Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends,
Year 10 Design and Technology students went to The Design Museum last week. They all took part in workshops focusing on sustainability and The Design Ventura challenge. This is a challenge run by the design museum alongside a sponsor Deutsche Bank who were present at the workshop. In this challenge the students are asked to design a new product for the Design Museum Shop with the winning product manufactured and sold at the shop. Students will now be taking part in this by completing the challenge during their lessons. The aim of the day was to explore the exhibitions and complete some market research to enhance their design ideas for the challenge
Thank you to the technology team and staff for organising and support this trip.
Still on the theme of creativity, last week la señora Totolan-Moore and Señorita Kaunds led another tantalising cooking workshop with MFL and Food Tech. This time, it was for mouthwatering churros. Surprised at the simple ingredients involved, the chicas mixed, squeezed and fried away to create the most delicious Spanish churros – practicing their Spanish as well – what a treat! Next session will be at the beginning of December, French cuisine this time.
We are always really grateful to have inspiring speakers come to visit our students at The Holt. Mrs Graham told us about one of our visitors:
“This year The Holt is taking part in the House of Lords Youth Engagement Programme 2024-5 with the Environment and Climate Change Committee. Only 6 schools nationally take part in the programme, so we are honoured to have been chosen. As the first part of the programme, we welcomed Baroness Shaz Sheehan, Chair of the Committee to The Holt. The students taking part in the programme gave presentations on aspects of climate change and took part in a Q&A with the Baroness. She was very impressed with their “amazing depth of knowledge” and the students commented on how “inspiring” the Baroness was. Well done to all who took part in the visit!”
We are very proud to be involved in the programme and we will update you on any future updates!
Also our Year 9 students who take a keen interest in science listened to STEM talks led by leading scientists. Firstly, Lin Wang a lecturer at Queen Mary University London spoke to students about his research which focused on audio and visual signal processing, robotic perception and machine learning. He applied machine learning techniques to human activity and context recognition from wearable sensors. Also a Alice De Schutter who is an Investment Associate at Edaphon, a Belgian impact fund that supports sustainable agriculture and biodiversity projects. Alice’s research involves environmental science, industry trends, and regulations to guide investment decisions. It was a fantastic opportunity to see the range of STEM careers which were available and students had opportunities to ask questions about the topic and careers.
Year 11 have also had a great opportunity to demonstrate all their hard work in their music GCSE. They planned, organised, led and delivered a fantastic concert yesterday evening. Well done to all our performers, it was a wonderful evening, and Mr Gray may even be using the programme design in the future! Good luck to the Year 11 students who will be completing their performing element of their music GCSE on Monday.
And finally, this evening we have our sixth form open evening. The first welcome talk begins at 5:45pm and the second welcome talk is at 7:40pm. There will be talks run throughout the evening to give students and parents all the information that they need to know. We anticipate that it will be a busy evening, and we are really looking forward to welcoming all of our Year 11 students and parents to find out about all of our A-level subjects, and about what life is like in the 6th form. Mrs Smith will give you an update all about the evening in next week’s blog.
Mrs Salamut-Ward
Head of Sixth Form
Assistant Headteacher