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USH Newsletter 26th June 2018

It's Official THE BEST PROM EVER ..

.. so says Year 11 after an amazing night celebrating the end of their exams at the Ageas Bowl in Hedge End.  The buzz on arrival was sensational  and the effort students went to in their outfits and transport reflected how happy they were to celebrate the end of their time with us.  It was great to see so many parents celebrating with us and there was more than a few tears shed by all as we realised this is the end of something really special.

The dinner and dancing which followed rounded off a lovely evening.  A highlight of which was the Prom King and Queen and a legendary dance off (boys you know who you are) which will be remembered by everyone as the ultimate symbol of self expression.

More Prom photos

JEP Summer Festival



Last week saw the JEP Summer Festival held at Central Hall.  This event celebrated the musical talent of all the schools within the Jeffreys Trust Partnership.  Our students were wonderful - so hardworking in their preparation, helpful with the logistics of equipment and transport and considerate in looking out for the younger performers on the day. And then they showed talent and professionalism in their performances.

The Choir, accompanied by a small jazz ensemble, sang Feeling Good, showcasing some beautiful voices in soloists and duets and all supported by the full Choir, all led by a Year 10 student. They joined in enthusiastically with the Primary School performance of "Be the Change", adding higher and lower harmonies for depth and colour. "Make Your Own Kind of Music" featured the strong voices of the Year 7 boys, the beautiful tones of the Year 9 girls and some sensitive singing by other smaller groups within the Choir before the final full and rousing choruses. The rendition of "Celebrate" by the massed Choir included all from the smallest infants to the USH senior prefects, everyone putting their all into the singing and dancing of the festive mood.

The USH Concert Band excelled itself, showing two contrasting facets of its abilities - firstly the accuracy and precision of The Great Escape, followed by all the fun and swagger of The Muppet Show.  Earlier they had contributed to a hearty performance of the 17th century hit "Danserye", along with the other JEP orchestras, and then the Strings and Woodwind players provided support for the Ceilidh Band who played for a delightful folk-dancing interlude. Not to mention the string, brass and vocal ensembles who greeted the audience as they arrived - and the fabulous stylish compering from two of our distinguished instrumentalists. The versatility of the USH musicians is apparently boundless!


JEP Festival Poetry Competition Winner

Congratulations to Ruby Hook who was awarded first place in the JEP Summer Festival Poetry Competition.

Ruby was invited to the Festival to recite her poem along with several other finalist from our feeder schools.

Seasons of Life

Here I sit, in the womb of spring.
A new blossoming beginning.
A time of innocence and blissful oblivion.
The bud of a rose, likened to the pink flush of a baby’s cheek.
The sapling embedding its roots in the comforting soil.

Like a dandelion being blown in the breeze, time carries us to the summer of our life.
We flee our nests, spread our wings and embrace increasing risk.
The tree of summer is taller, stronger and its branches full of beauty and courage.

Our autumn seems slower paced, and a quietness envelops life:
Majestic, but still, the crimson leaves fall like tears to the earth below.
Harsh winds and fierce rain batter our fragile branches.

Winter hair begins to whiten, ashen like the newly falling snow.
The creases of life imprinted on all those birthed by nature, gradually deepen.
The inescapable sorrow of decay.
We lay beneath the soil, whilst above, rose buds begin to blossom once more.


Duke of Edinburgh Expedition

The sun was shining gloriously, the pollen count was strong and the rucksacks were packed full of gear. It must be time for a Duke of Edinburgh’s expedition!

Over the past few weeks, our year 10 DofE’ers have undertaken both their practice, and their assessed expedition for their Duke of Edinburgh’s Bronze Award. In order to pass this section of the Award, each student must be able to successfully navigate their way around an outdoor location (the New Forest) using a map and compass, and remain completely self-sufficient for not only the 2 days that they walk for, but also for the night between them, where they are required to set up their camp, cook their evening meal on trangia stoves and sleep in tents for the night.

Our students approached this task with absolute confidence and excellent planning, some even bringing their own compasses and other thoughtful items along with them.  In spite of a lot of tiredness after the first day (even to the point of our Head Boy simply lying down on the floor of the camp site and not moving for 10mins!) the students were still keen to have a camp fire and had even come prepared with marshmallows, which they roasted over the embers with some carefully whittled sticks, true bush craft style!

