School Blog, Week Ending 5th September
Welcome to all our new families and staff, and welcome back to everyone else! I hope you all enjoyed a relaxing summer with friends and family. We have started this new year as we mean to continue, with enthusiasm and vigour, ready to make the most of every opportunity our wonderful school and community has to offer!
Students and staff celebrated some fantastic results with our first Year 11 and Year 13 (SL6) cohorts – to read more please click here Stone Lodge Schools – our first GCSE results! – Stone Lodge School. What was clear from this experience, is that those who students who worked hard throughout Year 11, attended additional classes after school and during the holidays and revised regularly and thoroughly at home, celebrated our best results. We will continue to offer additional support to our new Year 11s including new targeted booster sessions, more details will be available during the forthcoming Welcome Evening.
Our new Year 7 and Year 12 students are settling into school life, supported by a series of induction events, tours and lessons led by their Tutors, Student Managers and teachers.
Mr Proctor, Head of Year 7 added “it was fantastic to see our new students in their smart uniforms welcoming them to the Stone Lodge family! They’ve been spending quality time, getting to know their peers and making friends. I’m looking forward to seeing you all at our ‘Meet the Tutor’ evening tonight”
Our new caterers are already getting the thumbs up from students and staff alike who are enjoying the new range of meals, salads and snacks on offer. Our Parents/Carers portal, which can be found on our website here Supporting Your Child – Stone Lodge School contains menus and links to a range of parent/carer resources including ParentPay (for payment of school meals, trips etc). We will now be operating a Split lunch to ensure a speedy food service and allow greater space for students to dine. This means it will appear that there are seven periods a day on students’ timetables. There is still six lessons per day for each student, as lunch will be a lesson for some years and a lunch slot for others. This will work as below and the start of the year assembly and extra tutor time has partly been spent helping students understand their new timetables:
Year 9 and 10 – lunch period 4, lesson period 5
Year 7, 8, 11 and SL6 – period 4 lesson, lunch period 5
Mr Proctor and myself with students at lunch break
Students at line-up, classroom ready!
All new Year 7 students have had a series of ‘getting to know you’ classes including Miss Haynes’ English lesson where students have been using creative writing to express their identity and future aspirations. In the below lesson, students have been comprising a letter to their future selves!
Over the course of the next few Blogs I will introduce all new teaching and key staff, including;
I am delighted to introduce Mr Adenekan who joins us as Assistant Head Teacher. Mr Adenekan is a life-long educator with over twelve years’ experience in the secondary school sector. “I have a background teaching and leading Science Departments and am passionate about breaking down barriers, empowering young people to develop a sense of curiosity and ambition in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. I am looking forward to contributing to our school community and supporting students to make the links between their classroom learning and explore the opportunities and career pathways that they can provide. Outside of school, my passion for science is matched by my love of Lego and Formula 1 racing!”
As a growing school, we will have many more students and staff this year. As such, we anticipate that coming into and leaving school will be much busier. There will be staff at the school gates, on London Road and Cotton Lane. Students are encouraged to walk or cycle if they can. For those being dropped off by car, families should drop their child on the path near the canteen entrance safely before circling and exiting.
Mr Poole, Head of Computer Science is our new Head of Year 8, taking over from Mr Bailey, who is moving up with his students to Year 9. Mr Poole is a highly skilled practitioner with over 10 years teaching and leadership experience in schools around southeast London and Kent. Out of the classroom Mr Poole is a keen sportsman, particularly high intensity interval training (HIT)! In his capacity as Head of Year, Mr Poole hopes to bring his calm and measured approach to help and support the Year 8 students in becoming the best version of themselves that they can be. He added, “taking an active role in student life above and beyond lessons is very important to me and I’m looking forward to getting to know our Year 8 students and their families.”
In the below photo Mr Poole’s Year 10 GCSE Computer Science were beginning to start their GCSE journey in which they will learn to program in Python. They were learning how to set up the software so that they can begin learning to code.
We will be holding a series of evening Welcome Events for parents and carers. This will be an opportunity to hear from your child’s Head of Year who will share their vision for the year ahead, key milestones as well as how you can best support your child with their studies.
