Last week saw Key Stage 3 lessons suspended and students form Years 7, 8 and 9 engage in a variety of activities, read on to see how they did!

Year 7: Decisions Week

Year 7 Decision Week featured three days within the science department and a further two days with the English and geography departments.

• Physics - Space Day
  Students designed, built and tested water powered rockets looking at modifications to increase flight time and then designed a suitable landing craft to safely return their EGGstronauts back to Earth.
• Chemistry - Reaction Day
  Students got to learn about polymer chemistry by investigating how to make plastics from natural materials. Students then designed their own experiment and studied the effects of varying reactant concentrations on product yield.
• Biology - Nature World Day
  Students got a chance to get outside and see what is living and growing around the academy grounds. Activities included bug hunting, nature art, ice sculpting and global warming animation.
• English - Newspaper Reporter
  Students spent one day working as a newspaper team in order to create a complete newspaper by the 3pm print deadline. They debated the ethical and environmental issues that their readers would be interested in before following the story through to publication.
• Geography - Robin Hood's Bay
  Students headed out on an excursion to Robin Hood's Bay to learn about the process of gathering data whilst out in the field which is a key geographical skill needed in key stages 3 and 4.

Year 8 Challenge Week

Challenge week saw Year 8 students take on tasks created by a number of departments across the academy.

These tested the students’ physical and mental capabilities along with their reasoning, perseverance and collaboration skills. Students worked together in their tutor groups to complete challenges throughout the week, scoring points for how well they managed to do so.

Year 9 'Caves'

This year, 15 CaVEs were offered to students. Of these 8 were offered in previous bookend programmes and 7 new CaVEs for this year.

Students were keen to sign up for the activities, and their enthusiasm did not stop there. All students were allocated one of their choices. This meant that no student had to participate in something that was not their choice.

Popular CaVES, as expected, included 'Painting and Decorating', 'A Confident New You' and 'Law and Criminology'. The CaVEs involved visits to and from local businesses and schools including Aspire Fitness, Contemporary hairdressers and Archibald Primary School.

Behaviour was excellent throughout the week and student and staff enthusiasm and enjoyment was clear to see. The commitment and preparation from staff enabled a well-planned, exciting and unique experience for all students.

At the end of the week, there were food tastings, theatre performances, music and entertainment, and many displays and presentations where students proudly showed off their work.

All in all, an excellent week for everyone involved in all aspects of our Bookend curriculum – well done and thanks.