well this week and staff and students deserve a big pat on the back for dealing with the adverse conditions. The RE revision session arranged for Saturday has had to be postponed due to contractors working on the school site.

A big thanks
I would like to take this opportunity to offer a very sincere thank you to all the agencies that have helped us get through this very trying week. There are many people to thank but particular thanks must go to the Fire Service, Gelders, Kim Watts and Nigel Dann of Mouchel and our insurance advisors David Speed and Robert Taylor. We will be writing a formal letter of thanks in due course.

Ed Fitzpatrick

School Closure Update - Wednesday 28th of April for Thursday 29th of April

Students return
I would like to commend our students on their excellent behaviour and attitude today. Some of them even appeared on Look North! I would ask that all students provide teaching staff with emergency contact numbers tomorrow. We need these as we cannot access the main block to get ‘hard copies’ or access computer records of phone numbers that have been damaged in the fire. Students who are late or who need to leave the site, must register at the schools temporary office in the youth wing.

Student belongings
Some students have enquired whether they can recover goods from their lockers this will be impossible for the foreseeable future as much of the building is both unsafe and materials within it maybe contaminated. As soon as safety experts give us the green light to start to log student belongings, we will let you know. The same situation applies to members of staff personal belongings including my own! There is no threat to students who suffer from asthma from being on site. All students however must not enter the main building.

Contact with school
As well as the school website students and parents can now keep up to date with events on facebook. The facebook page can be accessed by simply typing Cherry Willingham Community School when on facebook. The page is read only and will be used to post other information regarding school closure and future events. Thank you to Mr. Flowers who has been working hard to re-establish the schools VLE and setting up facebook.

Peripatetic Music Lessons
These are postponed until the 10th of May.

Please keep checking for updates we are making very good progress to ensuring we will nearly be back to normal by next Tuesday.

Ed Fitzpatrick

School Closure Update – Tuesday 15.42

Welcome back to all staff today it was good to see you all back and I know that by working hard together we can turn this difficult situation into a positive.

Students return!
Students from years 9, 10 and 11 should return to school tomorrow at 8.40 a.m. school assembly will be held in the sports hall students should not go anywhere else on the school site unless instructed to do so by a member of staff. Students are advised to bring a packed lunch to the school although there will be some refreshments available from the school kitchen. Students will NOT be allowed off the school site at lunchtime.

Modern Foreign Languages exams
These will take place on Thursday and Friday candidates must bring their cue cards to school tomorrow. Students will be given further information tomorrow.

Interviews for Lead Practitioner/Aspiring AST in Maths
Could all candidates please note that the school has had a serious fire and has therefore postponed the interviews for April 30th? The new date for the interviews is Friday the 7th of May. We will be informing candidates as soon as possible of whether they need to attend on the 7th.

Update on progress
Power has essentially been restored to all usable parts of the building. We are expecting to be given the go ahead to use the Technology corridor from next Tuesday this in conjunction with the mobile classrooms will allow all students to return to school next Tuesday. We will keep you updated via the website and the local radio stations about the situation. We have restored internet access and have procured some new computers to set up some emergency ICT rooms. We are also hoping that the schools management information systems will be up and running by the end of this week or early next week. The schools phones system is going to take a little longer to rectify. A version of a PowerPoint outlining the schools initial action planning will be posted on the schools website later today.

Year 7 and 8 Learning Challenge
To ensure that year 7 and 8 students are not idle whilst they are off school we are issuing a challenge that asks students to do the following

• Design what you think the new Maths and Computing suites should look like (you should include diagrams, sketches and notes)
• Write a supporting essay/story stating why developing Maths and ICT skills are essential for 21st century learners

The five best entries will win a prize and will also be involved in the discussions when we eventually get to redesign our provision for Maths and ICT. From tomorrow work for ALL students in years 7 and 8 will be placed on the school website.

Please keep on checking local radio stations for updates.

Ed Fitzpatrick