The latest from The Mirfield Free Grammar and Sixth Form - June 2013

THEMFGNEWSLETTER

Chris Cook, with Mrs Barker (Principal), Miss Ryan (Achievement Co-ordinator for Year 7), Mrs Storr (Deputy Achievement Co-ordinator for Year 7) and Mr Ewen (Head of PE)

Year 7 Inspired by Olympian

Chris Cook a former Olympic athlete and Commonwealth double gold medalist visited Year 7 students at The Mireld Free Grammar and Sixth Form in May. Achievement Co-ordinator for Year 7 Miss Ryan was He was inspirational as usual, as he drew to a close their Rise to the Challenge programme which had been running since September. The aim of the programme was to Be the Best the students possibly could be throughout a variety of Olympic style tutor group challenges. After an incredible launch in September Chris returned to celebrate the students' achievement and distribute awards recognising their hard work. Chris was blown away by the students eorts, particularly the delighted to welcome Chris back as he had been such an inspiration to the students in September. Chris is an excellent role model and the students were in awe of him as he shook their hands when awarding the prizes. The students have enjoyed an amazing experience and will take forward advice from Chris to help them to be successful in the future. cooking challenge, and was impressed with the attitude and maturity the students displayed in setting goals and dreams for their futures.

THEMFGNEWSLETTER June 2013

E-safety Update What is my child doing online?

Socialising Your child will be using services to create networks of friends. Facebook is the most popular of these and even though it is great for keeping in touch with people, there are risks that people your son/daughter does not know can make contact with them over this network and bullying to take place if not policed. Gaming Games now are played with anybody in the world, not just with somebody at the same computer. This could be risky in terms of social networking again, but also lots of games introduce adult themes which are unsuitable for youngsters. Games do have ratings like lms and will warn about violence, sex and bad language content. Gaming is fun, but a careful watch needs to be kept on the length of time children are on them, and any unhealthy lifestyle changes which come from this practice. Talking to People Chat, webcams and email are dierent ways of communicating rather than the usual face-to-face contact. Children can often reveal more online Searching Most search engines have safeltering on to avoid unsavoury material coming up. However, no matter how good the ltering, there will be a time when your child is exposed to such Children can and do share photos and videos of themselves, in doing so they put themselves at risk; they dont see the risk of electronic sharing of personal information as they might in real life. Make sure you go through privacy settings on sites such as Facebook to ensure that normal pictures only go to friends. The above is a snapshot of the risks that technology can hold. The key message is not to block material, but to educate children in how to use it otherwise how are they going to use the technology properly and safely once they have total access? Mobile phone carriers normally have parental controls automatically activated on phones so check this out! Sharing The vast majority of children wouldnt walk into a music store and steal a CD o the shelf, but a huge number have no issue in illegally downloading a movie or music, and sharing them with friends. This is against the law and it is stealing. Using a mobile phone Most tasks on a computer can now be performed on a smart phone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry). As well as data charges which could be incurred (check your contracts!!) phones are a very private way of accessing material that children shouldnt be accessing. than they otherwise would and conversations can be inappropriate, aggressive or irtatious. You should talk to your son/daughter about the risks of this and how to prevent them. We warn our students about this and need you to do so at home. For educational purposes, searching is popular, but students need to understand that just because it comes up on Google, it may not be true! Children need to be critical about the source of material. inappropriate material and s/he needs to have a way of letting you know.

The CEOP ThinkuKnow website is a must for parents to keep up-to-date with the latest activities and risks online. Go to: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents There are two sections; one aimed at Primary and one at Secondary.

THEMFGNEWSLETTER June 2013

Year 8 Bakeoff
On 14th May, each tutor group in Year 8 took part in a "bake o". Students planned their ideas in tutorial to design and make a selection of cupcakes ready for the semi nals. We had 16 students, 2 per form group, in the competition The entries were brilliant. There were so many dierent ideas from the students, all so inventive

Miss Maguire and Miss Sharpe all judged the entries which was a very dicult task. The standard and nish was so high it was a shame to eat them! The winners were: 8R - Lucy Smith and Emily Powell with their "Popcorn Cupcakes" and 8E Caitlin Hayer and Josie Lindley with their "Garden Cupcakes". These two groups competed in a "Bake O Final" on 4th

their choice. Results will be in the next newsletter. A special mention to Jonny and Emily for their fabulous "Ice cream Cupcakes", Chris and Eleanor for their "Rainbow Cupcakes" and Ethan and Jess for their "Lily Pad Cakes".

