Friday 29th September 2023

Co-headteachers’ welcome

It has been an exciting fortnight at Simon Balle All-through School and our reflections must first begin with Open Day. It is hard to put into words just how proud we were of our students in every year group from Year 5 – Year 13. 

Those who supported on the Friday ensured that the site was impeccably clean and tidy, allowing displays and resources and newly renovated and painted classrooms and interiors to really shine. On the Saturday itself, we cannot speak more highly of students’ conduct – polite and welcoming, confident and so proud of their school. Whether they were touring visitors around the site, showcasing a particular department, engaging in music or sport, speaking at one or more of the four speeches, or just generally being on hand to give back to our community, we were so grateful for the multitude of ways that our Simon Balle values were exemplified. You will see house points, postcards and more on the way to you as parents/carers  so that we can recognise the contribution of so many individuals. We had well over 1000 visitors on site across the all-through, a fantastic ethos was felt by all, and the feedback we received from both visitors and our committed governing body all added to the celebratory atmosphere. It is indeed a privilege to lead and to belong to this special community. Thank you to all students, parents/carers, staff and governors.

Mrs Saunders receives her MBE

The Pedagogy Portal

At Simon Balle, our vision and values drive our curriculum. Our ambitious all-through subject curricula are a powerful educational journey that empowers students to develop comprehensive knowledge and skills within a specific area. This ensures a seamless and continuous learning experience from the early years through to advanced levels of education. By immersing students in a subject from the very beginning, they gain a deep understanding and mastery of the subject matter, fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. This approach not only builds a solid foundation but also cultivates a lifelong passion for the subject, enabling students to explore its full potential. It encourages interdisciplinary connections and a more profound engagement with the subject matter, ultimately preparing students for success in their academic and professional journeys. An all-through subject curriculum is a powerful catalyst for intellectual growth and the development towards creating tomorrow’s citizens today. 

We want to ensure that there is:

• An inclusive and challenging curriculum designed to inspire curiosity and build subject mastery, including the skills of literacy, numeracy and oracy.
• A progressive and sequential curriculum designed to develop a depth of knowledge. The integrity of each subject is respected with key vocabulary being explicitly taught.
• An interwoven, rich curriculum that is designed to support students’ retention and retrieval of knowledge

Please take a further look at our subject overviews on the webpage: https://www.simonballe.herts.sch.uk/curriculum-overview/

Many subjects that are taught all-through will show the sequential progress we are proud of.

Recently, Mathematics had an external Deep Dive that monitors and reviews our curriculum and the quality of education students experience. A summary of the review can be found here: https://www.simonballe.herts.sch.uk/category/teaching-learning-news/

Uniform

Uniforms are not mere clothing; they are quite literally the threads knitting our students into a tapestry of belonging and community so it is important that we give due care and consideration to it. In light of this, we wanted to inform you that we are carrying out a review of our uniform at Simon Balle All-through School to consider our policy and provision in terms of accessibility, affordability, and sustainability. This is a unique opportunity to consider multiple aspects of uniform in terms of branding, the number of items, gender-neutral designs, as well as shaping uniforms as tools to cultivate positive behaviour. Our commitment to review also extends to evaluating suppliers, benchmarking against peers, and promoting pre-loved uniforms, fostering a circular economy benefiting all backgrounds. We aim to simplify complexities and empower parents with more choices. We will keep you abreast of any updates as part of this process.

Safeguarding

At our school, safeguarding is not just a policy; it’s the very essence of our community. We have cultivated a safeguarding culture that is at the core of our school’s values and ethos, underpinning our environments and practice, where we place our young people at the centre of all our decisions.

The strength of this culture rests on each and every one of us, as it is only as robust as we collectively make it. This is what drives our desire to be proactive and at the forefront of trends and practice, rather just compliant. Parents play their role in this too. If you need support, guidance or wish to raise a concern then please contact one of our team named on the classroom safeguarding poster (click on the image to expand it). We would appreciate it if you could take the time to review the separate attendance update.

Careers

We believe that an education related to careers has its foundations in the Early Years and must be progressive and sequential through each year of the primary phase and beyond, all the way up to Sixth Form. Please take a moment to read the September careers update to see what’s on offer in the coming months. There are also links to some useful careers websites to get the conversation started at home.

Library news

Click on the images below to find out about what has been happening in the Library.

