This week Assemblies this week have focused on what it means to be a neighbour and in particular a good neighbour. Students also reflected on how technology is changing what we mean by neighbour and bringing people closer together virtually. The example was shared of how the Duolingo app is being used by millions of people worldwide to learn languages and how, by learning another language, we can then develop closer links with others that we might not otherwise have…
This week A Happy New Year to our whole school community. Whilst the relatively early return to school straight after New Year’s Day was probably a shock to us all, it was great to see our students and staff again on Tuesday. The Head Teacher wrote on Thursday about the challenges we faced in moving to a new catering company. Feeding the majority of the School’s 1700 students in 40 minutes at lunch time has never been an easy task…
End of autumn term As we reach the end of this first term we have been looking back over the term and reflecting on our students’ many successes and achievements. Achievement assemblies have been held for all year groups apart from Year 13 (currently completing mock examinations). Our assemblies each began with a Christmas themed performance by our KS3 Drama group, facilitated by our Sixth Form drama students. They did incredibly well performing from the stage in front of all…
Dear all, Please see our Curriculum Showcase from this half term. It is but just a small snippet of the fantastic work completed by students this half term. This showcase is a testament to the vibrant and innovative curriculum, and hard work completed by students, at Darrick Wood School. As you browse through the work, we hope you find it reflects the dedication of students to academic excellence, creativity, and personal growth that defines our DWS Life Learning Skills. Please…
This week Assemblies have been themed around the build up to Christmas and the traditions that we follow at this time. Today, many of our students and staff supported Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day. You can still donate to this worthy cause via ParentPay. Next week we will hold our achievement assemblies to recognise students’ hard work and achievements through the autumn term. Christmas Concert On Thursday, 14th December the Music Department will present our Christmas Concert, the culmination…
This week With Year 11 starting their mock examinations, as is usual at this time of year, our main assembly moved to an alternative rota for Years 7-10. This week’s theme focused on Peace. This follows on from our Remembrance assemblies a fortnight ago. The assemblies began with cast members from our Wizard of Oz school production speaking about their experience in the show, followed by a recording and photo montage from the production. We may now have Over the…
This week We have held Remembrance assemblies all week with all year groups. These included speeches from two of our fabulous History Ambassadors who talked about the origins of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and the famous poem, “In Flanders Fields”, by John McCrae. At the end of assembly we all stood, observed the Last Post (played by one of our musicians) and held a minute’s silence. As usual, no doubt many of our students will also be…
This week We managed to escape the worst of Storm Ciarán on Thursday to welcome hundreds of Year 11 students and their parents/carers to our Sixth Form Open Evening. It was great to see so many of our own students keen to find out what life in the Sixth Form is like and to consider which of the many subjects we offer would interest them the most. We were pleased to see such a large number of students from other…
Autumn term – reflections on the term so far We started this year with assemblies that emphasised the special community that exists in a school and our school in particular. We encouraged students to support each other to live by our values of Respect, Responsibility and Honesty. There have been so many examples of this so far this year, from charity fund raising (e.g. Jeans for Genes Day), to the Year 7 team building days, our fantastic Open Evening guides…
This week Thank you to parents of students in Year 11 for attending our Year 11 Parents’ Information Evening. From the comments received we understand this was an evening that parents really appreciated. We will be sending home copies of the presentation by email early next week. Assemblies this week have focused on the theme of Forgiveness – how we need to learn to forgive not just others, but also ourselves. We were also lucky to hear from Mr Wright,…