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December 2022
After a busy few months this is very much a 'roundup-Ribston Roar' including many of the fantastic accomplishments students and staff have shared this term. As we come to the end of 2022 it's lovely to be able to reflect and see what all our students - and staff have achieved.
A recent highlight for me was from last week and our school production of Legally Blonde The Musical, which was a resounding success! We are all incredibly proud of so many talented students who were involved, working so hard to make it such a professional and entertaining show.
I am also very proud that this week we have been able to deliver over £1000 worth of warm socks, gloves and hats, food and toiletries which have been bought and donated by students and their families for Gloucester Social Services who have families and individuals who will be in need this year and also the Gloucester City Mission.
I wish all our students and their families and staff a very happy festive season and look forward to seeing everyone in the new year refreshed and ready for an exciting and successful 2023.
Mrs Sarah Colombini
Headteacher
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World Mental Health Day
This year the theme for World Mental Health Day was 'make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority'. Students and staff across the school were invited to take part in discussions and activities as part of the day. It was great to see so many of our students from Yr 7 up to Sixth Form, having meaningful discussions about mental health and wellbeing. We were joined by Christy Costello, from Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, and students were given advice on Careers and Apprenticeships in the NHS as well as strategies for coping with mental health challenges. Students made hope butterflies, chatterboxes and resilience posters, and chatted about self-care and how school can help support student well-being.
It was amazing to see the younger and older students chatting together as a supportive community.
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Personal Development Day
Our new style Personal Development Day was held at the end of November when all our students were off timetable for the day and experienced a range of events centred around PSHE (Personal, social, health and economic education) and Careers. Our Yr 7's enjoyed relaxing yoga sessions whilst our Yr 8's were joined by the Outreach Team from the University of Gloucestershire who came in to explain what a university is and set them the challenge of designing their own, the team were really impressed with the breadth of ideas our students had. Yr 9's spent some time considering their subjects ahead of their GCSE option choices early next year, whilst Year 10s, 12s and 13s heard from ASK Apprenticeships, learning more about what apprenticeships are and how to look for them. This was especially helpful to our Year 13 students considering degree level apprenticeships as a next step. We also welcomed back Nick Gazzard from the Hollie Gazzard Trust, speaking to Yr 10 students about personal safety and the HollieGuard app.
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Social Sciences
This term the Social Science team gave out the first of their monthly 'Student of the Month Awards' for students in Yr 12 and 13. For most of our sixth formers, the social science subjects will be brand new, so along with offering them the opportunity to study new and exciting subjects, such as Business, Sociology, Politics and Psychology, there are new skills and knowledge to be gained which students have not encountered before. Students were awarded their certificates in assembly to recognise the amazing work they are putting into their studies. Certificates were awarded to Jess, Summer and Pip for making a fantastic start to a new subject, gaining high grades on tests, helping to promote their subjects by working with Yr11 students and for positive attitudes and work ethic.
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Psychology
Psychology at Ribston has been busy as usual, and this year we have seen the addition of Psychology at GCSE. Yr 10 have taken to their studies with enthusiasm, and have been busy studying research methods and completing their own practical investigations. We have used skittles to study sampling, and ping pong balls for investigations into performance when people have an audience or are alone. Students have been busy designing, carrying out and analysing the results of their own psychological investigations and have really got off to a flying start in their new GCSE.
October was very busy as psychology students in year 10 and the Sixth Form also helped out with our whole school World Mental Health Day event, and completed work and presentations looking at Black Psychologists, as part of Black History Month. In December It was great to see so many also volunteering to help out at the recent Open Evening, and students led activities such as pig portraits, jelly bean taste tasting, memory games and tongue mapping.
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In November Yr 13 social sciences students headed to the University
of Gloucestershire to experience some Psychology and Sociology taster sessions and take part in a professional policing and criminology practical crime scene house activity. Our students experienced social science beyond the A ‘level syllabus and found out what lectures are like in a HE setting.
