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Staff from Huddersfield new College will be in school today (12th May) to meet with our CyberMentors. The staff are looking at introducing the CyberMentoring Programme at the college and Beatbullying, the charity behind the programme, suggested they come to Horbury to see the fantastic work they have done.
The recognition the mentors are getting both locally and nationally is very much deserved, they recently presented at West End Middle School, Cleckheaton where their passion and dedication for the programme and its aims inspired several of their students to join the initiative. Their visit to this school came as a result of a conference they presented at in March on How Best We Tackle Bullying, Anti Social Behaviour & Truancy, staff from West End were delegates at this conference and they were blown away by the professionalism of year 10 mentors, Oliver Farrell, Laura Smith, Amy Walton & Emily Cameron and asked if they would present in their school.
On Thursday this week they will be talking to police officers visiting West Yorkshire from Germany about the work they do to support victims of bullying and their on-going campaign to promote anti-bullying in our school.
Closer to home, the Year 10 mentors will be presenting to staff at Horbury on Monday 17th May 2010.
Mrs Farrell

Last week was National Science and Engineering Week, the focus of which was on biodiversity.  Students in Years 7 and 8 did different lessons to normal, including going “On Safari” and drawing some birds (incidentally, this is one of Mr Clee’s favourite activities).

In addition, some students had the opportunity to go to see a presentation by Zoolab, who were in school with a variety of exotic animals.  Students had the chance to hold tarantulas, snakes, cockroaches, rats and treefrogs. 

Science supremo Ms Parsons was on hand to say, “This was a fantastic event, and a really good opportunity for students to engage in hands-on Science.  I particularly enjoyed going on On Safari, which was obviously a well-planned and interesting activity.”

Mr Hannah

Miss Fearnside has returned to Horbury School after an intensive 9 months spent on maternity leave. Her time away from school was consumed by early wake up calls, nappy changes and frequently sung nursery rhymes.

She arrived on her first day back to be transported to The National Coal Mining Museum, along with the Project Based Learning Year 7 cohort. The day was a fascinating exploration of coal mining through the centuries. Students investigated the working conditions and experiences of miners and how found out how laws have protected their wellbeing over the years. The excitement of students was not spoilt by the poor weather conditions, where it rained for most of the day.

However, Miss Fearnside and group C were not in favour with the staff at the museum, as they were late for the trip down the pit shaft. This severely disrupted the day and delayed all other tourists, including a French group. Oooops!

See you soon for the next exciting instalment in Miss Fearnside’s return.

This week Tanzania mentor group decided to do a whole house quiz during form assembly. The theme was around iconic women. Students and staff were asked to name women from 12 pictures and a soundtrack. Over 200 entries were marked by Tanzania form with most achieving over half marks. The overall winner was Mr Falloon with a whopping 17 out of 17. He was clearly delighted with his win. ‘I have often had an interest in women and clearly this has paid off on this occasion’ he said. Mr Matthews came a close second, but clearly does not know Madonna from Anastasia. Several students got 15 out of 17, but the winners of the Easter Eggs, as chosen randomly by Miss Vaughan were, Nikki Wood, Holly Abrams and Will Dyson. Congratulations to them.

Mr Hunt

Horbury Y11 Basketball squad faced their biggest ever challenge from the teaching staff in a fixture for Sport Relief. The match proved to be very close with the Teachers dominating the early exchanges gaining a 12 point lead by the end of the first quarter. The staff continued to dominate in the second quarter finishing 10 points up at half time, the second half continued in the same vein with the teachers dominating play but tiring in defence allowing the students to close the gap to just 6 points by the end of the third quarter. In the final quarter old age (and poor officiating) finally took its toll with the students getting to within 1 point with 30 seconds remaining when disaster struck for the teachers, the students were awarded a very controversial foul from which both free throws were scored clinching the game. The year 11 students can be proud that they managed to complete their Horbury Basketball careers remaining unbeaten, a fantastic achievement. The Staff can take great pride in pushing the students so close and make sure Mr Harrison is more willing to cheat in future fixtures.

Mr Hanby

Willy Wonka, the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland left their magical lands of literature to come to Horbury School in March for World Book Day.
Students and staff alike turned up dressed as their favourite book characters in a bid to prove that reading really is cool!
There was a magical atmosphere, with students turning up to their lessons dressed in a variety of costumes, from the Ugly Sisters to Winnie the Pooh!
The teachers also got very involved: the Science department were dressed as characters from the Wizard of Oz, the Art department chose Alice in Wonderland and the English department turned up as characters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
One parent even contacted the school to say it had ‘made her day’ to see Andy Pandy walking down the street.
Overall, the whole day was a massive success – many thanks to the effort and enthusiasm from everyone involved.

