USH Newsletter 7th May 2020

Dear Parents and Carers

Hope you’re keeping well.

As we await an announcement from central government on the
re-opening and easing the lockdown of schools, this week gives us cause to stop
and look back on a remarkable and humbling time in our history: the day the
lights came on after six years of darkness. Mr Farley has prepared a special
feature for Friday’s 75^th Anniversary VE Commemoration. On the 8^th
May 1945, newspapers were once again allowed to publish weather forecasts-
hitherto prohibited in case the information was used by the enemy.

It’s welcome that the weather forecast for this Friday is
good (light to moderate winds, and
temperatures near average or slightly above, allowing pleasant sunny and bright
spells) as our History Department will be helping deliver ‘VE Day’
parcels to the WW2 generation in the local community. These will include
questions and messages from USH students about WW2.

The special televised performance of ‘We’ll Meet Again’
at the Royal Albert Hall will doubtless have particular poignancy. I’ll
definitely be tuning-in (showing my age).

School will be closed to all students on Friday for the Bank
Holiday and will re-open to registered key worker children again on Monday.

Take care

Mr Woods 

Looking
through our school logbook, it simply says. ‘May 8-9, 1945: School closed for
these two days, “V-E” holiday.’ On the 11 May, the school returned for an
assembly in the ‘afternoon of both departments to celebrate victory (E)’. I was
probably hoping for too much for records in a logbook to capture the true
significance of what VE Day meant to people in 1945, but turning back through
the pages you get an idea of the impact the war had on the school and the
community. On August 29, 1939 it states, ‘normal school re-opened today,
following Evacuation Rehearsal on Monday’ and on 2 September the ‘school evacuated
to Bournemouth.’ For those who remained, on March 12 1941, the school was
closed ‘owing to UXB in King Edward avenue’ and on the 19^th, ‘school
reopened today, bomb having been removed.’ Heavy nights of bombing are a
regular occurrence and on August 27, 1941 ‘Anderson shelters in the near
neighbourhood now have to be used during “alerts”. The records also give an
insight into how the school came together to support the local community; ‘July
18, 1941: Headmaster handed a cheque to the Mayor for the “Bombed areas fund”
N.B. the combined departments of this school, aiming at £100 raised £703 in
savings this week’.

When we
started planning our VE Day commemorations 75 years on with Vicki Stacey, Madge
Heath and Liz Webb from the Shirley Local History Group we wanted to give
students the opportunity to find out about the diverse and substantial role people from Shirley played during
the Second World War and receive training in how to use oral history techniques
to interview these people in the community to record their memories. The
outcome of these sessions was going to be the students sharing their recorded
testimonies in an exhibition to be presented in the VE Day events, which were
due to take place during the 8^th and 9^th of May. It all
started well with Vicki, Madge and Liz introducing students to a range of
different sources including oral histories, bombing maps, photographs, war
damage registers and the 1939 register, where students were able find out about
how the war affected the people who lived in the houses where they now live
today. Hearing fascinating stories about some of the local buildings – now Pets
at Home, Halfords and the Range - being requisitioned for making Spitfire parts
or about barrage balloons in St James Park hit home just how local and
important this period of History is to our community. Then, full of questions
to ask, the club unfortunately came to a sudden halt and we all went into
lockdown.

Despite the fact that we were no
longer able to commemorate VE Day as we had planned, the need to create these
inter-generational links between our students and the Second World War
generation arguably became even more important – to show this generation that
we are thinking of them during this period of self-isolation and for the
students to be able to hear their memories of a time when the local community had to stand together
through the biggest national and global crisis. To look back and commemorate
their stories of resilience, togetherness and humour can help us to reflect on
the similar stories of kindness and community that are taking place today,
despite the personal sacrifices that we are all having to make.

Therefore, Jacob M, Zameer
A, Ruby H, Anna S and Ben D have written messages and
created questions on behalf of USH to be included in ‘VE Day parcels’ created
by the Local History Group. USH will be helping to deliver these parcels on
Friday to around 60 people in Shirley who lived during the war. We will look to
share their answers in an exhibition at a later date, possible VJ Day on the 15^th
August.

For Friday, tutors will be sharing
resources on Google Classrooms for students to access to find out more about
the significance of VE Day and a questionnaire to help students interview
anyone in their families who were alive during this time. Please share these if
you are able to interview anyone.  

Take care,

Mr Farley, Subject Lead of History

During school closure we have been working hard behind the
scenes to try to ensure that students still have access to books. Over the past
two weeks, we have sent out free books to students with food packages and with
work packs, and we will continue to do this in the coming weeks.

For those students with online access, we have signed up to
two ebook platforms. The first of these is the Renaissance Place myOn ebook
platform, which includes thousands of non-fiction and shorter fiction titles,
all of which have Accelerated Reader quizzes. 
These are ideal for students in Years 7 and 8 who want to carry on
reading and taking quizzes while they are at home.

The
second of these are provided by Wheelers and can be searched for and borrowed
via the school library app (see link below), students login by clicking “Login
with SSO” and using their school email address and password. There are
thousands of titles available, ranging from Billionaire
Boy by David Walliams to The Fault in
Our Stars by John Green, so there should be something for everyone.

Links
on how to access all of these services are available on the Library page of our
website

Click here to go to the USH school
library page

If
you need any more help or information, please contact the school Librarian Rosina.Mount@ushschool.org