and creative. Miss Proctor, Mrs Thurlow, June where they made a product of

Poetry Games
Heidi Aguirregoicoa (7U) and Maleeha Chichangiri (7U) recently entered the Young Writers Poetry Games poetry competition. For this exciting competition, students had to write a poem on a subject that matters to them, to ght for what

tremendous amount of entries from across the UK and overseas. Both girls worked really hard on their poems and constantly redrafted them until they were perfect. It was hard work but it was worth it as their work is going to be published in The Poetry Games

they believe in using nothing but the South and West Yorkshire! Work was selected for publication based power of the pen. on perception, imagination, The Poetry Games has proved popular with schools and students alike and they received a expression, interpretation of poetry and use of language. Miss Tighe and the girls are delighted!

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Sixth Form Ball 2013

This year the Sixth Form Ball took on a new theme, Hollywood meets Bollywood and changed its venue to the Aakash Restaurant, Cleckheaton. This decision was made by the Sixth Form Leaders, a group of students set up to have a say in what goes on in their Sixth Form. The change was fully embraced by many students and a fabulous evening of great food, entertainment and a disco took place.

It was wonderful to see so many of our Sixth Formers at the event. Its a chance for them to let their hair down and celebrate their Sixth Form experience. The venue was fantastic and really added to our theme of Hollywood meets Bollywood.

THEMFGNEWSLETTER June 2013

Robotics
For the third year running, the Sixth Form MFG Robotics team headed o to Southampton University for the Student Robotics 2013 Final Competition. This year the team was entirely new and consisted of three MFG students Year 13s Ashley Hudson (team leader), Calum Wakeeld (engineer and coder) and Year 12 Jake Fisher (programmer). All three students are currently working on their Level 3 ICT BTEC and in their spare time have taken on the challenge of building a fully autonomous robot and programming it to operate itself in an arena. They have also been helped and mentored by a former student of The MFG, Sean Sapstead, who has given his experience and expertise whilst on his break away from Aberystwyth University. The aim of this years competition was to build a robot to collect large cubes which contained QR codes on them and place them on a pedestal in an arena of a noughts and crosses formation. The robot had to compete in a number of rounds against 4 other robotics in each match to try and gain as many points as possible. There were a total of 37 teams competing from mainly from the south of the country plus teams from both France and Germany. The MFG Robotics team competed very well with the team ending up 12th after the league competition. This meant they got through to the knockout stages as they ended up in the last 24 of the competition. In the rst knockout round, they beat two of their competitors to get through to the quarter nals. To much excitement, the team then got through their quarter nal so were suddenly in the rst semi-nal of the competition! Unfortunately, due to many dierent matches and the very short time to the seminal, the wheels literally came o in the semi nal which meant that ultimately they couldnt quite make the nal. This was, however, a magnicent achievement, especially as the team had little experience and had never taken part in the competition before. They showed some superb resilience and solidarity working together and achieving so well. All the teachers involved (Mr Carpenter, Miss Cunningham and Mr Pruchniewicz) said how proud they were of the team and how incredibly impressed they were by their hard work and team work. They had given up so much of their own time to reach the semi-nal so bring on Student Robotics 2014!

THEMFGNEWSLETTER June 2013

The MFG Peace Project

On 6th March 2013 twelve students took part in a celebration of The MFG Peace Project which was established from an extra -curricular discussion forum led by Mrs Jones, Head of Integrated Studies. Lucy Stout, Josh Palmer, Izzie McGrath, Adam Nixon, Sid Dronamraju, Maleeha Chichangiri, Alex Williams, Jodie Ramsden, Dulcie Carr and Anya Walker represented Year 7, Emily Grith Year 8 and Isla Findlay Year 9. Each student presented to their parents, the MFG Sta and two representatives from Hudderseld Rotary Club their concept of Peace and posed the question to the audience, What does Peace mean to you? The exemplary work of Dulcie Carr, Anya Walker, Alex Williams, Izzie McGrath and Lucy Stout was chosen by George Webster and his colleague, from Hudderseld Rotary Club, to be displayed at The Packhorse Gallery in Hudderseld town centre over the Easter Holidays. Hudderseld Rotary Club are supporting the Kirklees Peace Project and have kindly organised for the students work to be displayed at The Packhorse Gallery. Three examples of the creative work are exemplied in this article and their written work will accompany their work at The Packhorse Gallery. The poem Emily Griths recited was also entered into a Year 8 National Poetry Competition.

