Summer Term: Week 7
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”. This is a famous quote from Albert Einstein and I hope that the children have not felt like this over the past week as, hopefully, our exams and assessments have given them a chance to show what they can do rather than what they cannot do. I went on a course several years ago and the speaker stressed the importance of the word ‘yet’ – do not say “I can’t do that” but, instead, say “I can’t do that yet” and have the ambition and interest to find out how to do those things.
We have come to the end of a very busy week for all children in Years 3 to 8 with both formal and informal assessments taking place. In all the sessions which I have invigilated, I have been impressed with the children’s focus and their keenness to do as well as they possibly can, which is all we can ask of them.
One of our key aims in putting together the Bridge Curriculum for Years 7, 8 and 9 was to place less emphasis on the exams and more emphasis on continual assessment and, simply by having only one set of exams in Year 8 rather than two sets of mock exams and then ‘the real thing’, I believe that we have gone a long way to achieving this aim and reducing the pressure that children are under in Year 8.
There is a separate letter coming out which gives more details of how and when you will receive the results of these assessments and, also, some of the things which will be going on in the second half of term. I hope that, by having the exams in the first half of term, all the children will be able to enjoy a relaxing half term holiday in the sunshine and will return for a purposeful and enjoyable second half of term!
Teachers have enjoyed being back in their own classrooms over the past few weeks and have worked hard to make their classrooms their own space once again. We are not far off being back to normality in terms of lessons and timetabling and hopefully another step forward will be made on 21 June which will enable us to be completely back to normal in September.
Enjoy the holidays!
Paul Shouksmith
Deputy Head