Miss Hancock and Miss Dove

During Science week a number of students were selected to attend a forensic investigation in S1 (Mr Pooley’s room).

The problems began when students entered the room and thought it had been ransacked.  Drawers were overturned, liquids were spilled on the floor and piles of books lay scattered across the floor.

What the students didn’t realise however was that this was the normal state of Mr Pooley’s room.

The room was such a hideous mess that students failed to notice the broken window and missing set of ICT laptops.

S1 has been closed now pending further investigations. If you do see anything suspicious please report it to the Science team

Ms Parsons

The yearly school skiing trip takes place this week.  40 students and 6 members of staff are getting excited and impatient as they await the 24 hour coach journey that will take them to the mountains of Zell-am-Zee, Austria.

Once there they will face blue, red and black runs that will challenge all abilities of skiers, even the Demon skier that is Miss Gibbs. 

This year sees the introduction of compulsory helmets, so expect to see some embarrassing pictures in 3 weeks time.

Also, we’ll see the yearly Slalom competition, which provides hilarity at the skiers who end up falling!  Who will it be this year?  Email your guesses to mail@philipwaud.org.uk

The English department are proud to announce the inaugural year 7 poetry slam competition on Wednesday 31st March (Y half) and Thursday 1st April (X half). The year 7 students are currently putting the finishing touches together to their wonderful performances. Each student is hoping to impress their English teacher enough to be chosen from their respected class and be entered in to the poetry slam. The students will be judged on clarity, expression, confidence and originality. 
 

Mr Dodsley

What a great evening we had!
 
After a long and tiring day of teaching I was flagging fast, but how my mood lifted after only 5 minutes of watching Oliver. It was such a joy to see the students who I normally teach singing and dancing and displaying such amazing confidence. I smiled from start to finish and have been singing the songs to myself ever since (much to the annoyance of my friends, as I unfortunately do not have the talented vocal chords which many of our students clearly do!).
 
Thanks to all staff and students for their hard work in putting on such a professional show
I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.
 
Well Done guys!
Miss Jackson 

Well, review day is upon us again, and I can't wait! Yes, it's nice to have a late start to the day, but that's countered by the late finish too. No, what I love, and I think all the staff feel the same, is the chance to sit down with you (Yes, I'm talking to you!) and talk about how life is going here at school. So many of you are making great progress in loads of your subjects. So many of you are able to reflect on what you really want out of your life and what you can be doing about it. Being a part of that process is one of the most rewarding bits of life here at Horbury, and I'm glad it's that time again.

Just make sure you take full advantage of it!

Mr Denton

The government are trying to get people to insure their dogs. They are trying to this because so there is a reduction of serious accidents involving dogs. 

The insurance premiums will be more depending on how vicious the dog is. The insurance will ensure the victim can claim compensation from the owners of the dog.
 

Alex Prime and Lewis Schofield from Cambodia

On the drive down to Dewsbury we were all very nervous, even Mr D, we enjoyed light refreshments from the bar at the Rotary Club. We observed our rivals who seemed to be raring to go, well prepared and as we listened to them practising we became even more nervous. One thing that lightened the mood was when a member of the other team said they felt intimidated by our blazers as they were only wearing sweatshirts.
Before the delivery of the speeches we had a delightful meal of sweet and sour chicken on a bed of boiled rice, Mr Dodsley loved this, followed by a scrumptious, rich and indulgent chocolate tart served with cream which was mine, Marcus and Emily’s favourite. Emily made a new friend called Jim, who came from Scotland and then it was time for the coin tossing.
It all went silent when the coin was launched into the air, the Ossett team chose to go first therefore we were subsequently second. Their presentation about the chosen topic was full of facts figures and lots of information. We were all shaking and anxious when it came to our turn. Marcus introduced us and the topic superbly which then left me and Emily to give our arguments about whether Global Warming is Fact or Fiction. Marcus then closed our presentation.
In the time that followed when the judges conferred we were all terrified about the result as we had worked very hard over the past few weeks. When the result was finally announced the head judge was not very clear but once we realised we had won we were amazed.
I speak for myself but I’m sure the others will agree that it was an enlightening evening and that we would all like to use of debating, presenting and public speaking skills  in a competition again.
 

Matthew Kent  (Turkey - Europe)
 

A teenager from New Zealand has saved herself from a shark attack by hitting the fish with her body-board.

Fourteen-year-old Lydiawas playing in chest-high water with her brother when she noticed the 1.5m shark swimming next to her. She said she wasn't sure what the shark was at first, but bashed it with her body-board to try and make it go away.

The shark managed to bite Laura's hip through her wet suit, before eventually swimming off. The attack happened off Oreti beach on New Zealand's south island on Monday.

Experts say it was probably a broad-nosed seven gilled shark.

