Loading

Our Manor 20-23 September 2022

Welcome to this week's newsletter

Thank you to all those families who attended our Welcome to the Sixth Form sessions this week. It has been great to welcome families back into school once again. We have missed being able to see so many faces in person due to the COVID restrictions and further safety measures over the past two years.

Whilst we have advanced our capabilities to host evenings like this virtually and it can be more convenient for some, we have missed the opportunity to meet families face to face and to have those more personal conservations.

We are really looking forward to meeting our Year 7 families again in the coming weeks for our 'settling in' evening. We hope to see as many of you there as possible.

I wanted to thank all of you who responded to our parent and carer survey at the end of last term. These are valuable opportunities for us as school leaders to gain greater insights into your views and perceptions of the school and we can use this to improve. We will be engaging in your views on further issues over the course of the school year and we would encourage as many of you as possible to tell us what you think. I will be writing to you in the next week or two with the things to celebrate from the most recent survey and we will be sharing the areas we will be working on in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to get in touch if there is something you would like to discuss with us. Your child's Form Tutor is always available as the first port of call, but you can also contact us at enquiries@manor.school.

This week's newsletter is another jam-packed edition. We hope you value the information that is coming through via this outlet. We do aim to keep the number of communications on a weekly basis to a minimum and endeavour to put everything into the newsletter. Please continue to engage with the newsletter as the main source of communication between home and school.

Enjoy the weekend!

Lee Towers, Head of School

Year 7 CAT4 and progress tests

This week Year 7 have been undertaking CAT4 assessments and a science progress test. There will be further progress tests on English and mathematics next Wednesday (28 September). These progress tests are from a national organisation and will allow us to benchmark the progress of our students against a huge national cohort. We will then use the outcomes to identify gaps in learning and plan accordingly for the best learning in English, maths and science. There is no preparation required and no additional equipment needed.

The CAT4 assessments completed on Wednesday test the cognitive ability of your child in four different ‘batteries’:

  • Verbal: reasoning with words
  • Quantitative: reasoning with numbers
  • Non-verbal: understanding and analysing visual information
  • Spatial: thinking about and manipulating shapes

The results can then be used to inform teaching planning but also groupings to ensure that children work in an environment where they can thrive. Ultimately, we will use these to identify target grades for students for the end of their GCSE courses.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me via email on gturner@manor.school.

Glenn Turner, Director of Learning (Science)

Year 11 Pledges Evening

Wednesday 28 September is the first opportunity of the academic year for us to welcome parents and carers onto the school site to explain the Year 11 journey, outline the support available for students, parents and carers, and provide an overview of the necessary information at this stage.

This event will take place in the main hall and we encourage all parents/carers to attend one of two time slots; 4:30pm or 5:30pm. To book your timeslot for this event, please click here.

If you have any specific questions that you would like us to address during the presentations, please contact us via email on enquiries@manor.school before the event.

Year 6 into 7 Open Evening

We would like to formally invite prospective students and their families to our Year 6 into 7 Open Evening on Wednesday 5 October.

The evening will give you the opportunity to meet and listen to the Head of School, followed by a guided tour of the school that will provide you with the chance to talk to our students and staff team about the curriculum, extra-curricular activities and all the opportunities that Manor School has to offer.

To avoid disappointment, and to allow the school the opportunity to manage numbers on the school site, we would request that all families reserve their places at the Open Evening in advance of the evening by booking tickets – click here to book your place(s). The booking form will give you the opportunity to select your slot at the presentation and subsequent guided tour of the school.

For more information about the event as well as how to arrange visiting us during the school day, please see our website.

Online safety - loot boxes

Marketed as increasing a player’s enjoyment of a game, loot boxes are usually purchased or given as rewards. When opened, they unlock items for use in the game, such as better weapons or new characters to play as. Loot boxes feature in many games and are therefore available to various age groups. They’ve often been criticised for emulating gambling: the odds of unlocking certain items can be astronomical, while the money being spent is often high compared to the potential reward. It’s imperative that trusted adults understand the risks that loot boxes can pose.

In the guide below from National Online Safety, you'll find tips on a number of potential risks such as addiction, scams and mounting costs.

Holiday camps

Manor Sports and Leisure's holiday camps offer a range of child-led activities such as sports, arts & crafts, first aid and movie afternoons for children aged 4-11 years old. Their next holiday camp is taking place in the October half term break. To book a place for your child, please complete their booking form.

Subject drop-in timetable

As part of our Nothing By Accident programme, we offer subject drop-in sessions for our Key Stage 4 and 5 students to further support them in their studies. The sessions provide students the opportunity to receive targeted support with any particular areas of the course that they are struggling with or to expand on their learning. The timetable for this term can be found below.

Click to enlarge, or click here to download

Extra-curricular timetable

Click to enlarge

Parent first aid course

Click to enlarge

Don't forget that you can access your child's details, attendance, REACH points and homework tasks via the Arbor parent portal app.

House points as of 23 September