Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
Last week on Tuesday 15th November, the global population reached 8 billion. Since I started teaching an extra 2.5 billion people now live on the planet (an extra 1 billion since our current Year 7s were born!). This very significant event definitely gave the geography department a reason to be excited, but it is also a time to think about the future.
This week the geography prefects delivered an assembly about population growth. They used graphs and maps to illustrate population distribution across the planet and outlined some of the challenges the global population may face in the future. Overall, however, they shared an optimistic view of the future explaining how the global community is working together to meet some of the challenges as well as suggesting how we as individuals can help reduce the pressures on the planet’s resources. It was great to see A level geography in action and hear the prefects talk about things they have learnt.
Many more prefects and sixth formers were talking about their A Level subjects on Thursday. This was our Sixth Form Open evening 2022 and introduced ‘The Holt Sixth’ to our current Year 11 students and many external visitors. Holt students are best placed to talk about the sixth form and the subjects they study and that is exactly what they did. They talked about their subjects as well as the freedom and independence they have as a Holt Sixth student. I think they may have also mentioned Costa a few times!
The brand-new website was launched this week this is the link for more details and information about applications www.holtsixth.co.uk
The Year 11s are definitely going to be thinking about their future in the next few weeks whilst they are considering A Level choices and applying to The Holt Sixth, the SLT interviews start next week and Sixth Form taster day is on Friday.
Year 11s were encouraged to focus on their more immediate future as well, half of Year 11 were off timetable on Thursday 17th for a revision morning. There were two staff speakers Mrs Barker and Miss Izod who presented on different revision methods, Cornell note taking and the Leitner method for active revision. This was greatly received by the students, and they even had an opportunity to try these methods using their own notes. Ms Herron spoke about timetables, managing healthy stress and organisation. It was a good session, and it was great to see all the students engaged and giving these methods a go. The other half of the year group will have their session on Thursday 1st December.
The business and social science departments were also encouraging students to plan for their future, in this case their future (or current) finances. Half of Year 10 were off timetable for a whole day to learn about all different aspects of finances, the other half have their day on 23rd November.
Jessica and Isla said ‘The first session was about saving and the next about managing money usefully, there was lots of debate about what was best to spend money on. We learnt about credit in session 3, and risk and reward in session 4. The final session was about security and how to keep cards safe as well as being aware of the dangers associated with internet banking. Everyone on each table got involved and were able to put across their points and express their opinions. At the end we had a very competitive mini quiz on cyber security. Overall, we thought finance day was useful for our futures, concerning money and being aware of what could happen’
Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘The future depends on what we do in the present.” Who knows what the future will hold for our students.
Yvonne Smith
Assistant Headteacher