Lakeview

We are planning a refurbishment of the Lakeview building ready for the new academic year for our sixth form students.

The building is a lovely learning environment, with a combination of large open classrooms and smaller study spaces and offers a unique experience for students as they take greater independent responsibility for their studies. We are excited about how the building will look and are already discussing a range of ideas which will be confirmed with next year's sixth form students before the end of this term.

Teacher development and research

We place a high focus at Chilwell on research and development of our practice. This year, we have had four teacher research groups investigating key areas of teaching and learning and we will be bringing plans and developments together at the end of this year.

• understanding assessment
• SEND cognition
• retrieval
• modelling

This work is on top of the individual professional development that many of our staff are engaged in, including national professional qualifications.

It was good to attend ResearchED Leicester today, following on from ResearchED Nottingham in September. The school has also been asked to present a summary of our work at the ASCL national training conference in June as well as at a regional conference in Beeston in July. We are proud of the work that our staff undertake and the desire to continue improving our practice.

Examinations and thank you

These began in earnest this week and congratulations must go to all of our students for the mature and sensible manner in which they are preparing for them and ensuring they turn up to the examination briefings and in plenty of time for the examinations to start. In addition, students in other years have been very aware and have willingly moved away from examination areas in social times. I must also thank our examinations team and especially Ms Tipping, who has organised this season with attention to detail in every aspect. Thank you.

Event for families recently arrived from Hong Kong

We are always pleased to support and publicise events that affect our families and the following is an event set up by Fusion to support families who have recently arrived from Hong Kong.

Fusion Project are holding a civic event on Saturday 28th May from 10am-1pm at Beeston Fields Golf Course for individuals and families from Hong Kong who have recently resettled in the Nottinghamshire area.

The event will run as a drop-in for local Hong Kong families, with stalls offering advice on how to vote, taxation and housing issues. There will also be civic leaders and local politicians in attendance.

The event is free of charge and there is no need to book. Translators will also be available for anyone who needs them. Please come along and learn about key local services, how you can vote and who you can vote for.

Year six to seven transition

Our next set of meetings with parents will take place after the half-term break and we are asking our primary schools to ensure we have information on close friends so that we can plan our tutor groups for next year. We are also looking forward to further visits into the primary schools and our sports leaders will be helping with primary sports days.

Finally

We ended Friday with a wonderful performance by Lincoln Poon in year eleven for a music room performance for staff. We are so lucky to have such talent and thank you for ending the week with such beautiful music. Tonight is the final performance of "First Touch" and I look forward to seeing Isaac McLeod when I attend the Playhouse this evening.