Short sharp hit

Laura said: "I wasn't quite sure what it was. But I looked towards my brother's face and he was just shocked. I looked at my side and just saw this massive grey thing...so, I just hit it with one short sharp hit of the Boogie board."

Jess Worth and Ellen Dewin Zambia

European Safer Internet Day (SID) is supported by countries throughout Europe and during the week, a range of activities will be taking place across the continent to help protect young people online.

The theme for SID ‘10 is ‘Think Before You Post’ and we hope you will help us to make the whole week (from Monday 8th February – Friday 12th February 2010) a week for raising awareness at Horbury School.

Safer Internet Day is on Tuesday 8th February.

Safer Internet Day is supported by CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre), Thinkuknow and several other organisations.

SID is all about raising the awareness of online safety, as young people need to be made aware of what they can do to protect themselves online.

On the Horbury CyberMentors Website there are plenty of resources (videos, useful tips etc) that can be viewed and downloaded. We are sure you will agree with us that the messages the videos portray are quite frightening.
Reported by Oliver Farrell (Morocco)

Brought to us by James Cameron, the director of Terminator and Titanic, Avatar takes us to an extraordinary world beyond imagination, where the reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure.

The human race discovers a new planet named Pandora with a new discovery of an expensive rock found under the ground, but the humans are not alone: the NA’ VI rule Pandora’s land.  We enter the NA’VI world through the eyes of Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington), a former marine confined to a wheelchair, who takes on his twin brother’s avatar and discovers unbelievable things: he realises the humans are destroying everything through obsessing over a rock for money.  In order to get what they want they have to take the home of the innocent NA’VI people, by learning everything from a female NA’VI the beautiful Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) he falls in love and fights for his future life.

This is a ‘must see’ film; it may be blue but it’s realistic. The graphics of the NA’VI people are unbelievably great and some of them were actual people! The scenery of avatar were out of this world; legendary floating mountains, aluminous settings of trees and animals, the spirits that floated around of Ewya that looked like squids and light bulbs.

The Avatar adventure is a blast; if you don’t see it you will regret it.

Sophie Platts (Zambia)

A woman who was taking an art class at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has accidentally fallen into a Picasso painting and damaged it.
The painting called The Actor sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner.
But the damage did not affect the "focal point of the composition" and should be repaired for an exhibition later this year, the museum said.
The painting was 105 years old and was worth 50 million but now it’s only half (30 million).
 
The unusually large canvas, measuring 6ft by 4ft (1.8m by 1.2m) and which depicts an acrobat posed against an abstracted backdrop, was damaged on Friday.
 
By Sophie Platts
Zambia
Year 10

Horbury Schools CyberMentors are privileged to be involved in the BBC News School Report.

This gives Horbury School the opportunity to ‘make the news’, the BBC News School Report allows groups of students in schools to make the news. The project consists of four practice days in the run up to 11th March (the actual report day). All the reports/videos on the practice days are and will be available on the school website for staff, students and the public to view. On the actual day the school website will ‘link’ to the BBC who will be featuring some of the content schools produce on their website and on TV and radio. We have just completed our first practice day (video can be seen here), which we feel was a great success, not only to the students involved but to the school as well.

As a group on our first practice day ‘we’ made the news!

Our next practice day is on the 4th of February and we want the ‘Horbury School Community’ to make the news! We urge staff and students to contact us so we can arrange to feature your items/interviews/reports on our site (and maybe even the BBC).

Report by Oliver Farrell (Morocco)

Beat Bullying!

A girl named Beth Ellis was bullied and got death threats via cyber bullying, she got beat up and the bullies even invited her friends to watch. When she went on Facebook she found out about a hate group about her and that was the final straw, she got the police involved, the group was removed and the bullying stopped.

Conner Tann wasn’t so lucky. He was an intelligent boy who wore glasses and spoke with a little stutter, immediately he became a target of bullying and it was common for him to come home in tears from the bullying. After a few times him mum went into the school and sorted it out. He quickly made a small group of friends and played with them after school. Then in a tragic accident he hung himself in the woods while playing on the swings.

So the moral is tell people about being bullied don’t keep quiet.

(Well done to this student from Zambia who gains 50 housepoints for writing this story!)
 

The bad weather continued this morning as a night of sleet and light snow made the conditions absolutely terrible this morning. The roads were very slippery and many buses got stuck especially in the Netherton and Middlestown area.

Despite this, Horbury School remained open and students and staff showed that it takes a bit more than snow to beat us! The forecast today is for more snow although it will be light and this is set to continue for the next couple of days before turning a little warmer. The long term trend is for more poor weather and this may continue until March.

Last night, there were many reports that we would be shut mainly due to a mistake by Ridings FM who displayed an old page on their web site saying we were closed. The first place that you should check is our school website which will be updated regularly.