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Graphics & Art
In our recent GCSE 3D Design Skills Building Lesson Year 10's Air has some fantastic results with their Drying Clay Models. They all loved making the melting Ice Creams!
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U14 Country Netball
The U14 team showed grit and resilience in the U14 County Netball tournament on the 14th November. A fantastic effort led to three great wins against Bournside, Cleeve and Tewkesbury school.
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Modern Foreign Languages
Bake-Off
October 18th saw the scrumptious return of the Great MFL Bake-Off, with students delighting both friends and teachers with their International Showstoppers and Technical Bakes.
Oodles of glorious cakes were paraded through corridors and classrooms for the delicious judging. Thank you to Mr Waters and Mr Sargent who valiantly ate into their lunchtime to eat lots of cake, along with the MFL Subject Captains.
House Points were awarded to all entrants, with the winners receiving baking ware and souvenirs. Thank you to all students and parents involved in supporting the event. The Open Evening cake sale raised over £100 for Water Aid and Save the Children International.
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GCHQ Language Challenge
At the beginning of November two teams of Yr 9 students battled it out in a national competition to win the chance of a visit to GCHQ’s Headquarters in Cheltenham to collect the National Language Competition 2022 trophy.
The competition was fierce all week, with teams from more than 650 schools across the UK putting their language skills to the test and battling it out for the top spot on their leaderboard. It was a closely fought race right up to the very end with teams pulling out all the stops to crack the codes and solve the language puzzles!
Ribston students completed the first test in logging onto the platform with flying colours! Over the course of the week they completed many challenging tests, which showed great resilience, determination and tenacity. The future looks bright for the codebreakers and information warriors of tomorrow.
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Primary Partnership
Sixth Form Work Experience
Several of our Sixth Form Students are currently attending our Partner Primary Schools for a 6-week work experience placement. Students are offering support in a range of subjects on Wednesday afternoons at Calton Primary School, Linden Primary School, Robinswood Primary Academy, St James Junior School and Widden Primary School.
Holly Nicholson shared her experience at a local primary school with us - 'I have been attending a weekly work experience placement at a Linden primary, working with a variety of year groups from year 1 to year 5. It has been a rewarding and positive experience in which I have helped children in all subjects but primarily maths and English classes. This placement is helping me enhance valuable skills in mentoring, guiding, and expressing myself to younger children. As a result, it has helped me with my application to university and made me more desirable when applying to study English literature at degree level as I have practical experience with mentoring children in this subject area. I would highly recommend work placement as it makes you stand out in the application process and develop important inter-sociable skills'.
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Themed Days
Mr Storey led this years first themed day on Friday 11th November. Ribston welcomed four Primary schools from our Partnership to experience OhBots in the Computer Science rooms. Pupils loved the experience and teachers welcomed the opportunity for them to be creative. Our wonderful Yr 10 and 12 Computer Science students supported the Yr 4 and 5 pupils, enabling them to programme their Ohbots to speak and move.
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Sports Leaders
Ribston Sports Leaders supported the Panathlon Swimming Gala for local Primary Schools on 23rd November. Panathlon ‘is a national charity which gives young people with disabilities and special educational needs every year the opportunity to take part in competitive sport’.
The Ribston leaders were incredible ambassadors for the school and have been invited to lead at the next Panathlon event at the University of Gloucestershire later on this academic year – well done!
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Sixth Form
Yr 11 enjoyed a much-needed residential trip to Devon in November following their assessments. Students participated in a range of activities from candle making, t-shirt printing, tea light holders, dance classes and more!
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Computer Science
Bebras Challenge
Well done to all of our students who took part in the Bebras challenge during November. Congratulations go to the following students who achieved Best In School in their appropriate category - Willow Potts Downing (Yr 7), Alessia Iaccarino (Yr 8/9), Georgie Abbey (Yr 10)
We also had an amazing 55 students awarded a gold certificate which means they scored in the top 10% nationwide, along with those named above.
