Dear Parents and Carers,
As we move through the Spring Term, the mornings and evenings are getting brighter, and we would like to enlighten you about your child’s current studies at GPA.
English
We have completed our Links to Legends unit of work and spent this week giving a voice to minor characters through poetry. We have entered our poems into the Poetry Society ‘Reinventing Myth: Poetry and Mythology Challenge’.
If your child is interested there is a puppetry performance of Beowulf at the Great North Museum during the Easter holidays. This is part of the Newcastle Puppetry Festival; more details can be found here.
From Monday 11th March we are considering Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, and our focus text will be Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. It is a fantastic opportunity to understand how adverts, musicians and politicians harness the power of words to increase their messages' impact.
Maths
We are continuing algebra with a focus on linear graphs, expanding and factorising double brackets, and applying these skills to solve problems. These fundamental skills are useful and applicable in various contexts, including banking, engineering, medicine, architecture, and scientific research.
Our classwork continues to be complemented by excellent homework performance, and we continue to be at the top of the Sparx Maths leaderboard.
Well done everyone!
Science
Year 7 Pupils recently sat the end of topic low-stakes assessment for the Y7 Chemical reactions topic, and it was very pleasing to mark, just like all the previous topic tests. Pupils demonstrated good long-term memory of fundamental ideas and strong scientific skills, plus pupils are developing the ability to apply their knowledge in unfamiliar scenarios; these are the three things that pupils need to do well to succeed in GCSE sciences.
We move onto the Biology topic of Cells. In this topic, pupils will learn to set up and use microscopes correctly and some fundamental ideas about the building blocks of living things. We will approach the topic through one of the GPA “Key Questions of Biology”: What are living things made of?
Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about the topics in this letter.
Kind regards,
Dr Clay, Mr Lawrence and Mrs Richardson