Brighouse High School: Students preparing for a new year

Last week our new Year 6 pupils came to spend the day in school as part of their transition.

There was mixture, quite rightly, of excitement and nerves amongst the soon-to-be high school students.

This week our current Year 7 students come to the end of their first high school year.

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Their experiences have been wide and varied and for most the nerves and anxiety that existed on day one is a long distant memory.

During the first year at Brighouse High pupils are grouped into forms which stay together for the five high schools years. The pupils have the chance to experience new lessons and to build on the learning from primary school.

They also have the chance to take up a range of opportunities outside the classroom; it has been good this year to see so many of the pupils take advantage of the enrichment on offer.

The trip to the Northern Lakes saw 200 year 7 pupils visited the Lake District this year and take part in activites such as walking, canoeing, climbing and, the favourite activity, ghyll scrambling. The 2016 trip was the 13th time the trip has taken place. I wonder if any other Calderdale schools have such a long running trip?

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On three days during the year the usual timetable stops and pupils have the chance to learn in a different way. In this activity Year 7 were focusing on teamwork.

Every week Year 7 pupils also have the chance to attend science club, a practical approach to science based around carrying out experiments, while Year 7s have the chance to get creative with homework too.

In this case Year 7 group made an edible mountain for geography homework.

Brighouse High pupils visit the Hepworth Gallery

The arts continue to be a focus of education at Brighouse High. Recently a group of Year 8 pupils visited the Barbara Hepworth Museum in Wakefield to inspire them in their work back in school.

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They were treated to a printing workshop with a resident artist where they used the Hepworth sculptures as inspiration.

Initially the students were taken around the gallery, where they carried out a series of drawing tasks, sometimes having to draw with their wrong hand and without taking their pencil off the page.

This challenge produced some interesting results. During the printing workshop, students used shape, colour and pattern to layer up materials to create a Collagraph print. The students seemed really pleased with their results, which are now on display around school.

Liz Cresswell, head teacher, said: “There is an increasing emphasis in many schools on EBacc subjects such as history, geography and modern foreign languages. At Brighouse, whilst we certainly value these subjects, we believe that it is important to encourage pupils who have an interest in art and other creative and practical subjects.

“The trip to the Hepworth stimulated and inspired creativity from our students who produced some excellent quality follow up work.”