Congratulations to Sackville’s first mental health first aiders!

Headteacher Julian Grant was delighted to award our first cohort of student mental health first aiders with their certificates over a celebratory breakfast on Monday December 9th.

Youth Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) courses are for everyone who works with, lives with or supports young people aged 8-18. Our qualified trainer, Mrs Nibloe has taught the students the skills and confidence to spot the signs of mental health issues in a young person, offer first aid and guide them towards the support they need. In doing so, they will be able to speed up a young person’s recovery and stop a mental health issue from getting worse.

Head of Sixth Form Mrs Valentine is keen to get our newly trained first aiders to support others within the school as soon as possible.

Pictured here are Mrs Nibloe, Mrs Barden, Emily Ford, Treya Lufu, Neeve Theobald-Smith, Kiera Ellis, Katie Cooper, Megan Straford, Mrs Valentine and Mr Grant.

Thank-you very much to Mrs Nibloe for providing this excellent opportunity.

East Grinstead Foodbank – thank-you for your donations

Monday 9^th December saw two car-fulls of Sackville donations taken to the East Grinstead Foodbank.

Pictured here are Archie and Freddie Mabey, whose mother Mags Donovan kindly did the trips from school to the foodbank.

We would like to thank everyone who donated so generously, Mr Endersby and the school charity team for organising the collection, and of course Ms Donovan for transporting all of the donated food.

Mrs Stromfield presents at national science conference

On Thursday 5th December Mrs Stromfield, our curriculum leader for science, gave two presentations to the PiXL National Science Conference in London.

The first presentation explained how Sackville teaches science students to decode exam questions, working out what the question is asking, which can be harder than you think! The science department really focusses on this betwen the two year 11 sets of mocks.

The second more general presentation ran through the strategies we have in place to help students with all aspects of exam questions, including how we enable learning of command words and how we write up our practicals to help with how the exam questions are framed.

Our science results have been consistently well above national expectations, which is why Mrs Stromfield was invited to present. Thank-you to Mrs Stromfield for giving up a day to do this; she and her colleagues will be marking their mocks this weekend!

Year 10 students show they are language champions

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Year 10 MFL stars Dilyn Arro, Matei Cumpatescu and Reece Dickenson teamed up with students from Reed’s school to win the first prize in the recent Business Language Champions event.

An intrepid group of 14 GCSE language learners travelled to Reed’s school in Cobham to attend on Thursday Dec 5^th. They were divided into multilingual groups and worked with students from other schools on a number of marketing tasks using German, French and Spanish. These included a radio jingle, a flyer, a slogan and a mock-up of a stall.

Some were required to book accommodation in the target language and at all stages they had to overcome any reticence and collaborate with new acquaintances to build teamwork, communication and language skills.

A special mention to Matthew Botten who was a member of a winning team in one of the sub-categories.

The willingness and enthusiasm of all to get involved typified the Sackville ethos and the students were a credit to the school.

Thank-you to Mr Green for organising the event and accompanying the students.

Sussex Circuit judges visit year 12 assembly

We were delighted to extend a warm welcome in our sixth form assembly on December 5^th to Her Honour Judge Sarah Venn and her colleague Her Honour Judge Helen Lusty. Both are circuit judges in Sussex and are also diversity and community relations judges, who act as a link between the judiciary and all local communities.

The two judges made a grand entrance into sixth form assembly, dressed in full judicial robes. Both these judges are keen to inspire young people to apply to train and work in the judicial services. The judges offered practical assistance for gaining work placements and could not have been more welcoming or giving with their time.

We look forward to a return visit. Sixth formers interested in pursuing a law related career should in the first instance speak to Mrs Fleming, Mr Roberts or Mrs Valentine for further advice.

Pictured alongside Judges Venn and Lusty are Madison McKay, Mia Sloane, Elise Brewer, Lauren Thorne, Sofia Davis and Amber Davies.

Year 12s lift their eyes to the sky in wonder …

With tremendous good timing the skies cleared after a dreadful week of weather to allow year 12 Physics students to visit the Sussex Community Observatory in Chelwood Gate on Friday November 29^th. The telescope is owned and run by the University of Sussex and we have developed a project with them to enable physics students to learn how to use a large, computer controlled telescope to image galaxies. Their results will allow them to measure the number of stars they contain and how their colour varies across the disc.

Students star-hopped to NGC 7331, an unbarred spiral galaxy 40 million light years away and discovered by William Herschel in 1784. Once digital images were obtained, students processed them to draw out fine detail, reducing “noise” and increasing “signal”. One the first images is here, showing dust lanes in the galaxy and other galaxies in this group too.

We were also treated to a flyby of the International Space Station and a glimpse of Saturn and its largest moon Titan.

Thanks to Dr Mike Hardiman, Mr Keeble and Mrs James for their support both on the night and over the last three years this project has been running.

Thank you to Mr Bush for this report!

Serving tea to the true ‘stars in our school’

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To mark the annual ‘Stars in our Schools Day’ the school leadership team were delighted to serve afternoon tea to all of our support staff.

They were treated to home-made sausage rolls followed by an authentic cream tea. Headteacher Julian Grant was also able to distribute prizes for the winners of the ‘Sackville Big Reveal’.

The main purpose however was to mark the fantastic work that this amazing group of people undertake, day-in, day-out. It takes a full team of people to make Sackville a safe place in which students can thrive, and in so many ways our non-teaching staff are our unsung heroes. Without them, nothing that we do would be possible – so thank-you.

Special thanks to Mrs Rowlingson who did the lion’s share of the work once again – better not to leave it to the baking skills of the SLT!

Thank you too to the students who provided the musical entertainment throughout the afternoon; Mia Boothe, Matthew Botten, Sam Baker, Thomas Salter, Tom Trounson, Ella Straszynski and Nicole Noakes.

Success for Sackville chefs

Sackville was delighted to host the local heat of the Rotary Young Chef Competition on Tuesday December 3rd.

In second place, Tilly Vickery was commended on her caramelised onion and goats’ cheese tart, and stuffed chicken ballontine with fondant potatoes and roasted tomatoes. Despite being pipped for first place by a competitor from Imberhorne, she will proceed to the next round of the competition. 

Joe Boyle came third, and both Ted Benstead and Mac Lloyd-Skinner were commended for their efforts. Thank you to Mrs Smeaton for co-ordinating the event.

Sackville’s Big Reveal just got bigger … 

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Christmas is very much in the air at Sackville! This year’s ‘Big Reveal’ surpassed even the high standards set in 2018. There were no fewer than 18 entries this year, as offices and classrooms were given the full makeover. 

Headteacher Julian Grant and Deputy Headteacher Neil Feist were joined by guest judge Maria Tackley who worked in our general office until last summer.

Trying to make a decision was very difficult and the judges decided to award special prizes for Overall Winner, Best Adult Office, Ho, Ho, Ho Award, Best Tutor Room KS3, Best Tutor Room KS4, Most Imaginative Display, Best Winter Wonderland and the Best Individual Display.

The overall winner was Mr Roberts’ lab, A39. The other winners were:-

Best Adult Office Main Office; Ho, Ho, Ho, Award Finance; Best Tutor Room KS3 7CHD Ms Halford D06; Best Tutor Room KS4 10LCS Mr Collins B04; Best Individual Display SSU (window); Most Imaginative Display LRC (12 days of Christmas); Best Winter Wonderland Y7/8 offices