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This term in Computer Science Yr 10 have been studying Boolean Logic. After learning about basic gates and Truth Tables we took some time to look at creating logic circuits with boards from the University of Southampton provided by #smallpeicetrust and also creating our own NOT gates on breadboard using transistors.
Students combined 4 boards to make a 4 bit adder which can add numbers together and also built NOT gates on breadboard.
We are hoping to build our own computer later in the year by building and combining NOT gates made from transistors.
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EmPowerCyber
A group of 37 Yr 8 students went to the University of Gloucestershire site at Oxstalls to attend EmPowerCyber. There they heard from inspirational female speakers working in the Cybersecurity industry and took part in hands-on activities covering cyber security, cryptography, logic and coding and networking from local organisations.
CyberFirst Girls competition
This term several teams from Yr 8 at Ribston took part in the CyberFirst competition. This is a prestigious, national competition lasting 10 days where students solve online Cyber, logic and coding related puzzles set by the staff at GCHQ. The problems set were often very complex, and the girls had to work at a very high standard to solve them. Thanks to Krystal and all the staff at BAESystems who have visited and supported us in training for the competition and computer club activities.
Team "A Disaster" - Annie Adamson, Lucy Devine, Bea Parish and Evie Poole have made it through to the finals, where they will spend a day competing for the title of National Champions. Well done to everyone who took part at lunchtimes and in the training and the competition, and good luck to team "A Disaster".
The teams were
‘A disaster’ - Annie Adamson - 8.3, Lucy Devine - 8.5, Bea Parish - 8.3,
Evie Poole - 8.3.
‘Sarah Desert’ - Iulia Barbulescu - 8.1, Lily Nemeth- 8.1, Natalia Kopec - 8.1
Stephanie Ugochukwu - 8.1
‘The Bookworms’ - Scarlett Fellows - 8.2, Lia Griffiths - 8.2, Sherin Paul - 8.2 Charlotte Treadwell - 8.5
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Science
In November, Yr 10 students took part in the ‘Junior Astro Challenge Competition’ organised by the British Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad. More than 1000 students from 50 schools across the UK took part. Congratulations to our Year 10 students who took part in the competition and achieved fantastic results of 8 Gold, 26 Silver and 95 Bronze awards!
This competition was specifically designed to engage and challenge students by offering them a range of astronomy associated problems to solve.
According to the organisers, ‘the students who took part in this competition should be praised not only for their success in using their imagination to come up with ideas to answer some quite tricky questions, but also for their sense of adventure and purpose in being willing to give it a go when it may not be a subject they are currently studying’
Gold Certificate: Imaan Mulla, Poppy Cashel, Laraib Malik, Gracie Janes, Emma Dawson, Evie Priddle, Chloe Jones, Jax Scott.
Silver Certificate: Lucille Maddox, Dulcie Walker, Ria Sanderson, Elsa Jorgensen, Thea Veale, Sasha Best, Bella Durrant, Sophia Marlow, Hafsah Saleem, Rachel Sinclair, Sophie Pulford, Ruby Burge, Ritisha Mehta, Anna Babu, Beatrix King, Alysha Croston, Poppy Done, Heather Aylward, Vienna Thomas, Sara Meta, Sanjeevani Sreeram, Devan Burford, Rosa Jolly, Bonnie Beauchamp, Tallulah Cole, Vanessa Augustyniak.
Well done to all our students who took part!
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Drama
Last Month We hosted a workshop with Frantic Assembly for our GCSE and
A Level Drama students. Practitioner Gavin Maxwell led students in a rigorous workshop introducing the Frantic Method; high energy and devising through physical movement. Students worked brilliantly together and mastered some difficult choreography - they even got Mrs Hill flying in the air!
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Success at London Fashion Week
Back in September Kiara Babar was lucky enough to walk in two of the most prestigious runways in the UK and take part in the Top Model 2022 Finals. Kiara shared a fantastic account of her catwalk experience.
