Leaders for Readers – Summer Reading Challenge 2023 - Please see poster below

Please also see the following link to the King’s Academy Ringmer newly launched reading site - https://sites.google.com/kingsacademies.uk/karsummerreadingsite/literary-news 

LOST PROPERTY

Please see below for all current unnamed lost property.

Anything unnamed and unclaimed by the end of term wit be donated to charity or disposed of

 

Art Department

What a great creative week we've had! Students have had the opportunity to use lots of different materials this week here what our week looked like: 

• Monday: Students used scalpels to create intricate paper cuttings, pasted glass jars with PVA and tissue to create fantasy scenes with carefully cut silhouettes and lastly little peg butterflies (or moths) that are simply cute! 

• Tuesday: This day was all about taking students down the rabbit hole of Art Journals, students were attentive as they watched, then replicated different techniques and styles. The day was then summed up at the end with free time, so students could explore their own Journals and they did some stunning work!  

• Wednesday: An ambitious day of 3 different workshops which all use specialist materials, we started with printing making using lino which is a difficult material that we don't usually introduce until year 10, the students approach it with maturity and produced work to take home, we then moved on to clay to create some lovely hanging clay pots and lastly, we showed them the skill of create a book cover and binding it. 

• Friday: We spent the day using Clay (ceramic), Polymer (oven bake) and Shrinky Dinks (massive in the 80s).  We had students creating Raman bowls, piggy rings, fried egg earrings and many more interesting things. The loveliest thing to hear as we walked around was that every student in that workshop was making at least one thing for someone else, the kindness and compassion for others was really evident. 

I hope your child enjoyed their week and gained some fantastic memories and skills. 
Miss Hook – Activity Leader
 

           

 

 

 

 

 

Tunnel Books in the Library - Monday 3 July 2023
Students spent the day creating imaginative miniature worlds out of paper into tunnel books. They learnt how to construct paper panels placing one behind the other and creating the illusion of depth and space through an accordion type structure. They were then encouraged to let their imaginations run wild to create multi layered collaged scenes taken from book pages and found images.

There were fantastical landscapes, surreal safari's, animal montages, astrological themed dream like scenes and music related responses.  All the students demonstrated highly creative and thoughtful work. 

Mrs Colbourne – Activity Leader

 
            

  
         

 

London Landmarks and Debating - Themes of Protest  

On Monday 3 July 2023, we took a group of 20 enthusiastic 8s and 9s to London. We explored landmarks that have had an impact on rebellion and where major protests have occurred over the long history of the city. Our aim was to learn a little about why these statues exist and why, even now, they are remembered as significant cultural touchpoints in the world we live in today. 

We started by travelling to Victoria station and then from there we visited Westminster Cathedral. Our students went inside and saw all of the intricate art and design that has been embedded in this building. We went from there towards the river, visiting the Houses of Parliament and the statues of Millicent Fawcett, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela along the way. 

The students saw Big Ben as we headed on to Westminster Bridge to recite Wordsworth’s famous poem. After visiting the famous statue of Boudicca and discussing the uprising of the Britons against the Roman forces, we stopped for lunch in Embankment gardens and saw the Battle of Britain Memorial and the statue of William Tyndale, a great reformer. 

After lunch we headed to No.10 Downing street where the students saw the cenotaph and the memorial to the women of WWII. IT was local petition day and the students chatted to some of the local constituents who were taking their petitions to the PM. Seeing this democratic process in action was fascinating and great to talk to the people who take these matters so seriously. 

We finally headed for Trafalgar Square and then on to our final stop, Buckingham Palace. A really enjoyable day and a huge number of cultural monuments that we got to visit made for a tiring but satisfying experience. 

On Tuesday 4 July 2023, the students spent the day exploring the workings of protest and the structures of formal debate. We had the topic of protests through the ages which the students researched and then presented on, exploring the importance of the ones they chose and the reason why they are remembered.

 

We then conducted a silent debate around contentious topics in the news which led to some heated discussion! The students decided that protest is sometimes necessary and the ways in which to protest are varied. 