Well done to everyone who participated at the Roald Dahl quiz in the library at lunchtime on Wednesday 13th September and especially well done to the runners-up and winners who have all earnt a point for their house!

• Runners-up: Christos (8A) Benjamin (8A) Jackson (11L)
• In joint third place: Ethan (9M), Shay (9N) & Jake  (9M)
• In joint second place: Issachar (7L) & Lucas  (7A)
• In first place: Yahya  (7A)

Well done also to everyone who participated in the Great European Bake Off to celebrate the European Day of Languages. And thank you to everyone who voted – there were over 200 votes!

The winners for the three categories are:

• Josh (Year 7) – Cake best linked to the European Theme
• Charlie, Lily and Willow (Year 9) – Tastiest looking cake 
• Summer (Year 8) – Best decorated cake

You can read more about the procedures around borrowing books (and what to do about overdue books) on the library pages of the school website.

Spotlight on the Larch

Reception: In Reception, the children have read the book ‘The Mega Magic Hair Swap’ and spent time celebrating the differences amongst our new cohort. The children have really enjoyed lots of activities linked to ‘All About Me’ making some fantastic self portraits! The children have thoroughly enjoyed starting the Level Two phonics and beginning to apply their sounds to initial sounds, blending, segmenting and learning new songs. Please have a look at the Reception notice board for more information. 

Year 1: The children in Year 1 have had a busy start to the year! They have begun reading books from their literary canon and writing repetitive stories based on the book ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear’. The children have thoroughly enjoyed being creative with the different things they may see inspired by their weekly welly walks. They have also been practising directional language in maths which has supported their learning of  algorithms in Computing, directing each other in preparation to create routes for bee bots. 

Year 2: The children have been focusing on poetry in English lessons. In preparation for our Harvest Festival celebrations, they have written some beautiful acrostic poems using fantastic descriptive language to really capture what Harvest is all about. 

Year 3: Year 3 have become experts at debugging during Computing lessons! Over the last few weeks, they’ve been learning what a ‘bug’ is and how it can cause the Computer to malfunction in some way. This week, they were given an algorithm of two penguins telling a ‘knock knock’ joke but it didn’t work as intended so they got to work in finding how they could improve the algorithm to allow the joke to be told correctly. 

Year 4: Science lessons have been jammed packed full of practical activities linked to the digestive system in Year 4. They have made a set of teeth and analysed all of the different jobs and this week really got to grips with how our food is digested and made their own ‘faeces’. Make sure they tell you all about it! 

Year 5: The children have been immersed in building on their prior knowledge of coding to create their own maze game in Scratch. They have impressed us with their ‘debugging’ skills when their coding hasn’t quite worked to resolve the issue, and successfully started creating an interactive game where their ‘sprite’ can make its way around a maze and if it hits an obstacle it is sent back to the beginning.

Year 6: There has been awe and wonder in Year 6! They have been learning all about the circulatory system in Science, and had hands-on experience  dissecting a lamb heart in pairs in class! The children showed real courage and resilience, whilst also showing such wisdom as they explored and asked excellent questions about their observations.

Lunchtimes in the Larch

It has been wonderful to see the children playing games with friends at lunchtime whether that be on the playground or astro. With various new playground equipment children can play games such as tennis, bowling, bowls, hoopla and practice walking on stilts.

The astro now has set times for year groups to enjoy organised sports with Mr Leonard and Mr Rouse. Key stage one has a focus on playing team games and promoting good sportsmanship in games such as football, rugby, basketball and many other sports.

A child in Key stage 1 said, ‘‘Mr Leonard always does fun games with us on the astro, I love lunchtimes!’

With the buzz of the rugby world cup currently taking place in France, the Simon Balle Lunch Time Premier Leagues are underway with a focus on tag rugby for a year 3 & 4 combined league, as well as a year 5 & 6 combined league where skills such as drop kicks, penalties and conversions have been added in for the year 5 & 6 competition. 

The leagues were set up to promote physical activity and healthy competition amongst children, with a focus of developing good sportsmanship skills whereby teams can earn extra points by displaying skills such as: encouragement for teammates, positive comments to the opposition, respect and shaking hands after every game.

The winners of the league will have the most points combined with sportsmanship points to earn house points, a team photo in the trophy cabinet alongside the Lunch Time Premier League trophy.  

