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Rock Road, Spennymoor
Co Durham, DL16 7DB
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Email Us
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Co Durham, DL16 7DB
theoaks@durhamlearning.net
Latest News From the School Blog
This morning 10s visited Spennymoor Community Fire Station as part of their careers exploration learning. The Red Watch team at the station were kind enough to show us around, let us see the equipment they used and answered all career related questions we wanted to ask. Pupils learnt about the skills they would need to become firefighters and the types of qualities that would be beneficial. We got to ask about the most exciting jobs the crew had attended, as well as the most dangerous and most rewarding. We also learnt about the other roles the crew take on and were surprised it wasn’t just about firefighting but educating, rescuing, training, learning and using skills from many academic subjects in real life situations, It was lovely to see a team so passionate about their roles and inspiring our young people. A great day was had by all! Take a look at the exciting things we got up to!
Q
On Wednesday, 8W and 9C went to Hall Hill Farm to see some local habitats.
We were able to visit all of the animals on a tractor ride. We fed the sheep, lambs and goats. It is still unclear who was more excited – the pupils or Miss Windsor. Following this we got to hold the chicks and the guinea pigs, which some of 8W thought were the scariest animals out of all.
The pupils (and staff) were taught many facts about the animals throughout the day.
This term in 9H, we have been exploring diversity of beliefs and values in religion. Today we went for a visit to St Paul’s Church to learn about important symbols within Christianity. After the holidays we will be visiting a Mosque, to see how their symbols differ.
Before setting off we made sure we all knew what was going to happen on our visit.
Then it was time to set off. Upon arrival at the Church we were greeted by Vicar Matt, who told us about the Church and their services.
We then looked around the Church to find important symbols in Christianity.
We popped into the cafe for a drink, ready for our walk back to school.
In Rights Respecting Schools, we have been working on a project about climate change. Our class decided to create a sculpture to represent the many negative impacts we are beginning to experience that will only continue to worsen if something doesn’t change
Students researched the different negative impacts, and decided how best to model them into a sculpture.
We are very proud of our final piece.
This morning, pupils in KS4 and 6th form enjoyed an assembly with Dave, a local engineer who has worked all over the world. He explained about different aspects of his job, and why engineers are so important.
Some pupils in Mrs Davis’ and Miss Heads’ classes then enjoyed a workshop with Dave, where they had the opportunity to ask lots of questions and handle some different pieces of machinery, switches and tools. Everyone found it really interesting.
Today we continued with our work on forces. This time exploring the effects of upthrust and buoyancy. The pupils looked at a range of boat designs and discussed the shape and size of these. The pupils were first tasked with creating a boat from play doh that was able to float without letting the water inside. We found that those with a large surface area on the base floated the best. The pupils were then tasked with adding marbles to their boats to see how many ‘passengers’ it could hold before sinking, and discovered those that could spread out the weight evenly floated better. Easten managed to add 7 passengers to his boat before it eventually sank. We will continue to explore this topic further using a range of materials next lesson.
7T enjoyed some messy play this afternoon. We made chocolate mud and used plastic cars and animals to expand our play and creativity, it also helped to encourage our social skills, sharing and acceptance of playing along side each other as a class.
Messy play releases happy hormones in the brain and 7T were extremely happy playing along side each other this afternoon.
Today we had Dave Corrigan join us, who currently works as an engineering manager at Huntsman, but has had an extensive career within this sector and jobs associated with chemical, nuclear and mechanical engineering. Dave talked the pupils through his education background, the skills and qualifications he needed and the jobs he has held, that took him all around the world ( As far as Australia!) The pupils were well behaved , listened intently and asked a range of questions that allowed them to gain an insight into what this kind of role would entail.
Dave followed this up with some workshop sessions where pupils could explore some of the equipment, join in with some hands on activities and ask further questions.
Fun was had by all and Dave thoroughly enjoyed his time with the pupils. We would like to thank Dave for giving his time up to share his experiences with us and hope to invite him back in the future!