'I walked for 4 designers for the Fashion London event, London Fashion Week SS23. These designers included Haneet Singh and Lina Joudi. The Friday consisted of a 12-hour day, full of fittings, hair, makeup, rehearsals and heel training – all for a total of 4 thrilling minutes out on the runway.
For the Top Model finals first walk, I wore a top and silver shorts which I sewed a train onto myself – creating a stunning look on the runway. For the second walk, the incredible Abigail Willis-Cameron styled me in one of her pieces from her “All Sortz" collection. Top Model finalists are split into 5 categories: Editorial, Over 25’s, Men’s, Commercial and Worldwide. My category was commercial.. and I won it!!! I was in complete disbelief when my name was called as the winner of my category and as soon as I was done with press interviews and photographs, I already had designers talking to me about all the amazing upcoming events they would like me to partake in, one of these events being New York Fashion Week next year!'
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Emily Ferrett in Yr 8, won the Junior Retrieval Competition at Frampton Country Fair with her Springer Spaniel, Bruno, in September.
Emily and Bruno won this competition in 2021 when they were the youngest pair to ever win. To repeat it again in 2022 was quite an achievement!
Well done Emily (and Bruno)
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Over the half-term holidays, Rebecca Walls, Yr 9 competed at Gloucester Dance Festival and came 1st in her lyrical & ballet solos, 2nd in her modern solo and 2nd in her lyrical duet. Rebecca also danced in the modern & ballet championships at the end of the week when she was crowned Junior Ballet Champion.
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Jessica Haworth Yr 9, compete and performed in the Malvern Festival. Jessica performed a modern solo, her own choreography solo and a lyrical dance, placing 1st in her own choreography – well done!
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Olivia Parker was very busy half term break. She participated in Malvern festival where she came 1st in her lyrical trio with Bethany Farr (in year 8), 1st in her tap duet, 2nd in her ballet duet and 2nd in her tap solo. As well as performing a character piece. She was also in a production of The Little Mermaid with Eva Nunez and Penny Steele where they had many sell out shows!
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In October Beatriz Parriha-Bolton who is in Yr 9 competed in the IFDPA International dance competition in Parisr. Beatriz said 'I had the chance to compete with my dance team in: lyrical, ballet, tap and jazz. My team and I did very well especially in lyrical where we placed 2nd against teams in Europe and Israel. It was so magical and such an incredible experience. I loved dancing on the Disney Paris stage. During the weekend I also had a magical experience dancing in the Disney parade alongside dancers from loads of other schools that competed in the IFDPA competition. It was amazing and so much fun'
Congratulations Beatriz!
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Anya Redding a new student to Yr12, who came to us from Barnwood brought great news in September, with success in her roller skating competition in Bolton. Anya came first in her competition! Anya has been skating since she was about 6 or 7 years old and has been competing since 2019. Due to Covid she had not managed to do too many competitions so it was great she was able to get back to it this year. Anya has usually been placed around the middle to slightly above category and up until last weekend had only been placed on the podium once before in a "Never Won a Medal" category coming 2nd - This however was her my first time at coming first! Huge congratulations Anya - We are very proud.
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This month Emily Moss in Yr 8 won a swimming award for the Dursley Dolphins. She was awarded the Spirit Award for perseverance, kindness to others and working hard. Congratulations Emily!
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Congratulations to Alice Holder who was chosen for the U17 Seven Stars Squad. Severn Stars are an English netball team based at the University of Worcester and the University of Gloucestershire.
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Congratulations to Evelyn Warwick in Yr 11 for her selection into Severn Stars, Crypt Nova, a wonderful achievement showing pure grit, determination and talent!
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Congratulations to Roman's just taking the lead ahead of Saxon's for first place as we end 2022!
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Join the Ribston Hall Team - Vacancies
Ribston Hall High School is looking to recruit relief Cover Supervisors to work on an ad-hoc basis to provide classroom cover, sometimes at short notice. This may be for one lesson, a whole day or for an extended period. This is a Term-time only role. You can see all of our current vacancies on our website
If you know anyone who may be interested in any of our vacancies please do share the information!
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