Newsletters

Caution in the school's car park

Can I request that all parents please drive slowly and be aware of students on foot when dropping off and collecting your child? A couple of students have recently nearly been hit by moving vehicles on two separate occasions.

REWARD and PARENTPAY DELIVERIES

From Monday 21^st March all rewards and items purchased through Parentpay will be delivered to students during Tutor time on the following days:

MONDAY 

Lancaster – Year 8 

TUESDAY 

Chiltern – Year 9 and Year 11 

WEDNESDAY 

Gloucester – Year 10 

TC 7 and TC 9 – Year 11 

G95 and G93 – Year 11 

THURSDAY 

Dunstan and Tynings – Year 7, Year 9 and Year 11 

Food Allergy Information Request Form

To enable John of Gaunt to take the necessary precautions to ensure the safety of your child, parents and carers are being asked to complete the below Food Allergy Information Form.

It is likely that we are already aware of your child’s allergy, but it is essential this form is completed to ensure a full and updated record of foods to which your child is allergic/intolerant to.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=R0wg0KHBF0CDOm9kYy17xbnaJArPkuFOiXJnJrIACH5UNlpZWjJITUc3NTlWOE5LRDA0TUVINUNTVS4u 

Please can you complete this form as soon as possible.

Many thanks,

Luisa Mitchell

Pastoral Support Lead – Health & Wellbeing

Dear parents and carers

I am delighted to have recently joined The John of Gaunt School to manage the Pastoral Behaviour Support Centre.  Having had several years’ experience of leading educational provisions in Wiltshire for students with very challenging behaviour, it is very refreshing to witness, daily, such high standards of behaviour and a justified pride in such behaviour by most students.

The Pastoral Behaviour Support Centre is in place to support the minority of students that are required to leave lessons through failing to meet behaviour expectations.  We continually evaluate the impact the PBSC has in the way we support these students and our routines within the centre are a part of this evaluation.

Over the coming weeks we will be introducing some changes within the PBSC, as we intensify our efforts to minimise any disruption to learning across the school and, at the same time, identify students that may require additional support to manage their behaviour.

I will be updating you regularly, through this newsletter with significant changes within the PBSC, as they are introduced, throughout the term.  The first of which will come into effect from Monday 28^th March 2022 and will require all students arriving at the PBSC to surrender all mobile devices for secure storage.

As you are already aware, the school has a mobile device-free policy.  This means that students may have a mobile phone in school, but it must be turned off and in school bags.  Students wishing to use their phone, for example, to contact home, may go to a designated area and be given permission to do so.  To ensure students are not distracted by their mobile devices, from the above date, all devices will be routinely placed in a secure safe within the PBSC when a student arrives.  Urgent messages for students can be passed on to the PBSC via the school number.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you wish to discuss our reasons for this policy change or for any further clarification on any PBSC procedures and provision.

With best wishes for an enjoyable weekend.

Adrian Hart

CONGRATULATIONS

The Year 10 Team would like to congratulate Sophie Dooling for being chosen as the Mayoral Cadet for an annual Remembrance event that took place on the 5^th March at the Civic Centre in Trowbridge.

Sophie was specifically chosen and invited to attend the event by the Mayor, Denise Bates, where she partook in the ceremony and was front of house with the Mayor to greet guests as they arrived. Sophie also aided the mayor on her duties throughout the night, which included a formal dinner, the distribution of awards and a dance.

This is a fantastic achievement and something the team felt should be shared.

Well done Sophie, keep up the fantastic work!

Comic Relief - Thanks for your contributions

We've had good fun today raising money for this charity.  

Our sponge the teacher event raised over £140.

We will be adding up our total raised and update you in next week's newsletter.

Thank you for your generosity. 

One of the harder games of this season, at home to Kingdown and the boys managed to come away with 2 draws, the A team 1-1 and the B team 3-3. Both teams were a credit to themselves and the school keep it up!

Man of the matches were Anton and Rayan.

Mr Mockett

Year 10 Scotch Eggs – Enrobing and Food Assurance Schemes

This week we have been researching different food assurance schemes – Lion Mark eggs and the Red Tractor Scheme to name but a few. We used ingredients from these schemes to design and make Scotch Eggs.

This week is British Stem week and as a result years 7, 8 and 9 have been taking part in a number of STEM related challenges during their science lessons. Year 7 have been using forensic skills to determine who ‘Kidnapped Mr Skipp.

This has involved tasks ranging from narrowing down suspects from a list of staff by their alibis to identifying strands of clothing and deciphering pen ink.

Year 8 have been look at ways of transporting produce up and over mountains in remote areas and then modelling and testing their inventions whilst year 9 have been challenged to build freestanding bridges made from paper, straws and string which are capable of supporting as much mass as possible whilst spanning a distance of 30cm.

We have seen some amazing designs from all years, and it's safe to say we have a fair few detectives in the making in year 7. A big thank you to Mrs Simmonds for organising all the challenges and to all the KS3 students for their enthusiasm!’

Year 7 Netball

The Year 7s played against Clarendon on Wednesday. It was a great game to watch with equal possession from both sides throughout the match. Clarendon took the win of 10-3.

Players of the match went to Zoe Randall and Annabelle Nuku. Well played all!

Mrs Acheson 

Unfortunately the Year 7 A team lost 3-1 to Kingdown on Wednesday this week whereas the B team won 3-1, Kingdown was by far the hardest game of the season and the boys represented the school excellently and will learn a lot from this loss. Well bone boys.

Man of the match Logan and Harrison.

Mr Mockett

Dear Parents,

RE: Upcoming webinars for parents - How to Help Your Child With Stress & Wellbeing

We’re excited to announce that we have teamed up with a company called Elevate Education to help prepare our Y11-13 students who will be sitting external exams this summer. This will include a range of activities, starting with small group workshops in school on Tuesday 22^nd March, followed by access to online resources and further sessions during tutor time in the run-up to the exams. 

Elevate also host Parent Webinars, with the next one being on Tuesday 22^nd March.  Feedback to the series so far has been fantastic, so please do sign up using the link below. 

Elevate works with our students, delivering high impact workshops on study skills, motivation, wellbeing, and exam preparation. By tuning into their webinar series you will learn how to better support your children at home through reinforcing the skills they learn at school.  

Tuesday 22nd March (6-7pm)

How to Help Your Child with Stress & Wellbeing

As mentioned in Mr Skipp's letter to parents last month, GCSE, AS and A-Level exam boards have released further information to support students in their exams this year. The information released by boards highlights certain areas that are going to be focused on in exams and in many cases provides information about areas that will not be focused on this year. As a result, the staff have been working hard to both adapt the remaining curriculum time to focus on the key areas and plan all the associated support accordingly.'

Staff have also gathered all the information and collated this into the following booklets for students to use to plan and guide their revision. There are lengthy documents, so please use the contents' page hyperlinks to select the subjects relevant to your child.

KS4 Courses - KS4 Advance Information

KS5 Courses - KS5 Advance Information 

We hope that you find this useful and if you have any queries, please contact your child's class teacher or subject lead. 

Activities Week - 18^th - 21st July

Next week we will be sending home our Activities Week programme for Years 7-9.  Every year we celebrate the end of our school year with 4 days of very varied activities.  Last year's events included: golf, fishing, sports, Paultons Park, Kidzania, Cotswold Water Park, hiking and a school disco!

All details will be in the booklets.