Freddie's Focus
For Parents & Carers
- Issue 72
- January 19, 2024
Freddie's Focus
For Parents & Carers
- Issue 72
- January 19, 2024
Things to celebrate
- This week we have hosted our attendance breakfast for all of our students who have achieved above 95% attendance.
- On Thursday morning our Year 11 students received their mock examination results. We hope for many, this will provide a clear picture of where they are currently at, where the gaps are and what they must do to ensure every success when it comes to their real exams.
- Adam Corbally, ex ‘Apprentice’ star has been in with the Y10 students this week for their enterprise challenge that they have been working on since September. The students have had the opportunity to pitch their business ideas to Adam to win some prizes and showcase the work they have been doing.
- On Friday our Year 7 students had the opportunity to meet and question Phil Earle, author of the book ‘When the Sky Falls’.
- On Sunday our Brass band are performing in a joint concert with the British Army Brass Band Catterick. Freddie’s Band will open the concert and our program will feature a solo by our principal cornet, Grace Anderson (Y8). The army band will perform, and then the two bands will form a massed band and perform three pieces for the finale – ‘You can’t stop the beat’, the hymn ‘Manchester’, and ‘Prismatic Light’. The army band will also speak to the Freddie’s players in the afternoon about careers as a musician in the armed forces.
- Sporting Success this week
Sporting Success this week
How we learn
The working memory has a very limited capacity. Information stored in the working memory that is not rehearsed can be lost between 18 to 30 seconds. This means that we need to do something with that information and regularly revisit that information to make it stick and remain in the long-term memory. In schools, we use ‘Retrieval tasks’ to help information stick. These tasks include:
- ‘Do Now’ starter questions based on prior learning
- Quick quizzes during lessons
- Regular testing of things recently learned – from last lesson, last term and last year
- Using images alongside words (dual coding)
- Re-visiting information through our interleaved curriculum
- Knowledge Organisers which we return to and can use for tests
- Presenting/organising information in a different way such as through graphic organisers
- Setting homework tasks that will help your child to retrieve information
Parents and carers can support their children at home to retrieve material learned in class so that it has more chance of sticking. Encouraging children to create their own mini quizzes based on their learning is a great way of doing this. Even better if you then become the quiz master and test them on the questions that they have created.
The video below shows a short clip which explains how learning happens.
Homework and Self-directed study
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
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.
Homework Club
Please remind your child that homework club is available to all students Monday-Thursday in the Library (apart from Monday week B) where support and IT equipment is is available.
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.
Message from the Headteacher