The students then researched and decided upon their own protest they would carry out: one topic that they cared deeply for and designed a placard to take with them on any protest they went on. 

In the afternoon we wrote out our speeches on the topic of our choice which was “there is no need for protest in 2023”. Some lovely responses from the students and overall again a very engaged group who took part willingly and hopefully had a great time thinking deeply about some really challenging concepts and going outside of their comfort zones.
 

Food dept - Enrichment Activities

During Enrichment week the Food department organised three cookery days offering savoury or
sweet cooking sessions which proved very popular with all three year groups.
On the Monday students had the opportunity to prepare their own break and lunchtime meals from
their own baked bread, burgers prepared from scratch and a cheese and garlic stuffed chicken
breast wrapped in streaky bacon and served with potato wedges. Students who preferred
Vegetarian dishes were busy making their own short crust pastry vegetable quiche or marinated
kebabs.

In the afternoon everyone designed their own dip platters with some creative vegetable cutting and
tasty cheese and hummus dip recipes.
‘’Afternoon tea’’ cookery days followed on Wednesday and Thursday. Multiple cake baking
throughout the day with some very impressive strawberry and cream filled sponge roulades,
homemade scones and jam and everyone’s favourite lemon drizzle cake.

Feedback from students was very positive but they were surprised by how tired they felt after a day
of cooking and eating!
‘’Very fun overall, I enjoyed it a lot. Next time I will bring more containers for everything!’’
‘’It was lovely.’’
‘’I really enjoyed making the bread as I think it was my favourite thing to eat and it had many steps.’’
‘’I liked the dip platter where you had the freedom to make what you wanted.’’
‘’It was better than I expected. No improvements needed.’’
And a suggestion for next time - ‘’It was very fun but maybe some more competitions next year?’’

Mrs Budd

 

Design and Chocolate Making – Tuesday 4 July 2023

A group of enthusiastic cooks, met together to learn the history of chocolate.  They heartily took part in the blind tasting of 8 varieties of chocolate, deciding upon their favourite.  As part of their experience, they were asked to design their own chocolate bar, slogan, logo and pitch in a Dragon Den's style competition.  Students were put in pairs to create their own pieces of chocolate from scratch.  Despite this being a challenging task, their resilience shone through.  The results as you can see were impressive!  

Mrs Simmons – Activity Leader

 

       

 

Lion King Visit – Wednesday 5 July 2023

On Wednesday 5 July 2023, Mr Perry, Mrs Cornford, Mrs Anderson and I took 40 students to the Lyceum Theatre in London's west end to see a performance of The Lion King.

To start the day, we decorated lion masks whilst waiting for the coach to arrive. 

At 11am we left the school to make our way to London, along the way we saw some landmarks: The Shard, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament to name a few. We arrived in London at 1.30pm, and we got off the coach in Aldwych and walked a couple of minutes to the theatre, we were welcomed by a member of staff who escorted us to the entrance door for us to enter the theatre. Once the doors opened we made our way into the theatre and up the stairs to the Royal Circle where our seats were. The students settled into their seats quickly, and we awaited the start of the performance.

The show started, and it was lovely to see the excitement on the students faces when the cast came on stage. At some points in the performance the cast were near to where we were seated with puppets of birds which added the extra excitement. At the interval the students were all talking about various scenes that we had watched and how much they were enjoying the show. All too soon the performance was over, and we all clapped at the excellent show that we had just seen. At the end of the performance we made our way back to the coach where the driver took us on a different route, so we went past the Tower of London, and he spoke to the students at the front about going past Pudding Lane where the Great Fire of London had started many years ago.

We arrived back to school at about 8pm and I think it is fair to say everyone was tired, but we had all had a great day, and it was a joy to see the excitement on the students faces both on the journey when some were seeing the landmarks for the first time and throughout the performance of an excellent show.