THEMFGNEWSLETTER June 2013

Design Team Come Top

We have recently had success with a team of four Sixth Form students who were entered into the Batley Technology Tournament. They were given the task of designing and creating a vehicle that was powered by an onboard pulley system. The vehicle had to travel up a 30 degree incline without any assistance (aside from releasing the weight to kick-start the motion). They all had numerous possible designs in their folder, but found one that would work best and began to construct it. The students found that time was almost up, however in the last couple of minutes of the construction stage it all came together very swiftly! We were all a little dubious as to whether or not it would be stable enough when in motion, but we had faith in the design and sure enough it worked! Commented the team. The students won their category and thanks and congratulation has to be given to the team who worked eectively and eciently to create a very advanced design.
Design Team l-r Kirsty Humphries, Sam Barker, Peter Redshaw, Elvedin Gredelj

Brooke Vaults to the Top!

On Sunday 10th March BrookeKelk, Year 9, competed against 32 other artistic gymnastsin the Regional Club Grade 11 Competition held at Diamonds Gymnastic Club in Halifax. She came joint rst on the bars dazzling the audience with a very competent andskilful performance, joint second on the vault, 7th on the beam; keeping her balance and composure throughoutand second in an elegant and very uid oor routine. Miss Sharpe, PE teacher, said The atmospherethroughout the competitionwas tense as the standard

of gymnastics wasextremely high. Brooke does not settle for less than her best and never givesup in the face of adversity. As a result, in the hours of training she is doing each week at TSV Gymnastics Club, she has been very focused andcommittedto developing her skills in all the gymnastic disciplines. Her excellent performances in the competitiontoday resulted in her being awarded distinction level at Grade 11 and achieving 5th position overall with 47.32 point she was only 0.88 points o the rst positioned gymnast. We are very proud of Brookes achievements and look forward to watching herdevelop further and impress the audiences in future competitions.

THEMFGNEWSLETTER June 2013

MFG Sports Leadership Academy

The Mireld Free Grammar and Sixth Form have established a committed team of 30 Young Sports Leaders from Years 11-13, who have assisted with the organisation and delivery of many successful festivals, whole school and primary school events. These students are exceptional role models and ambassadors for the school, with some sixth form students volunteering over 90 hours since September 2012. The objective of the leadership academy is to increase the number and quality of young leaders who are actively involved in school based and community based volunteering. Not only does it raise attainment within PE and school sport through leadership but also provides an increased workforce for primary schools to help organise and run out of school hours learning. Several of the young leaders have gained additional coaching qualications, and the majority of students are running at least one after school club which has had a massive impact on our primary school extracurricular programme. Some sixth form students have been involved in supporting external clubs to enhance sporting experiences and enjoyment for young people. The leadership academy has had a massive impact on students not only through providing support, training and mentoring to help them with their progression as a leader but also in developing the students communication and organisational skills as well as showing a dramatic increase in their condence, self-esteem and overall achievement at The MFG. Two sixth form students Hannah Patel and Luke Newsome have also been selected to be part of the Kirklees Leadership Programme, as a result of their exceptional leadership qualities and commitment. From attending the Young Ambassadors Programme these dedicated students delivered a leadership training afternoon to present Year 12 Sixth Form students, who will hopefully follow on in Hannah and Lukes footsteps next year.

Kitson Hill Road, Mireld, West Yorkshire, WF14 9EZ Telephone: (01924) 483660 Fax: Email: Web: Twitter: (01924) 483661 mfg@themfg.co.uk www.themfg.co.uk @mireldfree

Dates for your Diary

Monday 10th June Thursday 13th June Thursday 4th July Sixth Form Higher Education week Outstanding 100 at John Smiths Stadium, Hudderseld End of Summer Term A Level Results Day GCSE Results Day Sixth Form Enrolment Day Year 7 start of Autumn Term Years 8-11 and 13 start of Autumn Term

Tuesday 23rd July Thursday 15th August Thursday 22nd August Friday 23rd August Monday 2nd September Tuesday 3rd September

Y12 starting information will be communicated to students individually.