On the 16th October, the entire year 9 cohort took part in this year’s Restart a Heart Day, during which they were trained in the important skill of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Selby High School was one of over 160 schools across Yorkshire involved in the project, which was overseen by around 850 volunteers from within each of the regional fire services and police forces, as well as hospital staff, university students and many other organisations. Over 40,000 students were trained this year, which takes the total number of students trained in Yorkshire to nearly 150,000.
Opportunities to experience and take part in the Performing Arts are growing in the school. Last week we welcomed the FRED Travelling Theatre Company in to deliver a performance of A Christmas Carol to our year 11 students who will be studying Dickens’ famous story after the half term break. Rehearsals for our whole school production of Annie are now well under way, and we know that we are in for a treat of acting, music and dance. The performances will take place in February, and it would be great to see as many of you as possible supporting our talented young people. Students from Selby High School are performing in the Yorkshire Schools Dance Festival on Saturday, 16th November at Central Hall, University of York. Tickets are now available on their website using the link, yorkshireschoolsdancefestival.co.uk/tickets. We have also been very pleased with the development of the school choir, which is now 40 strong.
In other curriculum-based activities, our students have had a chance to find out a bit more about the Selby High School staff during National Languages Day and National Poetry Day. Posters and displays around school have revealed our staff members’ favourite phrases in other languages and their favourite poems, and students have been involved in competitions based on this.
In addition to these experiences within school, there have already been numerous trips and visits this year. Four students had the opportunity to visit the battlefields in Belgium during a special trip linked to First World War poetry. Since their return, the students have been working on a History project, which involves them writing to the former addresses of 88 Selby soldiers who were killed in the First World War. If you live in the Selby area, you may even get one of their letters and, if so, we would be really grateful if you could participate in the project by displaying your window card around Remembrance Day. In other trips, a group of year 11 students visited Cambridge to discover more about University life and the Spanish team took a group of year 11s to New College, Pontefract for a languages taster day; we hope to be able to develop our links further in the future to provide a similar opportunity in other subject areas. Slightly further afield, a group of our students had a brilliant time visiting the UK’s biggest gaming event- EGX- at the ExCel Centre in London.
We have put on a number of events this year to further build the partnership between the school and our parents and carers. The focus of the Key Stage 3 Supporting Success Evening was literacy, home learning and knowledge organisers, and in the Key Stage 4 Evening this week, a wide range of workshops were on offer, providing information on a range of topics relevant to preparing for the exams at the end of the key stage. If you missed this evening, all the resources are now available on our website, under the parents section. It was also great to see so many parents and carers of our new year 7 parents at the recent Settling-In Evening. This was a chance to meet the form tutor, and look at some of the high quality work that students have already produced since they started with us.
The sporting calendar has been rich and varied so far this year. The Race for Life Event in York was a massive success, following weeks of training, with 80 students and 25 staff members taking part. A big thank you to Classroom Clothing who sponsored the Race for Life T-shirts. An amazing £3,569.82 was raised through this event.
In other sporitng news, preparations are well underway for the Ski Trip next year, and Mr Field has been running a number of visits to Snozone where students have enjoyed skiing and snowboarding lessons and activities.
Finally, we are delighted to announce the introduction of Selby High School’s official Facebook page. Please search for @Selbyhighschoolofficial in the Facebook search bar and click ‘like’ then share with your family and friends. The Facebook page will be used to inform the public about our events, trips, celebrations and important information. Our Twitter account has been successful over the past few years and we wanted to expand our presence and audience on social media by creating a Facebook page. The public will not be able to directly communicate with the Facebook page but there are direct links to the school’s email address, phone number and website. We encourage people to like, share and invite friends to like the Facebook page so that people will not miss out on what Selby High School has to offer. It would be great to see the community supporting our school and we hope you will get a flavour of what a great place Selby High School is to learn and work.
Have a happy and healthy half term break, and we look forward to seeing our students again in November!
Best wishes,
Nick Hinchliffe
Principal
Forthcoming
dates
4th – 14th
November Year 11 Mocks
Year
8 Assessment
6th November Governors’ Awards Evening
16th November Yorkshire Schools Dance
Festival
18th November Careers Fair (5pm)
2nd December Year 8 HPV
3rd December Year 7 Theatre Trip
5th December Year 11 Poetry Live Trip
11th December Year 11 Consultation Evening
18th December Christmas Show (7pm)
20th December Year 7 Science Fair
School
closes for holidays