BXM, the company who supported these expeditions were thoroughly impressed with the ability of our students and how successfully they undertook every element of both of their camps.  They could not speak highly enough of the students they were working with. A huge well done to all of those students who took part.

USH Art and Photography Work Exhibited

Well done to 2 Year 9 artists and photographers, Weronika and Issy, who have had their work exhibited at the Southampton Schools Education Forums show. The exhibition took place at Tauntons College alongside the A level students work. The opening was attended by many people, with friends and families praising the high standard of the paintings and photographs. Weronika’s painting of cutlery showed her brush control and many compliments were given by those viewing the exhibition. Issy’s portrait photograph stood out with it’s bold composition and dramatic lighting. Well done to you both.

Thank You!

A huge thank you to Mr Mendez who very generously donated a bass guitar to the music department.

If there are any other neglected musical instruments out there looking for an appreciative home, then USH Music Department will gladly provide one!


Southampton Media and Film Awards

This year will see the second year of the Southampton Media and Film Awards that will celebrate not just the amazing film work of students from both USH and other centres within Southampton, but will also exhibit some fantastic print media produced by all of our students as well.

Please come along to support our students and help them to celebrate the fantastic work that they have produced over the course of this year. Families are welcome and it promises to be a great evening of celebration and community.

Please confirm your attendance and the number of people in your party by emailing lueddej@richardtaunton.ac.uk


University Challenged Competition

On Thursday 28th June, 4 Year 7 students participated in the University Challenged competition at Southampton University. 8 schools from across the city competed in rounds answering general knowledge questions with some maths and science problems in the mix. Before competing in our round we had a talk about advertising and had a go at designing a new promotional campaign for McDonalds linked to the World Cup. Unfortunately we didn’t make it through our round against St Anne’s and instead got to take part on a ‘Science Room’ workshop which had us debating questions such as ‘do animals do science?’ and ‘which species is the most intelligent?’.

Well done to Raul M, Sam K, Phoebe W and Samah J for taking part!

Miss Baillie


The National Lottery Awards - Will You Vote?

Polli:Nation is a Heritage Lottery funded UK-wide initiative supporting pupils from 260 schools to turn their school grounds and other local walk-to spaces into pollinator friendly habitats. As part of this programme, the OPAL Polli:Nation Survey was developed to:
• Survey their patch using the OPAL Polli:Nation survey
• Make improvements for pollinators on their patch
• See how well it has worked using the OPAL survey to see the impact the improvements have had.

This cross-curricula project is giving our students at USH direct hands-on experiences; from creating bug hotels and flower beds made out of pallets to a competition in designing equipment for use in the Pollination area. We have enthusiastic members of a club called Upper Shirley Hive that have surveyed our patch to explore the health of our soils and trees, the distribution of invertebrates, and the importance of hedges.Year 9 and 10 COPE classes have learnt about the role pollinating insects play in ecosystem services, as well as providing the manual labour needed in developing our space.
Alongside creating a network of knowledgeable and enthused young activists, the ambition of this programme is to utilise school grounds to form green corridors and ‘stepping stones’, enabling species to move between core areas thereby contributing to the overall aim of the project by increasing numbers and sightings of pollinating insects in the UK.

Polli:Nation has made the finals of the National Lottery Awards – this is fantastic news and is a reflection of all the hard work the participating schools have put in to make the project a success.  So now we want them to win!

The voting takes place between 9am on 27th June and midnight on 27th July and there are a number of different ways you can vote. Anyone of any age can vote so that means as many pupils, parents, governors, friends of the school etc as possible. You can even vote if you are overseas – so you could vote whilst on holiday!

Firstly – you can vote on-line. The special website address is: http://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/project/pollination-0
You can phone in your vote on 0844 836 9686
You can also vote via twitter – including #NLAPolliNation when you vote – or just retweet one of our tweets. You need do this only once as only one vote will count from each twitter account.
Votes will not count from a twitter account if it has:

• Less than 10 followers
• A poor follower to following ratio
• No profile picture
• Posts from bot accounts/clients

So you can’t just set up a new account to vote! You can promote the hashtag on other social media platforms but only those from twitter will count.

