WLD Update Sunday 6th October 2019

I have been a teacher for 28 years now and the more I look at the results that students achieve each year the clearer it seems to be - students who work hard and attend school do well! It doesn't sound very complicated, and it isn't. We call it "attitude to learning" at WLD and, if your child is in Year 8 to 11 you will be familiar with the grid of descriptors that we use for all our reports.  They are in the image at the top of this blog.  My analysis of this year's results clearly shows that if a student's attitude to learning was worse than average (a "3" on our grid) then they didn't make the progress that they should - obvious really!  Please support us in ensuring that all our students do well by focusing on their attitude to their learning (effort, behaviour and homework in particular).  I mentioned homework last week and we are reviewing our procedures to address the issue of some students not completing homework on a regular basis - more details to follow.

Life at WLD is about so many things and it is great to see so many students participating in extra-curricular activities.  Just to mention a couple - lots of cross country runners were representing the school at Hutton on Saturday morning - well done to all of them!  Also we have lots of students showing an interest in completing the Arts Award - that is a really good initiative being run by Mrs Heywood-Connor. Then we have the regular sports fixtures - lots of football and netball at this time of year - training has been well attended and results are looking good....  Wider concerns for the world that we are living in are demonstrated by Amnesty Club  and we are discussing, as a school, our response to the declaration of a Climate Emergency by the UK Government.

Life is never dull!

Our Career of the Week is "Design and Development Engineer" and our weekly student bulletins are now on the website here... We look forward to meeting all the parents/carers of our new Year 7s on Wednesday for our "Settling-in evening".  "Period 6" - our revision/study sessions for Year 11 - get underway this week. 

Have a great week!

James Harris

Headteacher