Two children in Key stage 2 said, ‘I love lunchtime sports. I really like that they are competitive and fair and there is always lots to do and always lots of fun! I am always excited to do the lunchtime leagues. I look forward to playing against my friends in different teams’

Year 12 Scholar Programme

Tuesday 26th September saw the launch of the Year 12 Scholar’s Programme to support students who are applying to Oxbridge, Russell Group and other aspirational Universities. The programme supports students in a variety of ways:

• Application workshops
• Interview preparation
• Support with admission tests
• Workshops led by our link colleges at Oxford and Cambridge University
• Support with super-curricular activities

Students will also have the opportunity to apply for the Cambridge Higher Aspirations Scheme (CHAS) which includes the opportunity to experience Cambridge-style supervisions: teaching led by subject experts in small groups. A series of six supervisions in 27 different subjects will run between January and the end of March, with the first being in person in Cambridge.

Year 12 and Year 13 Expectation Evenings

Over the past few weeks we have held expectation evenings for both year 12 and year 13. We would like to say a massive thank you to all the students, parents and carers who were able to attend these evenings. 

Year 12 were informed about the expectations of sixth form students with additional strategies they could use during their study lessons, they were also given an in-depth introduction to the new year 12 enrichment programme.

The year 13 evening focused on their next steps and the different pathways available including university and the different types of apprenticeships available,  Effective study techniques and UCAS deadlines were also discussed alongside the recent changes to student loans.

We hope you found these evenings informative and if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

All-through enrichment clubs

We offer a vast and exciting range of enrichment opportunities at lunch and after school across our all-through school, thanks to the fantastic commitment from staff. These provide for a broad range of interests and to provide the students with new and exciting experiences beyond the curriculum.  There are also regular opportunities for the students to engage in competitions and events which are promoted in assemblies and on the enrichment board, such as the recent all-through design a new house logo competition, The Great European Bake Off in the secondary library and Speakers Corner, plus much more!

If your child is interested in any of the below, please contact:

• Y1/2 clubs- A Google form has recently been shared.
• Explorers Y3-6: A Google form for Autumn 2 will be sent by the end of next week.
• Music: please email Mr Taylor at music@simonballe.herts.sch.uk
• Secondary sports: please email Mr Brennan or Mrs Scarrott or sport@simonballe.herts.sch.uk
• Lunch clubs: your child should speak to the adult running the club to confirm the location. 
• Y6-8 Wednesday enrichment: please fill in the form which outlines the information.

Please also contact Mrs Boyce if you have any questions at all about enrichment: boycek@simonballe.herts.sch.uk 

A full calendar of enrichment opportunities can be found on the enrichment page of the website.

House competition: Form boards

For this academic year, Ms Cannon is re-launching the Simon Ball House system with the help of her Year 12 House Leaders team. All of our students from reception to year 13 are members of a House – Ashbourne, Beane, Lea, Mimram, New and Rib. The first competition launched at the start of September was for each form in secondary to decorate a form board to reflect the colours and themes of their House. The winning entries are below:

• Year 7 Mimram
• Year 8 Lea
• Year 9 Ashbourne
• Year 10 Ashbourne
• Year 11 Ashbourne
• Year 12 Lea
• Year 13 Beane

Dates for the diary

Please check the calendar page and the term dates page of our website for upcoming events

Vacancies

We are currently looking for a teacher for the Larch and a 1:1 SEN Teaching assistant. For more information, please see Teach in Herts. If you, or someone you know may be interested please contact creaseyj@simonballe.herts.sch.uk

PSA news

30th September – Quiz Night

Quiz, games, raffle, auction, cheese, wine, music and dancing. Final tickets remaining, for tomorrow’s ‘Quiz with a Twist’.  At £12.50 per head, it will make for a fun filled evening out.  Teams can book in groups of either 4 or 8.

7th November – PSA AGM and Meeting (Rescheduled)

Join us in the Secondary Library for a cheese and wine reception from 6.30pm, ahead of our AGM. You’ll learn about some of the upcoming events, meet the team and will have the opportunity to share your fundraising ideas. We urge as many supporters to attend as possible.  You will not be committing to anything but good attendance will allow us to elect a larger number of committee members. We will be looking to fill some key positions, new joiners are welcome! If you are unable to attend but are interested in supporting us or sharing ideas, please take a moment to register your interest here.

Click on the images below to expand them.

Wishing everyone in our community a positive and fulfilling fortnight ahead.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Rachel Kirk and Mr Michael Moss (Co-headteachers)