Congratulations to Thomas Young from Year 8 who is celebrating being named ‘Top Student Rider in MK’ at the MK Mayor’s ‘Cycle September’ Awards which saw members of the MK community ride over 15,000 miles during ‘Cycle September’. Thomas was delighted to meet the Mayor, Mohammed Khan and receive his certificate and prize of a Trek cycling helmet at an Awards Ceremony in Central MK. Watling also won third place in the ‘Top Cycling School’ Category, proving that we are committed to our students and staff developing greener daily habits.
Before half-term, our three winners from the Foreign Language Spelling Bee School competition, Jenisha C, Jenefa R and Janelle S, participated in the Regional Final against other schools in the Southeast of England. They had to learn a total of 200 words in preparation for the competition. During the competition they had to correctly translate and spell as many of these words as possible in a minute. All three students did an incredible job, particularly as the competition took place in the week before their end of year assessments. I am delighted to announce that Jenisha and Jenefa both made it through to the National Final. Jenisha was the overall winner of the Regional Competition. A superb achievement.
The students have a further 100 words to learn for the National Final, making it a total of 300 words that they could be tested. Please congratulate them and wish them luck.
This Mindful Collaboration piece includes artwork from each of our inaugural cohort of Year 7 students at the new Watling Academy and was assembled during the third UK National Lockdown.
For Stage 2 of the Spelling Bee competition, students had to correctly translate and spell in Spanish as many words as possible in a minute. This time students had a total of 150 words to learn.
The students participating in Stage 2 of the House Competition were:
The 3 students with the highest number of words correctly translated and spelt in a minute were:
The total number of words correctly translated and spelt in a minute by each House was:
The winners will now compete in Stage 3 – Regional Competition. Please wish them luck as the winners from this stage may then compete in a National Final.
Well done to all those who have taken part. It is great to see everyone spelling words in Spanish using the Spanish alphabet. This will really help you with your learning in general.
The maths department enjoyed recent celebrations for Pi day. Students were tasked with the challenge of learning as many digits of Pi as possible off by heart.
The first round took place in form groups and the winning member of each form then took place in the final to crown the overall champion.
The competition was very close and the final was tight.
Those who made it to the final were:
Naseem A, FWL, was the overall winner. He managed to correctly recite 169 digits of Pi. What an incredible achievement. Well done Naseem!
The House system is at the heart of what we do at Watling Academy. Throughout their time at the Academy students will earn House Points in lessons and compete against each other in a range of events. These include subject based challenges, sporting tournaments and competitions based around our core values of Respect, Responsibility and Kindness and our curriculum themes of STEM, Milton Keynes and Sustainability.
The first Watling students were responsible for choosing the house names. As part of their induction they were asked to nominate people who they felt represented the Watling Academy core values, they chose-
As you have probably spotted these are all people who have made a significant contribution to Milton Keynes.
Our students were also involved in the design of our House Logos, each House group was tasked with producing a design brief of what they wanted their house logo to look like. Our very own Ms Piper acted on the design briefs to produce these fantastic logos.
Students have been earning points throughout the year in a variety of events and we look forward to crowning our first Watling Academy House champions at the end of the year.
Since being formed our student council has been involved in arranging various charity events.
Our first non-uniform day raised over £200. This was followed up with a student busking event where students sang and played their musical instruments around school, raising another £80. Money from these events was donated to the MK Night-shelter.
As part of our Christmas celebrations the student council arranged a challenge day, one of the activities was to plan an in-school Maths challenge that also collected food for the MK Foodbank. As you can see below there was a fantastic response:
A second non-uniform day has been planned in conjunction with the Student council. This will take place on Friday 19th March and proceeds will be donated to Comic Relief.
During the first term all students have been practising translating and spelling in Spanish up to 50 new words as part of their preparation for the Foreign Language Spelling Bee House Competition. The competition itself took place in their Spanish lessons during the last week of the Autumn Term. Students had to correctly translate and spell as many of the 50 words as possible in a minute. Two winners from each House were then selected to take part in the next stage, which is a School Competition that will take place just before the Easter Holidays. The winners of the School Competition will potentially then compete in a regional/national competition.
The winners of the House Competition were:
The total number of words correctly translated and spelt in a minute by each House was:
Well done to everyone in Year 7 for taking part. It is great to see everyone spelling words in Spanish using the Spanish alphabet. This will really help you with your learning in general.
Today at the end of breaktime students had a surprise visitor come into school to drop off their certifcates that they achieved for attending The National Museum of Computing virtual trip.
The Starship robot came into the playground drove around the students, who were all lined up and then answered questions from the students. Johnny Jeywright, 7RST, accepted and took the certificates from the ‘boot’ of the robot.
This was a great way for students to end their first half term at Watling Academy.
