Blog week ending 10th July
Year 9 End of Key Stage Celebration – A Night to Remember! Last night, our Year 9 students came together for a special End of Key Stage celebration, marking the end of an incredible three-year journey at Stone Lodge School. The evening was a fantastic opportunity to reflect on all the memories, achievements and growth our students have experienced since joining us and to look ahead with excitement as they begin their GCSE years.
The event, organised by Mr Bailey, was a great success. He was delighted to host the celebration for a year group that has consistently shown dedication, resilience and enthusiasm, making the entire school community proud.
A heartfelt thank you goes to all the staff who kindly gave their time to chaperone the evening and help create a safe and enjoyable atmosphere for our students.
Well done, Year 9 – we can’t wait to see what you achieve next!
Our Year 10s got the chance to flex their sporting expertise during their own Sports Day activities. Students competed on behalf of their Houses in team events including benchball and dodgeball, and individually in Quoits (a game played in ancient Greece where you throw your hoop onto the wooden target to earn points) as well as table tennis, Connect 4 and Jenga. The winning House was … drum roll .. Edison! Congratulations to all competitors. 2nd place went to Johnson, 3rd place Seacole and 4th Hawking.
Mrs Gordon-Keyes’ Year 7 Scientists have been exploring temperature in their current topic. This week they have made their own thermal cups before trialling their effectiveness in a controlled experiment – excellent work throughout both lessons with student comprehension and application to concepts and investigations exemplary!
Our Year 9 English students are exploring ‘Freedom in Literature’ in their current cycle. In lessons this week students have been considering Voice and Identity and discussing what makes someone’s voice powerful and worth listening to. Students have embraced this topic creating considered and insightful contributions to class discussions and demonstrating excellent analytical skills in their writing.
Mrs Favata’s Geography Year 7 students analysed three National Grids from 2023, 2024 and 2025 identifying differences and similarities to inform their extended piece of writing on how the UK produces its electricity. Some students particularly distinguished themselves for how they presented their data such as Maisie E in 7A (pictured below right – who was also the winner of the Golden Ticket) and others worked very sensibly in pairs. Mrs Favata commented “I’m very proud of them and the high calibre of work they produced and I think they deserve to be mentioned in our school blog!”
Mr Poole’s Year 9 Computer Science classes took part in a series of engaging activites to first reinforce, and then test knowledge in their cyber security and malicious software topic. Mr Poole compilled a wordsearch to remind students of key words and then a crossword to to test their comprehension – then follows a practical exercise to test their knowledge. A hugely engaging way to maximise the effectiveness of revision tasks.
Our new SL6 correspondents are Millie S and Seren, both will be going into Year 13 next academic year. This Blog, we introduce Millie (pictured) who as one of our Stone Lodge ‘pioneers’ has been part of Stone Lodge since it first opened its doors. Millie is currently studying Politics, Sociology and English at A Level as a pathway to her chosen career in paediatrics – specifically, speech and language theraphy. Millie and Seren will contribute regular Blog updates and news from our SL6 students … their first report can be read below;
“The Sixth Form, as part of their Wednesday Electives afternoon were visited by Megan Prigmore, the skills, employment & education lead from a company involved in the lower Thames Crossing – Bouygues and Murphy. Megan led a workshop running a mock assessment centre workshop.
Degree apprenticeships are becoming increasingly popular and so this experience was extremely insightful as a common method of hiring apprentices is through assessment centres.
We split into small groups and were set the challenge of ranking the importance of necessary items if somebody had crash-landed a spaceship on the moon. As we worked together to curate our rankings, Megan, Mrs Tiddy and our form tutors circled our groups and assessed our teamwork skills as well as who naturally took lead in the group.
We all thoroughly enjoyed this experience and found that it gave us an insight into what employers may be looking for and additionally what an assessment centre looks like and how one works.”
Millie and Seren
Dartford Family Hub Opportunity. Please find attached a copy of our HAF Summer Activity Timetable. Families of children aged 8 to 16 years, who are in receipt of benefits relating to free school meals can access our Summer Holidays Activity and Food (HAF) Programme. To express an interest in the activity, eligible families can scan the QR code on the flyer or complete the form via the link below.
Forthcoming Dates;
Year 7 to 10 Learning Beyond the Classroom Week – w/c 14 July
Year 12 Work Experience – w/c 14 July
Year 10 mock exams results day – 21 July
Student Celebration Week – w/c 21 July
Last Day of Term 6 – 22 July 12.05pm
First Day of Term 1 – Wednesday 3 September (new Year 7 students first day is 2 September)
Best wishes,
Catherine Cusick
Headteacher
