Dear all,

Every morning, following line up, we start our day at HP with reading. Reading teaches us about a wide range of other people and cultures, and helps us to appreciate different points of view. Every tutor group spends the first 25 minutes of the day reading together - the tutor reads a book and the class tracks it. This helps our students develop as an excellent reader and learn new vocabulary. You can click here to find out what books we're reading in each year group and the range of different themes that the books cover across the year. If you think we've missed a great book, please email our Literacy Coordinator, Ms Tomlin, at [email protected]. The day also ends with DEAR Time - Drop Everything And Read. In this period we expect students to read their own choice of book. It's a lovely, calm finish to the day.

This week we have begun our Sixth Form interviews for all of our Year 11 students who are looking towards this as the next step in their educational journey. The purpose of the interviews are to help guide the students as they make provisional choices about the subjects they would like to study in the Sixth Form, as well as supporting them to be fully aware of our expectations. I thoroughly enjoy being a part of these interviews, and one of the most enjoyable questions to hear the answer to is “what will you bring to the Sixth Form”. It has been fantastic to listen to mature young people tell me this week how they want to be role models to our younger students and play active roles in our student leadership opportunities, such as our School Council and our newly formed Eco Council.

Yesterday evening, we had our Year 9 Options process, led by Deputy Headteacher, Mr Park. This is always such an important time for our Year 9 students as they need to closely consider the subjects that they want to choose heading into Key Stage 4. Making informed choices, having weighed up the range of possibilities is very important, and we want to provide you with as much information as possible to do so. You can find all our Year 9 Options information on our website here, including how the process works and an electronic copy of our Options booklet.

I wish you all a lovely weekend,

Mr Hudson

Headteacher