Friday 26th March 2021
Parents will have seen some correspondence from me this week regarding our Teachers Assessed Grades (TAGs) along with a presentation, and also a letter from Rebecca Anderson, regarding Drug Awareness. If you require a further copy of either of these letters or the presentation, please do contact my PA, Hanna Boddy on hboddy@salisbury6cac.uk
With the Easter Holidays fast approaching, we are as busy as ever at S6C and here are some exciting news stories this week.
Best wishes,
Louise
Vice Principal
Careers Update – Rosie Roberts, Student Liaison Officer and Careers Lead
UCAS Fair
Last week students had a Life Skills session with their tutors on researching university in order to prepare for the virtual UCAS Fair which all Year 12s had the opportunity to attend this week.
The virtual UCAS Fair gave students the opportunity to speak live to universities and employers from across the country. This is a great starting point for students to begin their research into higher education options and we would now encourage students to book Open Days for the universities they’re interested in.
The day also had a series of live webinars covering topics such as “How to start researching what’s right for you”, “Student finance explained”, “How to land your dream apprenticeship” and “Simple steps of applying to uni”.
Work Experience
Next week Year 12 students will be exploring Virtual Work Experience opportunities with their tutors in Life Skills. They will register with Speakers for School, an online platform for virtual work experience placements and hear from a local employer, Jaime Williamson from DSTL, on tips for successfully applying for virtual work experience placements and what activities a virtual work placement could involve.
All students are tasked with sourcing and participating in the equivalent of three day’s meaningful employer engagement (MEE, otherwise known as work experience) before the end of the Autumn term in the second year. This will allow students to undertake and evidence experience of work in an area relevant to their career aspirations or, if students are undecided on their career goal, a placement that will support them in exploring their progression options.
We will support students to source virtual work experience placements this year by sharing opportunities students can apply for in the Google Information Classroom.
Speakers for Schools does require parental permission for the College to submit information on behalf of the student so please do respond to emails requesting your permission to confirm your young person’s virtual work experience application.
Career Pilot
After Easter, students will have an introduction to using Career Pilot to research all careers options and will complete the Pathway Planner which is an online programme to review how confident students feel about researching their next steps following College.
Although our students are young adults and making important decisions for themselves about their future, we appreciate the support and guidance you as parents give your young people. You may find it helpful to look at the information and links we have on the careers page on our website https://www.salisbury6c.ac.uk/students/careers/ when discussing careers options with your young person. Here you will find information on labour market information and links to information on university, apprenticeships and employment options. Students can access all of the materials used in the careers education programme through the Google Information Classroom and they may wish to log in to the Classroom with you to enable you to view these resources too.
Life Skills Update – Rebecca Anderson, Pastoral Lead
S6C teachers and tutors are committed to constantly improving our pastoral care and our ability to equip students with all they need to move forward as well informed, confident, empowered citizens and young adults. Our Pastoral Meetings for Tutors have previously covered training on careers and next steps signposting, and how we can best support our LGBTQ+ student community, with a focus on supporting non-binary/gender queer/trans students.
Thursday’s collaborative training was on cultural capital, making connections, and closing the gaps – it was inspiring to hear the tutor team excitedly sharing ideas on how we can ensure that every single student (whatever their background, prior knowledge or prior performance) can access the information, skills, wider knowledge, resilience, resources, habits and conduct to be able to grow as individuals.
For this to be successful, life skills are integrated beyond tutor time and into lessons, clubs, and daily interactions – and we need to find creative ways of getting students to see the relevance of these skills, choosing to incorporate them into what they already know about the world and themselves.
We are always keen to hear from parents and community members who feel they may have something to add to our Life Skills programme across tutor time, subjects, and our speaker programme. Please contact Rebecca Anderson, pastoral lead, with your ideas, suggestions, or offers of input.
Creative Faculty Update – Richard Eno, Faculty Lead for Creative
Media
This week Media students have been working on a Sound for Film unit and student Sam Harrison has been making the sound components to a scene from Jurassic Park! This has included re-recording all the dialogue from the film with actors from S6C as well as rerecording the famous theme tune using Logic Pro. Here’s a screenshot from the scene
Art
Year 12 Art are currently making individual pieces of mix media /textile in response to ‘Connecting again’. All pieces will contain a message about how they felt covid and lockdown affected their identity. The pieces will come together as one hanging/ exhibition in the art room during our session this Friday.
Year 12 photographers are now working on organising a possible exhibition of works produced to date. They are exploring ideas and spaces whether online or on site, out of site… Etc. They are also researching what a curator ‘s role is. A live q & a with a curator is being organised (dates to be confirmed)
Humanities Faculty Update – Sally Tye, Faculty Lead for Humanities
Making the classroom real, our BTEC Business students have the opportunity to work with Chris Woodgate CEO of Goodwood.
Chris Woodgate, the Goodwood CEO joined the Year 12 BTEC Business class to give an overview of the Goodwood Estate, the Group that runs the internationally renowned Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival and has a number of other hospitality businesses including a hotel, and a private member’s club alongside traditional Estate activities such as Goodwood Home Farm – one of the UK’s largest downland organic farms.
