Freddie's Focus
For Parents & Carers
- Issue 140
- November 7, 2025
Freddie's Focus
For Parents & Carers
- Issue 140
- November 7, 2025
Message from the Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
Welcome back to the second half of the Autumn Term. This week we have successfully introduced YONDR pouches to Year 11. We will be looking to roll out to Year 10 next and the date for this will be confirmed asap. Please bear with us, it does take time to embed the morning routines.
I hope all the Year 7 students who attended Winmarleigh this week have had an enjoyable time – it certainly looks to be the case. I can only apologise for the washing it will have generated!
Further to Mr Taylor’s email to all parents earlier this week about attendance, in the last two weeks of the last half term, we did notice a slight dip in attendance, with a number of students being kept off school due to illness. It can be difficult to know whether your child is too ill to attend school. NHS guidance is clear that it’s fine to send them in with a minor cough or common cold, provided they don’t have a temperature. You support your child’s physical, social and mental wellbeing by ensuring they are in school every day. For ease of reference, the NHS guidance on child illness and whether to keep your child off school can be found here.
Thank-you for your continued support.
Mr Davies
Message from the Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
Welcome back to the second half of the Autumn Term. This week we have successfully introduced YONDR pouches to Year 11. We will be looking to roll out to Year 10 next and the date for this will be confirmed asap. Please bear with us, it does take time to embed the morning routines.
I hope all the Year 7 students who attended Winmarleigh this week have had an enjoyable time – it certainly looks to be the case. I can only apologise for the washing it will have generated!
Further to Mr Taylor’s email to all parents earlier this week about attendance, in the last two weeks of the last half term, we did notice a slight dip in attendance, with a number of students being kept off school due to illness. It can be difficult to know whether your child is too ill to attend school. NHS guidance is clear that it’s fine to send them in with a minor cough or common cold, provided they don’t have a temperature. You support your child’s physical, social and mental wellbeing by ensuring they are in school every day. For ease of reference, the NHS guidance on child illness and whether to keep your child off school can be found here.
Thank-you for your continued support.
Mr Davies
Things to celebrate
- Over the half term we ran two trips; a history trip to Belgium, and a Sports Tour trip to Madrid. Both trips were very successful, and a great experience was had by all.
- This week our Year 7 students have attended the residential to Winmarleigh Hall. Staff were incredibly impressed with the behaviour and resilience of all students involved.
- We have continued with our YONDR launch with Year 11 this week. We have been very impressed with the way in which our students have responded to these changes.
- Sporting Success this week
We are always excited to learn of any sporting successes outside of school so we can celebrate the student’s achievements. Please email Mr Gregory with any information so we can share with everyone on Freddie’s Focus – gregoryi@flhs.wigan.sch.uk
Sporting Success this week
We are always excited to learn of any sporting successes outside of school so we can celebrate the student’s achievements. Please email Mr Gregory with any information so we can share with everyone on Freddie’s Focus – gregoryi@flhs.wigan.sch.uk
Key Events
We will be holding the following events for parents and carers during this term:
We encourage all parents and carers to attend these events if they have a child in any of these year groups. Further information to follow.
What we do at Freddie's and why we do it
At Freddie’s we want our students to develop as excellent learners who ultimately achieve the very best from their time at school. Below are the FLHS BEST Standards.
We want there to be no learning time lost!
These standards are displayed in all classrooms and referred to as a constant reminder of the positive learning habits that we want all students to display:
‘Habits accelerate learning’
Year 7 to Year 10
100 HoY Mug/Earphones/Water Bottle/Skip the queue pass
175 MTA Power Bank/Skip the queue pass/Calculator/£5 Amazon voucher
250 MTA £10 Amazon voucher/Skip the queue pass
350 PDA £15 Amazon voucher/Skip the queue pass
Year 11
100 HoY £5 Amazon voucher/£5 off Prom
150 MTA £10 Amazon voucher/£10 off Prom
200 PDA £15 Amazon voucher/£15 off Prom
How to support your child to become an independent learner
O.S.C.A.R
Organisation, Selection, Creativity, Association, Repetition
The ‘OSCAR’ model is something that we are promoting at Freddie’s in order to support your child with independent/self-directed study at home.
The ‘C’ stands for creativity. We know that learning happens when we have to think hard and actively do something with the information that we are trying to learn (and store in our long-term memory.
To support your child with this, the following tasks may be useful:
- Creating a set of flashcards (there could be key questions or vocabulary on one side and the answers or definitions on the other);
- Creating graphic organisers – this is a method of capturing information in a visual way. For example:
- Creating their own mini quizzes based on a topic so that they can self-test.
- Capturing information as images alongside words (this technique is called Dual Coding). For example:
Applications that we use for learning
The following applications are used by our students during their time at FLHS to aid their learning. You can learn more about them below.
Microsoft Office
Did you know that your child can access Microsoft Office at home for free? As a student at Fred Longworth High School, your child is allowed to download a fully working free copy of Microsoft Office 365 to use on their computer, smartphone and tablet whilst they are a student at our school. Click on the button below to learn more.
Satchel:One
Satchel:One is the school online learning platform for students and is the parental portal for all information related to your child’s overall progress within school. You can keep track of your child’s homework using Satchel:One. It is advisable to remind your child to get into the habit of checking their homework on Satchel:One regularly. Relying upon notifications is not the right approach and we advise students to turn off notifications so that they are not disturbed by them.
GCSEPod
GCSEPod is an online study platform and is the perfect resource to help your child learn, retain and recall all the information they need to achieve their GCSE goals. GCSEPod provides 3-5 minute bursts of audio-visual, teacher written learning which can help to reinforce and consolidate key GCSE topics covered in lessons. Experts read and explain everything clearly including all the right facts, quotes, keywords, dates and diagrams on screen. GCSEPod is only available to students in Year 10 and Year 11.
Homework Club
Please remind your child that homework club is available to all students Monday to Thursday where they can complete work in a quiet environment with staff on hand to support them, and computers for online quizzes and research.
Homework Intervention
If your child is not meeting deadlines or completing homework to the best of their ability, their teachers and/or Head of Year will refer them to our homework intervention group. Parents/ carers will receive a letter notifying you and to explain the night that your child will be required and for how long. This is a supportive intervention which is used to get students back on track with homework if they are struggling in this area.
Attendance
We want to do all we can to support your child to be in school every day and ask that you support this important message from home, encouraging your child to avoid missing curriculum content through absence. Here is a breakdown of the absences for the following attendance percentages:
Thank you for your continued support with attendance.
Please encourage your child to be in school every day.
Can we please remind all our parents and carers to use the correct channels of communication should they wish to raise a concern or question. Your continued support is invaluable to us.
Belonging, Engaging, Succeeding Together.
Can we please remind all our parents and carers to use the correct channels of communication should they wish to raise a concern or question. Your continued support is invaluable to us.