Noadswood Bulletin Week commencing 3rd march 2025

Events Coming Up

10-17th Year 11 Mock GCSE’s

10-13th Year 10 Iceland Trip

14th ATA Programme Trip to Southampton

17-19th Food Practical Exam

17 & 18th Gym and Dance rehearsals

18th Year 11 Progress Event (Invite only)

19 & 20th Gym and Dance Show

21st Year 10 BTEC Art

Message from the Leadership Team

As you read this newsletter, many Noadswood colleagues with our friends across the Waterside and beyond in Hampshire are involved in our collaborative Waterside INSET: we look forward to sharing our learning with you, and we thank every single school and speaker involved with this day for making this happen – a special shout out to Mrs Rollett, Assistant Headteacher, for pulling such a large event of professional learning together, with speakers for us to learn from who are at the top of their game. We are very lucky.

We were delighted this week to write to our year 6 families to welcome them to the Noadswood family. The ‘moving up’ team and I have started our visits to year 6 students within their schools this week and look forward to more visits in the coming weeks. Anything we can do to answer questions, provide reassurances, and be friendly faces they will already feel they know helps, and we enjoy these visits such a lot. If you have a child joining us, please do look at our dedicated webpage and remember to email any queries to movingup@noadswood.hants.sch.uk

We know that many families are keen to plan ahead: we are starting to update our website with our 2025-26 term dates. We work with local schools regarding our INSET days and so we have just a few outstanding dates which we will look to populate in the coming weeks.

Last week, I enjoyed the second of two recent Hot Choc catch up with lots of Noadswood’s sporting heroes with our formidable PE leader, Mr Shearsmith. The first was a group of PE Champions, who do so much for sports leadership in the local community – we popped a photo of this brilliant group on the socials. The second was some students succeeding in a host of sports, outside of school, managing the demands of school around that, as well as some who play well for school teams, and one more of those PE champs. It’s a joy to work with them all for the success, teamwork and leadership they bring.

It's been an exciting week for year 10! We know that many of you are packing for our forthcoming trip to Iceland. With less than a week to go until our Year 10 trip to Iceland, please can parents ensure they have read the final reminders email. There is palpable excitement amongst students and staff alike and I hope you all have a fantastic experience – thank you in advance for all the efforts and energy that go into a visit like this, and for all the parent/carer support, too.

Year 10 students also took part in the Mock Interview evening this week, a brilliant opportunity for students to experience an interview and receive feedback from employers about their CV and covering letter as well as their interview itself. Not only were the interviews great for students to gain experience of what a job interview is like, it is also fantastic practice for them as they begin to prepare for their college interviews next year.

We want to say a huge well done to all students who came along and showed a great attitude towards developing their confidence and interviewing skills. In addition, we would like to congratulate Miss Clews and Mr Lewis for all of the support and opportunities that they provide our students with in helping them towards life after Noadswood.

Sincere thanks, too, to the amazing employers from our local community, as well, for giving their time and skills to interviewing the students. Our Chair, Alison Munden, was one such interviewer, messaging me as she got home to say how lovely our young people were, and how well they did. It has a great Waterside spirit, this event.

If you are a local employer and would like to get involved in future school Careers events, such as this one, please contact Miss Clews at jclews@noadswood.hants.sch.uk.

This week we were joined by ‘The Riot Act’ who presented some important messages about road, rail and cycling safety to our Year 10 students. The students participated in a range of interactive activities to explore the risks, dangers and distractions we experience and most importantly the small things that we can all do to keep ourselves safe. We hope that the students found this useful and will take on board the key messages about being safe and responsible. Thank you to Miss Skinner for arranging this important health and safety event.

Build a Book Event

Our annual Build a Book event took place on Wednesday this week. We welcomed Year 5 students from our feeder schools: Orchard Juniors, Marchwood Juniors, Hythe Primary and Waterside Primary to work alongside published author, Stewart Ross. In this exciting writing workshop, students worked together, alongside Noadswood students in Year 7 and Year 10, to create their own book. Everyone had a wonderful day working on this joint story and prizes were awarded for their writing and ideas. My thanks to Miss Walker and Mrs Rollett for all they do to make this event fly.

I loved popping in to see Stewart, the children and our young people having a visibly brilliant time together, with the usual level of vibrant ideas we have loved hearing every year for about a decade!

We think this might have been Stewart’s swansong with us, and we would like to thank him for years of dedication, inspiration and fun. What an impact he has had on the enthusiasm for readers and writers on the Waterside!

We will be busy planning his successor – big shoes to fill but Build a Book must continue!

Yesterday was also World Book Day, of course, and some of us loved dressing up or wearing a book-themed lanyard so that the students could spend free time hunting for book characters and titles, sparking fun, laughter together and chats about books. I loved talking to students about the books they love that staff were representing in their costumes or lanyards. Some of us opted for characters from the good old 100 Acre Wood, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet, so I will end this week’s comments with this little quote from the real Christopher Robin: ‘In their storybooks. A child meets real flesh-and-blood characters and becomes familiar with all the inner conflicts that pull them this way and that. And as they learn to understand others, so they come nearer to understanding themselves.’ A reminder to me to leave my phone and laptop to one side and to read at some point, with no excuses made.