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Covid Safe Careers Day!

On October 22nd, 2020 we held a Covid safe careers day event. Several outside speakers attended following all guidance to enable our students to have access to a variety of careers and HE and FE providers. Key Stage three students took part in a variety of events including a STEM activity, which was well received and a business design challenge. Thank you to Marriott Hotel group and Willmott Dixon who delivered bespoke sessions on the day.

In Key stage 4, we enabled students to explore apprenticeships, careers in the armed forces and uniformed services as well as the RAF. Students also attended a session about the sixth form at Etone and various colleges in the area. By popular request, the Landscape gardener also attended and visited groups during the day.

Sixth form students had the opportunity to explore apprenticeships and HE. The football academy met with football managers and people within the sport.

Think higher and the careers hub were also in attendance to enable selected students to continue with their training.

Feedback from employers and students has been positive. Employers have complimented us on the safety aspect and the engagement of our students. The students themselves stated that the day was informative and has helped them think about future carers and the links between our employability skills and the careers they may wish to follow. The Careers Hub is using Etone as an example of good practice in the current Covid pandemic and we were all delighted to still be able to provide our students with some hands-on experiences of careers.

Careers Guidance Pupil Hub

We are excited to launch our brand new Careers Guidance Pupil Hub.

Pupils need to be prepared for the evolving working world and so, at the heart of our Careers Programme, is a focus on building up essential lifelong employability skills.

Visit our new website to access a wealth of careers guidance, designed to support both pupils and parents.

With our brand new resources, you can…

Choose a subject you love and see where it might lead
Explore your options for when you leave school
Gain valuable advice on applying to university, apprenticeships and jobs
Practice your interview skills
Discover alternative options like gap years or starting your own business

www.matrixacademytrust.co.uk/careers

Careers / General - 10/15/2020

Literary Detectives

Year 7 have had an extremely exciting start to their English lessons at Etone College. After completing a two-week introduction to the dystopian genre, we have started to study the novel “Thief!” by Malorie Blackman. This book tells the story of Lydia, a girl who moves to a new school and is accused of stealing the Sports Cup. As a result, Lydia’s whole world is turned upside-down. Students have particularly enjoyed the range of expressions and emotions within the text. They have also found the idea of a child starting at a new school to be relatable, which helps to engage them with the text.

The students have been using ideas from “Thief!” to craft their own pieces of writing, ranging from diary entries to re-writing parts of the story.

The students are also taking their first steps towards becoming literary detectives, analysing Blackman’s use of language and how this creates certain ideas and feelings for the reader. Everyone is showing fantastic commitment and creating some superb pieces of independent work.

Away from “Thief!”, students have also been having weekly “library” lessons. While it is not always possible for these to take place in the school library, we still have an hour each week where students complete spelling tests and share the reading of the class book (Holes or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas). Students have told their teachers that they really appreciate the opportunity to read “for fun”.

Uncategorized - 10/01/2020

European Day of Languages House Competition

To celebrate European Day of Languages we held a Food House competition where students in Years 7, 8 and 9 were tasked with creating a cake that represented European Day of Languages or an individual European country. Due to Covid 19 restrictions cakes were baked at home and photographs of the bakes were sent in for judging. The standard of cakes was amazing and lots of entries were received. Mr Smith had the challenging job of selecting the winners who all won a prize and house points for their houses. Excellent work!

General - 09/28/2020

Lockdown Food Superstars

During the Lockdown school closure period, students showed excellent problem solving, initiative and resilience, several of our school Employability skills. They responded amazingly to work set online and soon my email box was full of images of creations that students had made at home! A range of new culinary skills were developed and other, existing skills were practised and honed. Students tried their hand at lots of dishes- such as family meals consisting of healthy eating ingredients, meals that used a maximum of 5 ingredients due to limited availability of ingredients, several cultural dishes such as tuna niçoise, tartiflette, fruit galette, then there was pavlova, mug cakes, pasta salad, blondies, victoria sponge cake and many more! Although many students sent in work and rose to the weekly food challenge there were a group of students who consistently applied themselves and sent work in every week- often trying out different variations of the same recipe.

These students were rewarded for their consistent effort and application with a certificate and prize when returning to school in September. The prizes were baking-themed to encourage students to continue to develop their passion for food and cooking at home. Students were given some recipe cards for some more complex dishes to further extend their skills. It has been great to see that these students have continued to send in photos of their work this term too including dishes that they have created using their baking equipment and recipe cards. Further prizes will be presented to students for excellence in Food this term.

General - 09/09/2020

Sixth Form Enrolment

Sixth Form enrolment for internal applicants will take place on GCSE Results day on 20^th August. Following the collection of your results in your allocated time slot, you will have the opportunity to enrol with a member of the Sixth Form leadership team.

