History
In Year 9 History this week, our pupils worked in groups within their year group bubbles and debated the justification of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2. All of our Year 9 historians displayed incredible levels of maturity when discussing the topic and were shining examples of Plymouth College pupils.
Biology
This week has been a fun week for our Year 11 biologists, who have been getting back to the laboratory for their practical lessons! Their lab sessions have consisted of dissection different organs, including a heart and a kidney and learning about all of the different sections as part of their GCSE course. Distance also hasn't stopped our pupils from learning about dissection thanks to our Google Classrooms and has meant that our international pupils are still able to learn with their classmates with live demonstrations courtesy of their lab partners.
Sports Baccalaureate & PE
In Sports Baccalaureate and A Level PE this week, our sixth form students have been participating in a wide range of activities with Miss Tremaine, to contribute to their final grades for the year. In our Sports Baccalaureate course, our Upper Sixth students have been creating, filming and editing their very own first aid videos from their own sporting injury scenarios. In Lower Sixth Sports Baccalaureate, our students have been preparing themselves for sports careers by updating their CVs and application cover letters for a sports career of their choice.
In A level PE, our Sixth Form pupils have been investigating competitive sporting and have been investigating how elements such as confidence and self-efficacy can change competitive orientation in sport.
Languages
In German, our Year 7 pupils met their German pen-pals virtually in February, travelled around the map of Europe learning countries and languages spoken and are now learning how to describe where they live. Year 8 have been consolidating their amazing work during online learning about the future tense and have worked hard to improve their language and are now ready to begin the past tense next week. Their dedication, hard work and sense of fun is aspirational and they are proving themselves to be very capable linguists.
Year 10 GCSE German pupils are ahead of schedule for the year and have recently finished pieces of work writing about holidays in different tenses and have just begun a new topic on healthy living. In Year 11, our focus has been on bringing together all the elements of the course and practising the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing whilst also fine-tuning some complex grammatical ideas. Mr Carr has been incredibly impressed with the resilience and tenacity shown by the pupils.
In French, our Year 8 pupils have been working on talking and writing about their daily routine, the time and giving their opinions on school subjects. After Easter, we plan to expand our vocabulary knowledge and learn all about clothes, followed by a fashion show! In Year 9, our linguists have been revisiting their early years by learning all about the imperfect tense and will also enjoy a "guess the baby" competition on their last lesson before Easter with Miss Venon.
Design Technology
This week in Year 7, we have been learning to use 2D design and drawing up the start of our push torches which will be laser cut. Year 8 have been learning to use a 3D CAD program which will work with our 3D printers and Year 9 have been modelling their smart watches in 3d CAD and 3D printing their watch faces.
In Year 10 students have completed a series of practical lessons finishing off their concrete planter projects. They made a mould in cardboard which was then filled with concrete to hold a plant. They then used pine to create a stand for the concrete planter cutting and chiselling a halving joint. Their outcomes were fantastic. They have also been learning about mechanical devices in our theory lessons. We took our lesson outside for students to test our their knowledge of types of motion, acting them out in the playground.
Lower Sixth have been focussing on inclusive design this week. They completed some primary research evaluating what it was like to complete a set journey without their vision. They then used this knowledge to redesign some products in teams focussing on making the products more inclusive.
Psychology
In Psychology this week with Mr Bryan, our Sixth Form students have been tackling the subject of abnormality, in relation to abnormal behaviours associated with mental illnesses. To start off the subject, our Sixth Form psychologists have been investigating phobias and OCD specifically and analysing the behaviours of people with those mental conditions.
Mayflower 401
This week a volunteer group of Lower Sixth students met to start a learning journey alongside students from the Netherlands. They will be making online introductions next week and then getting out and about to explore our local monuments connected with the 1620 voyage of The Mayflower, which set out from Leiden in the Netherlands, stopping at Southampton, Dartmouth and Plymouth carrying the Pilgrim Fathers to a new life in America.
They will then exchange their images and information about our local monuments with those in Leiden and, hopefully, in Boston and New England and consider whether the monuments we have tell all sides of the story equally well. This will culminate in an online international debate about the role of public commemoration and the kinds of information and context we need to understand all sides of the stories we tell about the people and places that made us who we are today.
Music
It has been wonderful to hear voices and instruments in harmony again after three months of solos and muted mics. Congratulations to all those students who have kept up lip muscle tone, finger flexibility or vocal stamina - it has not been easy to keep motivated when you can't play your part in a group. Our choirs are working on The Rose, made famous by Bette Midler; our string ensemble is working on The Capriol Suite by Peter Warlock, and our orchestra is looking at Renaissance dances by Praetorious and Susato.
Year 9 Music celebrated St Patrick's Day as part of their project on researching, composing and performing Irish jigs!
Year 10 Music have been benefiting from bringing their own devices into school to use dedicated composing software to write waltzes, and all of Years 9-11 have been using the new MuseScore software to get an immediate playback as they compose.
Politics Club
In our Sixth Form Politics Club, we have been looking at the prevalent topic of professional athletes and their ability to use their exposure to spread awareness about key social issues before matches, under the critical question: should players be forced to take a knee in respect of the recent growth of the BLM movement?
We quickly came to the conclusion that the desire to force athletes to do this was arguably the antithesis of what the BLM movement represents - freedom from oppression. Whilst the act of taking a knee is an effective way to raise awareness, we also decided that further, more direct action needed to be taken by professional teams. The symbolism of the knee is a welcome sign that change is happening, however deeper, fundamental change is necessary for an equal society with equal opportunity.