Please remember you cannot, and must not, vote before 27th June. Otherwise they might be disqualified.


Heritage Bus is in Shirley - 30 June

The bus and exhibition which came into the school for Year 7 will be at the Shirley Parish Hall tomorrow. It’s free and a great bit of local History.

Team Spirit Junior Coach Award

TheTeam Spirit Junior Coaches award is seen as an opportunity to build a future for budding sports coaches or for those who want to stay on at Team Spirit and learn about responsibility and develop their own leadership skills. Either way this provides a great chance for Team Spirit superstars to have fun and develop between 12-15 years  Team Spirit lasts a life time.

Not only will you get to take part in the activities you will also be set out your daily Junior coaches plan at the start of the day. You will be allocated your very own Team Spirit coach mentor who will support and work with you that day.  Your Mentor will lead you through session planning / Positive encouragement / Communication in small groups / responsibility in a working environment / basic Ethos expectation and how to not only demonstrate leadership skills but how to also coach this. 

A variety of sports are used to learn these skill sets.  The main objective is to give you the opportunity to learn what the Team Spirit coaches deliver including the Ethos and responsibility that comes with coaching in a fun environment.

This is a great opportunity to gain knowledge and understanding of coaching.  Every day is action packed and you will get the opportunity to learn / develop and have fun with your Team Spirit coach mentor. Awards are provided for your progression and amount of sessions completed.

Red star Badge - complete 5 days
Blue star Badge - complete 10 days
Yellow star Badge - complete 20 days
Team spirit star Badge plus certificate - completed 30 days and demonstrated 4 key ethos areas of coaching experience!  Proactive | Positive attitude | Reliability | Team player

How to book?
Just choose any course we run in the school holidays (Summer or end of term / half term) and email or call the office to book onto the selected day or days. Payment is £10 per day. You can book from June 18th.   We will add you to the Junior coaches award list and keep track of all courses booked and completed and the new can hand out each award  when the number of days are completed.  

www.teamspirit4sport.co.uk





GDPR - Urgent Response Required

Following the mailing of documents from us regarding how the rules around data protection are changing we have a large number of consent forms still outstanding.  We need to regain your consent for using photographs, or videos of your child on our website, in internal displays and for other purposes as specified on the form.  Enclosed in the documentation posted to you was a copy of our updated Consent Form and we would appreciate it if you would complete and return the form the General Office as soon as possible.  Also included was a copy of the Acceptable IT Policy for you to read, sign and return.

A copy of both our new Data Protection Policy and Pupil Privacy Notice can be viewed and/or downloaded from our school website: http://uppershirleyhigh.org/school_policies

Your speedy co-operation in completing this new documentation would be greatly appreciated. 

If you have any questions about how the GDPR affects you, or how our school is preparing, you can contact me by email: Julie.Prince@ushschool.org


E-Safety Article

Please use the link below to access the E-Safety site featured in this Newsletter courtesy of The National Online Safety Team.

The National Online Safety Team have provided a FREE online safety football special guide.  It is important to stay vigilant online and make sure
children are aware of the potential dangers that they may be exposed to during
large sporting events. From cyber-attacks, malware, fake merchandise and fake
ticket offers, this guide is designed to inform parents and carers about online
risks relating to the football and how they can help keep their children safe
on the internet this summer.



https://twitter.com/natonlinesafety/status/1009360114036428800

Revised Uniform Policy

A communication was sent out by email at the start of this week regarding an update to our uniform policy.

We have listened to recent communication from students and decided to adapt our uniform policy to include black/dark grey tailored shorts that can be worn in the summer months. 
 
Whilst we want our students to feel comfortable, we also want to retain the smartness of their normal uniform. We would therefore like parents to buy the shorts from our uniform supplier, Skoolkit. This will avoid confusion over suitable styles and lengths. They can be found using the following link - https://www.skoolkit.co.uk/productDetail.php?categoryUID=Af4573487&productUID=A65477391b2107436#
 
If you have any further questions regarding this or any aspects of our Uniform Policy, please could you contact your child’s Head of Year.