User blog: Student Voice

Community Cohesion Conference

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:20:44 GMT

Today both students from KS3 (Lewis Peddie, Lindsey Hunneman and Martyn Still) and from KS4 (Corey Briffa, Dean Goodall, Nicol McMeekin, Sophie McShane and myself) along with Mrs Ballard attended a conference held at Wicksteed Park to consider what community means to us as a school.

We were also asked to bring an item to sum up our school community along with an item we could each bring to show what made us individually unique! So to represent our school community we brought a collage of pictures to show 'Ambition'.

To begin with, everyone was asked to draw/write about "10 things that makes you unique" on an A3 sheet of paper - which was stuck on the walls around us and then we circulated around the room to see if we shared anything in common with any of the other students.

Afterwards we were given questions to review the links we have with our community, thinking about what groups we have within school and outside of school, and what a member of the community would think of our school.

We were then put into groups, along with one student from each of the other schools. We were firstly set a task to see who could build the tallest free-standing structure out of six pieces of A3 paper, and the tiniest amount of sellotape.

When the task was over we had to think of questions we could ask someone who worked within the community to find more about their role and inspiration for doing so. Then to our surprise members who worked within the northamptonshire community sat at our tables and we had to move around the room interviewing them using the questions to find out more about them.

From our research we then had to as a group, think of ways that we can express our community and make a collage to present this. The collage presentation was in a form of a jigsaw puzzle, with every group having one piece of the puzzle each. Once we had finished our collage all of the pieces were fixed together to complete the jigsaw.

Finally, we evaluated the entire day and we were each presented a certificate by the Mayor of Wellingborough to congratulate us for our work and returned back to school!

Maisie McInnes

SSAT Achievement Show!

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:22:43 GMT

Hello! Today we are at the Emirates Stadium and have just presented about 'Students Leading Learning Using Technology' are now 'chillaxing' in the words of Mrs B in the executive box! Maisie McInnes - the new Student Voice blogger. Along with: Corey,Dean,Lyndsey

The Student Voice

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:50:33 GMT

Here is the student voice blog. In this we hope to let you know what has been discussed and what we are doing to make ourselves heard in school.

Meetings so far!

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:50:15 GMT

We will be using this blog to write down what has been discussed in our meetings. every Wednesday, the KS4 student voice meet up to talk about how our school could be improved. In our meetings previously, we have been discussing, what could be done to improve the school toilet system. This is a subject we feel is very important. We have decided that change needs to happen, and action need to be taken, but first us as a student body need to prove that we can look after the toilets.

We will be talking about this more in tomorrow's meeting, and I will post more information as we discuss it

Nicole Devlin, 3/2/09

summary of the student voice meeting 18/3/09

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:50:00 GMT

The main areas for discussion this week were:

Uniform (lower school and sixth form)
Behaviour of students
Use of music in lessons.

Uniform: This was discussed by all attendees, there were many advantages and disadvantages to having school uniform. There has been lots of discussion amoung students about blazers and business wear for the sixth form. Nothing has yet been confirmed and student concerns are being raised with Mrs Pendrill.

Behaviour: The council have discussed the behaviour of a small minority of KS4 students. There were lots of ideas put forward of how the student body can help.

Music: At present iPods are not used in lessons and the council feel that this should be open for discussion as it fits with learning styles. This is to be raised with Mrs Pendrill.

Nicole Devlin, Andrew Gray. 25th March 2009

Overview of meeting, 22.04.09

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:49:28 GMT

This weeks discussion was very limited due to lack of attendees. As many of the year ten representatives were in Paris and the year eleven's had to be elsewhere it meant that we could not hold a full running meeting.

We have discussed some burning issues and personal suggestions we have thought of and we will be elaborating on this more in the next meeting.

- Nicole Devlin

Recently

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:49:11 GMT

Hello fellow students!
With mr york we discussed smoking and how we can help put a stop to it around school.
With Miss Ballard we decided that we need a Meeting with Mr Shearer before we can make any further choices.

An update on meetings from this year

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:48:51 GMT

On Tuesday 20 October, the active student voice members of years ten and eleven enjoyed a day of training on how to become a more successful voice. Hannah Taylor – ex student council member from Sheffield – came in to our school, gave us skills and helped develop our ideas for making us stronger in bringing change and new things in to improve our school. The day seen us doing various activities, such as, role plays - acting out an interview between Damien and Rajinder, in which we had to change things to fit in with the criteria given, improvising our way through a fake meeting about a pretend school disco for year 7s, and sorting out our roles as a council to make meetings far more productive. With a lot of tea drinking and fun activities we all left the day knowing a lot more about the next steps we need to take. Jack Mitchell said “I have gained a lot from this and it has been really fun!” and overall the thoughts from everybody were very high Going on from the meeting, we decided that introducing roles into the meetings that happen once every week, would help to make the upper student voice more active, efficient, and productive. We have decided that Jack Mitchell will, from now until the end of this term, chair our meetings. On Friday 6 November, Jack Mitchell, Annalise Cuthbertson, Colt Barratt And I, Nicole Devlin, went in to the lower school's student voice meeting, to observe how they're run and to see what they're talking about. The lower school have been speaking about bullying, and how to prevent it. They have come up with some ideas, that will be hopefully taken further in due course. The years 7, 8 and 9's have set themselves a target to help the school achieve the silver award for the anti-bullying, which would be added to the school letter head. Years 10 and 11 will meet on Wednesday, and more will be posted then Nicole Devlin, 11G

Loughborough

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:48:25 GMT

Hello! We're in Loughborough today, for an ICT conference. We are going to explain how technology has helped us to advance as a student council and connect with students, parents and any other concerned members of the public.

Nicole Devlin