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End of Term July 2019
Celebrating the end of term
Although a very hot afternoon, it was lovely to celebrate the end of term with our annual ‘Party in the Park’ on Tuesday 23 July 2019. This year, we anticipated the hot weather. In an effort to keep everyone cool, we kept the celebrations indoors and invited our pupils to wear non-uniform.
Our summer ‘Party in the Park’ is an opportunity for us to showcase and enjoy the talents of so many of our pupils and to say goodbye to members of staff who are leaving.
This year was no exception. In a packed programme that was performed twice, once for our (new) Years 8 and 9 and once for our (new) Years 10 and 11, we were entertained by the cast of ‘Grease’, the Deer Park Dancers, our GCSE Performing Arts pupils, DJ Dan, our Steel Band and other school bands, and we were treated to the premiere of a new song, written and performed by pupils in our (new) Year 9 as a part of our Year 8 Song Writing Project.
We are very grateful to our Expressive Arts Team and our school technicians for their commitment and professionalism and to everyone who helped set up and take down the staging.
In between performances, Chiquita Henson, Headteacher, reflected on the year, congratulated pupils and staff on their achievements and said farewell to members of staff who are leaving Deer Park this summer. Pupils were very sorry to learn of these departures, but especially that of Cosmo, our school dog, who will be joining Mr Johnson and his family in Brussels, where Mr Johnson will be taking up a new post at The British School.
It has been an important year for Deer Park, our first full year as a member of The Corinium Education Trust which started with a collaborative world record breaking attempt on 21 September 2018, organised by our Ghana 2019 volunteers, which involved pupils from all four schools tying over 1,500 school jumpers together and we were delighted to receive confirmation that we had secured the world record and a certificate confirming our achievement!
We have provided leadership and support. Our pupils have taken part in trust-wide activities including peer reading and sports leadership, most recently at Chesterton Primary School’s sports’ day on Thursday 18 July 2019. They have been commended on the quality of their work. Equally, our own sports teams and individual athletes have secured success as a result of their commitment to practices, participation in fixtures and the support they have received from our PE Faculty and other colleagues from across the school who contribute to their coaching. Read Summer Sports Roundup...
We aim to challenge pupils to achieve more than they first think is possible and this is evident in their participation in our STEM projects, both within the curriculum and as a part of our annual Enrichment Week and at Cirencester College. On Saturday 20 July 2019, following their success in the heats, our team of five new Year 10 pupils came second in the Engineering Challenge at The Royal International Air Tattoo! On the previous day, 50 of our pupils studying triple science in Key Stage 4 visited the RIAT show to learn more about flight, space and technology.
Pupils from Deer Park are encouraged to have a global perspective and this year they have travelled far and wide to take part in international competitions and debate (The Toothpaste Challenge and Model United Nations at Alfrink College in the Netherlands), field and study trips to Iceland, Bristol and the Dorset Coast, just to mention a few of the opportunities pupils have had in addition to the trips to Germany, France and Wales during our annual Enrichment Week. We also saw our third team of volunteers travel to Ghana to build on the project work started in 2017 and continued in 2018; a new team is already preparing for their trip in 2020.
All learning is a journey and we aim to ensure that in classrooms across the school our pupils are transported and challenged by what they read, engage in and come to understand.
We are looking forward to sharing their exam results with our ‘Class of 2019’ on Thursday 22 August 2019 and welcoming our new Year 7s back to the school with all other pupils on Tuesday 3 September 2019.
We wish everyone an enjoyable holiday.