Providing two workshops, he initially focussed on the core values of the business, the organisational structure of the business, its unique ownership model, the importance of developing your staff and using customer perception to refocus the business.
In the second week Chris considered the impact of the pandemic on the Goodwood Estate , providing a real life commentary on how the estate has met the significant financial challenges they have faced, developed a strategy to stabilize the business financially and provided a pathway forward for it to grow again.
For our business students to experience working with a CEO of one of the top hospitality and events organisations in the UK was a huge opportunity for them to develop their skills and knowledge beyond what is taught in the classroom. Chris will be joining us again in the new college year to work with our students on developing their leadership potential.
STEM Faculty Update – Kirsty White, Faculty Lead for STEM
Six of our students recently completed a virtual work experience opportunity with Great Western Hospitals. The process was extremely competitive and students enjoyed the opportunity to explore various aspects of the NHS through a series of online lectures, as well as interactive activities such as quizzes and writing personal statements. They have provided their individual reflections on their experiences. As a college, we are very proud of how they conducted themselves throughout the experience and are grateful to GWH for awarding so many places to our students.
Hannah Coleman (Y13): “The whole programme gave me a brilliant insight into what a career might look like with the NHS, as webinars were hosted for each of the occupations covered, with professionals talking about their job role, and answering a wide variety of questions during Q&A sessions. The work experience really allowed me to gain an understanding of what it means to have a career in the NHS, with inspirational words from professionals, tasks labelling parts of an ultrasound and much more. The experience as a whole was brilliant, and I enjoyed every part of it! I really feel more confident now regarding how to work towards a career with the NHS, and and truly excited for what the future may hold! So a big thank you to Springpod, the NHS and Great Western Hospitals for this brilliant experience, which I would certainly recommend to anyone else interested in a career with the NHS.”
Isabelle Richardson (Y13): “The work experience gave me the opportunity to gain much needed experience for my Health and Social Care coursework while still remaining flexible to work around college and a job, which I think is something unique to the GWH virtual work experience. I thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks spent enriching my knowledge of what it means to work for the NHS, not just job roles available but the core values at the heart of the work. This helped me specifically as I could use this not just in my future work, but when going off to university and in the interviewing process as it links perfectly with the values instilled in my course which they ask a lot about in interviews. The GWH work experience enabled me to talk well on the subject. In my opinion, the most interesting part of the experience was learning about clinical psychology as it is fascinating to hear from the psychologists firsthand how they work, what other professionals they work alongside, how they gained their qualifications and what they find challenging about their work.”
Francesca Lloyd (Y13): “The great western work experience has allowed me to gain an insight into the daily roles of many different healthcare careers. Due to current situations being able to access virtual experience has been really useful for university applications and interviews. It has also given me the confidence that I know I have chosen the right career path to pursue.”
Ella McGrail(Y12): “I think that taking part in GWH’s work experience has allowed me to gain more of an insight into healthcare and different professions in it. I gained awareness of the many roles within the NHS and how they differ from each other. I particularly enjoyed the midwifery and clinical psychology talks as I thought they were really interesting. I liked that we were able to talk to healthcare professionals to gain a valuable look into what their day-to-day working life’s are like. I have also gained knowledge on what qualifications and values I may need to undertake a career in healthcare. I think it was useful that even though the work experience was online, it was extremely interactive, and we were able to ask questions and gain feedback on any activity we completed. I think partaking in this work experience will be beneficial for me in the future as I want to go into healthcare- it has helped me understand more about working within the industry and how to stand out from others.”
Megan Cowdrey(Y12): “I really enjoyed the virtual work experience. I really enjoyed learning about a range of different healthcare professions and how their job can make a difference to people’s lives. It was also really interesting to hear from various people in healthcare who were passionate about their job. From hearing what their job is like day to day to what led them to a career in healthcare. In particular, I loved learning about careers in psychology and also listening to psychologists about their career and what it entails. This also confirmed for me that I want to study psychology further and gave suggestions how to get into this field. The work experience also gave me greater knowledge that will be useful for University, as I now have a better understanding of the skills required to be a psychologist, such as communication, empathy and problem solving. As well as knowledge of most of the healthcare professions that work alongside psychologists.”
Imogen Primmer (Y12): “The work experience helped me gain a lot more knowledge in the different roles within the NHS. I enjoyed how you could complete the activities in your own time, so it can work around your college timetable. The webinars were also recorded so if you were unable to attend, you can watch it afterwards. I found the webinars really interesting and useful as there was one for each subtitle listed as part of the work experience. This meant that you were able to learn from people who actually work for the NHS what their job is about and we had opportunities to ask them questions at the end of the webinar. It has benefited me as I now know what I would like to do in the future and how to get there by either applying to university or doing a degree apprenticeship.”
Enrichment – Dr Sally Tye, Lead for Baking Club
Baking club took on the challenge of an enriched dough with a double prove this week, making hot cross buns – great efforts from everyone.
Maddy Sheely’s (left) and Rebecca and Megan Cowdrey’s (right)