Mrs Duckworth - Visit Leader

 

Bude – Monday 3 July to Friday 7 July 2023

On the beautiful North Cornwall coast of Bude, students enjoyed a week of activities that challenged their physical strength and mental resilience.  Everyone had a go; no one opted out.  From squeezing head-first into confined spaces underground, to climbing telegraph poles in the wind and rain, to facing the enormous rolling breakers of the Atlantic with surfboards and rolling down hills on off-road boards, there was definitely plenty of adventure.  In the evenings, we dressed up, danced, sang, played team games and watched movies.  There was plenty of entertainment to keep everyone occupied.  It's safe to say, everyone returned exhausted - but happy!  Well done to all the students who -sometimes literally - threw themselves into each activity.

Mrs Hunnisett – Visit Leader

 

Ardeche Visit – Friday 30 June to Saturday 8 July 2023

We had an extremely successful trip to France last week. The students displayed great Kindness, Ambition and Resilience throughout the journey. We started the week with a paddle down the gorge on 2-person canoes. With everyone paired up, we began our descent down the river looking at the majestic sights around us. 

We carried this on, on day two of our trip. Feeling the buzz flowing through the group, we took note of the caves and nature surrounding us, watching out for those sneaky rapids that we would approach and delightfully, expertly navigate, laughing all the way.

On day three of our trip, we took a trip to Wave Island, a water park located in Monteux. Here the students learnt a thorough understanding of resilience and ambition by taking on every waterslide the park had to offer. It was great fun, and all of the students presented themselves in a mature manner. 

Day four was the dreaded walk. Consistently, the students were asking ‘Do we have to do this?’. However, come the end of the walk the students felt an air of achievement and pride as they had all completed the trek through the gorge and difficult pathways. A special mention to Millie, that despite the difficulties she faced, not once did she give up and powered through and received a round of applause from the whole camp. 

On our final full day of the trip, we once again travelled down to the river and took part in two activities: SUP (stand-up paddle boarding) and raft building. With the group split up into four teams we went about our activities in a proactive manner. All students really enjoyed both the team-building exercise of the raft building and the independent challenge of the SUP. 

On the whole, all students were a credit to the school and behaved incredibly well. I think it was summed up by Caroline, one of the activity leaders when she said that there is a real sense of community within our school, that no one is left alone, isolated or upset; linking back to our three values Kindness, Ambition and Resilience

Mr Duckworth – Visit Leader

Here is a lovely message from a paretn about the trip:

Good Evening 

 

Charterhouse Centre Visit – Wednesday 5 5 to Friday 7 July 2023

Firstly can I just say how proud I am of all the students who have joined myself, Mrs White, Miss Tompsett and Mr Schulz for these three days to The Charterhouse Centre.

The staff that are working for and at The Charterhouse Centre were amazing, so supportive and encouraging throughout the activities.  Everyone was made to feel safe and from my own point of view, I never once felt worried safety or questioned their decisions.  We will be looking at booking again for next year watch this space…

Your children have set the most wonderful example of well-rounded individuals who we are and you should be very proud of.  The fear factor has come in for some pupils when asked to lean backwards off the edge of a rock face in Sandford Quarry as they prepared to abseil down with gusto and huge smiles.

Caving in Goatchurch Cave was without doubt my highlight, so much so that I cheekily opted to go in again and sent Mrs White off to get wet again on Cheddar Reservoir with the Super Stand-Up Paddle Board and some power boat driving.  This was a highlight for our resident speed demon Mr Schulz who loved driving the power boat across Cheddar Reservoir.

Miss Tompsett has enjoyed her first ever outdoor pursuits adventure and she has tried everything with the students.  Her highlight was the abseiling in Sandford Quarry.  This was a beautiful place with the most amazing views out across The Mendip Hills.

If you happen to bump into any of these kind and supportive staff, please do take the time to thank them.  We have all left our own small people behind for these three days and without them, this trip would not have been as good and I am confident to say that the combination of staff and students was a winner for all involved.