Sixth Form enrolment for external applicants will take place on Thursday 20^th August between the hours of 12:30pm – 2:30pm. In order to enrol you into our Sixth Form we need you to provide the following:

A printed copy of your GCSE results
A valid form of identification (passport or birth certificate)

Please ensure that you have these with you at the time of enrolment.

If you cannot attend on results day, there will be an additional opportunity for enrolment on Monday 24^th August between the hours of 9:30am-1:30pm.

Enrolment will take place in the main Sixth Form block. Please report to the Sixth Form Reception entrance, located on the corner of Trent Road. Please also note that there will be social distancing procedures in place with a one in, one out queue system.

In order to enrol you into our Sixth Form we need you to provide a printed copy of your GCSE results. Please ensure that you have these with you at the time of enrolment.

We will look forward to congratulating you on your GCSE results and welcoming you to Etone College Sixth Form.

General - 07/15/2020

Results Day 2020

Results will be available as follows:

A Level/AS Level/BTEC Level 3 – 13^th August 2020

GCSE/BTEC Level 2 – 20^th August 2020

You will receive a letter advising you of the time you can collect your results and detailing the arrangements that have been put in place to ensure a safe environment during results day. To keep numbers inside to a minimum, please do not bring your parents/carers or friends into the building with you.

Here is a video from Ofqual with more details about how they are making grades consistent with previous years:

General - 07/14/2020

Big Bang Digital 2020

Tuesday 14 July from 10am to 4pm

Big Bang Digital 2020 – science, engineering and Covid-19 is a free online event for young people 11+ to attend short, inspiring sessions looking at all aspects of STEM in a pandemic.

It’s the perfect opportunity for students to see STEM careers in action, hear inspiring stories from incredible people (including a Nobel Prize winner), ask questions in live Q&A sessions, add their voice to online polls and complete activities throughout the day.

Big Bang Digital can be included as part of home learning or streamed in school and is a secure environment with safeguarding measures in place.

Line-up at a glance:

TV & Radio Science Presenter, Podcaster & YouTuber Greg Foot will be hosting live
Meet NHS frontline staff, join the race to find a vaccine and ask the experts your coronavirus questions.
Hear from people designing PPE, ventilators and a social distancing lanyard
Find out how the NHS Nightingale hospitals were built so quickly
Meet the teams keeping things moving, water in the taps and food in the shops
Explore lockdown cyber security and staying safe online
Pay tribute to key workers with a rainbow science show with Gastronaut Stefan Gates

To check out the full programme visit: www.digitalbigbang.co.uk

Uncategorized - 07/10/2020

Virtual House Sports!

This term house sport took on a new form when it went virtual! Pupils were asked to support their house by posting photos of their workouts on Twitter and adding the hashtag for their house. Lots of pupils and staff got involved with house sport and showed great support for their houses. Well done to everyone.

The winning house was DRAGON!

A huge well done to everybody who got involved!

Uncategorized - 06/24/2020

Food News!

Staff have been massively impressed with the amazing creations students have been making at home during recent weeks! It has been lovely to see both baking being done and meals being created too! Lockdown has provided an ideal chance for many of us, both students and adults too, to develop our range of culinary skills and repertoire of dishes. Students have used this time really positively and effectively responding enthusiastically to the challenges set, especially the practical ones. Valuable life skills have been gained and employability skills have been practiced. One of our school employability skills is resilience and we have been blown away by the resilience of our students who have adapted to a new way of working and have produced home learning with such creativity. Many students are now regularly cooking meals for their families independently or assisting parents within the family kitchen. They are thinking about reducing food waste, planning meals to use up available ingredients, time management whilst also working hygienically and safely.

A weekly food challenge has been set at the start of each week detailing a themed practical activity. This is in addition to a range of theory and research activities researching chefs, methods of cooking, designing dishes for sports people, finding out about different dietary needs and the functions of ingredients too. There has also been time to watch Food related TV shows and write a review, to gain ideas and inspiration for new recipes to try. It is worth remembering too that by developing practical skills and creating delicious food, students are also incorporating some important skills such as numeracy and literacy into their daily schedule. Reading a set of instructions or a recipe is great literacy too especially as this involves reading for meaning and understanding. Numeracy is developed through weighing out ingredients and measuring liquids, and demonstrating accuracy to ensure consistency within recipes. This time has also allowed staff to (distantly) co-plan lots of joint challenges and House competitions, reinforcing cross-curricular links between subjects.

Projects have included the MFL and Food Cultural cuisine House competition which saw students create a range of dishes from different countries. This is a venture that we plan to continue when we are back in school. In Food we also worked together with Humanities when we celebrated VE Day, where students were invited to research and experiment with wartime recipes, which saw some fantastic results! Great examples of how teamwork and collaboration is happening across the school too!

To catch up with what is going on in Food, and to celebrate student success, check out Food on Twitter at Food@Etone.