Parent and pupil newsletter 16 Nov 2018

Exam week advice 

All students will sit formal exams during the week of 3rd December. The timetable for the week is attached to the back of the newsletter and all students will have received a copy. We have spoken to students about the need for proper structured revision and their task over the weekend will be to write a revision timetable which will help them ensure they have covered all their subject areas.

In the first newsletter we outlined some tips which students should follow when studying and these also apply to revision:

• Find somewhere quiet to work, away from distractions
• Turn mobile phones off
• Make a plan for study, best in 30min slots
• Take regular breaks, but only after work has been completed
• Make sure students get to bed on time and also get plenty of exercise

Cricket competition at Lord’s

On Tuesday, our year 7 boys travelled to Lord’s, the ‘Home of Cricket’, to play in the Westminster schools indoor cricket tournament.

We played 3 games against Marylebone Boys, Westminster Academy and Paddington Academy – resulting in one tie and two losses. We had a younger group of boys than the other teams, with less experience on the cricket field, but performed very respectably. The team was well led by Jash – everyone fielding enthusiastically and played a role throughout the afternoon. Jash, Roland and Devesh bowled well; Vonley fielded energetically; Haroon had a direct hit to run out one of the Westminster boys; Erin was very good behind the stumps in one game; Marcus had a good effort with the bat in his first game of cricket; while Jacob, Nathanile and Romario were also good team members in the field. and when it was their turn to bat or bowl

The R word!

All students will need to draw up a revision timetable to help them prepare for their exams. Students in year 7 should expect that they will revise for at least one hour per evening and for at least two hours each day at weekends. Older students will need more revision time. They should aim to cover two subjects per evening in blocks of at least 30mins per subject.

They should remember that the worst way to learn is to read their work. Making notes, highlighting, re-writing, making flash cards, using mnemonics and BBC based revision sites are all active ways of revising and are much more effective. All student exercise books have example questions in them and it’s a good idea to tackle these again. Similarly all student textbooks have exam questions in them which can be completed. For GCSE and A level courses exam boards and others produce revision guides which provide a secure if slightly basic coverage of all the material needed for exams. All exam board websites also have past papers which students can download and complete.