Welcome Expectations Evenings are;
Year 7 – Welcome & Meet the Form Tutor Evening – Thursday 5th September 4.30pm-7.30pm led by Mr Proctor
Year 8 – Welcome & Expectations Evening – Wednesday 11th September 5.30pm-6.30pm led by Mr Poole
Year 9 – Welcome & Expectations Evening – Thursday 26th September 5.30-6.30pm led by Mr Bailey
Year 10 – Welcome & Work Experience Evening – Thursday 12th September 5.30-6.30pm led by Miss Ho
Year 11 – Welcome & Expectations Evening – Thursday 19th September 5.30-6.30pm led by Ms Anderson
SL6 Year 12 – Welcome & Expectations Evening – Wednesday 18th September 5pm-6pm
To read more about our Key Leaders, their roles and responsibilities, please click here Our School – Stone Lodge School
Should you have any queries please contact the appropriate department: Department/Teacher Email address;
Attendance – reporting absence/medical appointments/ lateness [email protected]
SENCo – SEND and medical concerns [email protected]
Year 7 Pastoral Leaders Team [email protected]
Year 8 Pastoral Leaders Team [email protected]
Year 9 Pastoral Leaders Team [email protected]
Year 10 Pastoral Leaders Team [email protected]
Year 11 Pastoral Leaders Team [email protected]
Sixth Form Pastoral Leaders Team [email protected]
Mr Barnett – Head Teacher Please direct your enquires via the Head Teachers’ PA [email protected]
SL6 (our sixth form). Year 13 student Harvey is our SL6 Student Correspondent. Harvey is in the second year of his Sports BTEC Level 3 with us and is already a published social media contributor and journalist for, amongst others, Welling United. Harvey contributes regular updates to our School Blog, his first of the academic year is as below;
“As we embark upon a new school year this week, we would like to welcome the new SL6 Year 12 cohort who start their new journey after completing their GCSE exams and earning their place in SL6. We have already begun building relationships with the new students through ice-breaker activities. They join a successful group of Year 13 students in the sixth form who have achieved excellent results in their BTEC courses and are working towards securing positive results in their courses and going onto apprenticeships, full-time work and universities next year. We hope that they will settle in quickly and enjoy the SL6 experience.
Our vibrant sixth form includes a programme of visits, external speakers and careers workshops. This week, we have welcomed speakers from NCS (National Citizen Service) to share details of their residential courses – click here for more details Our Experiences | NCS (wearencs.com) and a trainer from the army air corps who delivered a brilliant session on opportunities in the forces, including professional apprenticeships and career pathways.
There has been some success outside of the curriculum for our Year 13 cohort over the summer. This includes Kieran, who has been competing against international level cricketers in his matches over the summer. And following on from my work experience, I was able to complete more journalism work with Welling United over the summer consisting of running their social media pages on a matchday and writing the match report on their match against Ebbsfleet in pre-season which can be found on their website.
As a Sixth Form cohort, we are looking to strive for more great results inside and outside of our school lives this year!”
Photos from our recent teambuilding sessions below
Thank you to all those families who took the time to give us evaluative feedback on your experiences of Stone Lodge in our recent parental survey. From this feedback we took away lots of positives and were pleased to see that so many students are happy and thriving. We have made some changes to our practice in the following areas to support some of this helpful survey feedback. The changes we will be focussing on for this year are:
• Increasing positive communication with students’ families who are getting it right.
• Increasing communication with families on what each year group are learning and how they can support with this at home through increased year team curriculum information being shared at least six times per year and adapting the Knowledge Organisers to include learning information that captures progress and next steps.
• Increasing communication with families on how their children are doing in their academic studies and what they need to focus on.
The active support of our parents and carers is central to the ongoing success of our school, and we are grateful that so many parents and carers engage so positively with all aspects of school life. Please do consider joining our wonderful PTFA who make a profound and vital contribution to school life, click here for more Supporting Your Child – Stone Lodge School.
Our School Blog is shared with our parents and carers once a fortnight and contains our latest news, key dates for your diaries and provides a platform to showcase the amazing work and achievements of our students and wider Stone Lodge community. We love to celebrate all student achievements, including those that may come from outside of school, from students’ involvement in sporting activities, memberships of clubs or any community contribution. Please send any news and photos to the office for inclusion in our School Blog to Grace Wellcoat on [email protected]
We look forward to meeting with you over the course of the welcome meetings.
Best wishes,
Gavin Barnett
Head Teacher