We have all taken a ridiculous number of photos which will be shared via a Google Drive link that I will share with the students via their Gmail.  Please can you be patient as I have to double check for permissions and faces before I share any photos.  Once I have organised this, I will get them in one folder and send out the link.

Many thanks for your support and patience, please do pass on our gratitude to your children for making this such a good trip.  When you speak to them, I can only apologise if they are now tired and grumpy but rest assured they will all have lots to tell you about the experiences of caving, climbing and abseiling, paddle boarding, power boating and then surviving room sharing!

Mr Quinnell – Visit Leader

PS:  Bed changing is not something we thought we would have to be teaching but you can now be very pleased that your child is now an “expert” and I am sure they will volunteer to do this regularly at home!

 

Eco Enrichment Day

The Eco enrichment day at school was packed full of a variety of different activities, to give the students the opportunity to try new things and explore the different aspects of eco.

We started the day with a competition using a bicycle attached to generator, to see who could cycle the longest to turn on a lamp.  The students took turns pedalling and trying to beat one another's time.  They enjoyed having a go and throughout the day, many students came back to see how long they could pedal for, with one student doing up to 15 minutes!  Great work!  

We were then fortunate enough to have some visitors from East Sussex County Council Children's Services who are working on a project to create a climate Change Charter. The charter will be produced by children and young people at workshops with ESCC across the district, and we held our workshop during Eco Day.  The students worked in groups to come up with ideas and suggestions around lots of environmental and sustainable topics such as energy, recycling, transport and more.  Their brainstormed ideas have been collected by the ladies running the workshop and will be added into the charter they are producing.  In addition, ESCC will be holding a Climate Change Summit next year, inviting students from schools across the district, including King's Academy Ringmer.  We will share further details on this as we have the specifics.

After break, the students all had the opportunity to get involved outside in the Eco Hub garden.  One group of students worked on labelling up plants in the raised borders of the Eco Hub garden, using labels made from used plastic milk bottles.  They used Google lens to identify the plants, write the names using acrylic pens as these don't fade or wash off, then tied the tags on.  This will help us keep track of what plants we have, learn more about how to care for these and how they benefit pollinators and wildlife.

Another group planted up cowslips (primroses) kindly donated by the Ouse & Adur Rivers Trust, along the fence in between the trees and hedge saplings we planted with the Eco Reps earlier in the year.  They did such a good job digging as the ground was so hard and dry from the weeks of blazing hot sun.  But they were determined and with a little splash of water to help soften the ground, they managed to plant most of the cowslips during the afternoon.  A fantastic job and the plants are already settling in and going strong.

Whilst students were identifying plants or digging and planting others, our final group worked on weeding the gravel area around the raised gardens.  Sadly, the weed preventing membrane is struggling to keep up with the quantity of "weeds" that are self-seeding themselves.  Though we are encouraging "weeds" in other areas of the Eco Hub garden and have an area left to grow wild, in the gravel and raised border area we want to allow the plants that have been planted for pollinators and the small pond that was put in last year, to thrive.  The students were fantastic pulling these out and adding them to the compost bins.  The area now looks much better and makes it easier to keep up with until the winter when things die back.

The last activity of the day was making bug houses.  Chandlers of Lewes kindly donated some weatherproof timber and a local resident kindly cut the wood and pre-drilled it to size for the students.  Local farmers Mr & Mrs French donated straw and another local Ringmer resident donated pine cones - thank you so much to everyone who donated items, we really appreciate it.  Armed with all the components, some electric screwdrivers and their enthusiasm, the students soon created some wonderful bug houses for the Eco Hub garden.  We have put these against the building under an overhang of the roof as they don't have solid backs to them.  We are hoping lots of insects and bugs will soon take up residence and will benefit from their new accommodations which are akin to hotel level!

All-in the students had a wonderful day, they were enthusiastic, participated in the activities and really embraced the Eco element here at King's Academy Ringmer.  We really look forward them joining in with our future activities.

 

Safeguarding 

Places where kids can eat free (or for £1) During the 6 Weeks Summer Holidays 2023