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FARINGDON COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Week Two – School Closure We’ve been sending out regular communications through Edulink during our enforced closure, and I hope you’ve found these useful. You will also have noticed that schoolwork over the Easter break will be more in keeping with what is normally set over a holiday period. As I said last week, setting appropriate work for everyone is not easy, as people’s home circumstances are very different and although we can provide the work, and some of the resources, it is important that parents monitor what their children do. It is unrealistic for every child to complete every piece of work and I would not want students to feel anxious about their work. What is important is that there is some engagement with the activities set and staff are acknowledg-ing completed work, either through comments, or through our rewards scheme. There is a sense that the nationwide lockdown and the school closures will be going on for some time and I believe that we need to manage expectation from both sides, home and school.

As I write this article, I’m waiting for details from OFQUAL on what evidence we will need to submit to the examining boards for those students who this year were planning to take their GCSE’s or A levels. All par-ents of these students will be kept informed through Edulink.

As we approach the Easter break it’s normally a time when I present badges to students in their year group assemblies, based on student attainment. Staff have still nominated students and 147 badges have been posted to those successful students. I hope it brings much needed cheer when they drop on the doormat in the next few days.

All schools were asked this week to donate any PPE to support our health and social care workers. We put a package together from some of our resources in Science and DT, of gloves and safety goggles, which were collected on Thursday. It was only a small contribution but the co-ordinators were very grateful.

This week’s edition of the newsletter contains many examples of poetry and photography which cap-ture, ‘working from home’. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have and can I thank all the students and parents who have contributed.

I hope you all have a healthy and restful Easter break. C. Proffitt Headteacher

LIAM

7KS

AR STAR

OF THE WEEK

To aid the support available for students during the school’s closure, we have opened a YouTube channel and will be making use of the school’s Twitter account. These can be found in the following places:

Twitter: @FaringdonCC

YouTube: Faringdon Community College

Mr Bew

Assistant Head teacher - Head of Key Stage 4

HEADTEACHER’S BLOG

If you would like to read the Headteacher’s Blog, click the link below

http://www.fccoxon.co.uk/headteachers-blog-1/

A handful of scattered sherbets,

Decks the lining of my palm,

The last defence I cling to,

To blur the ever-present alarm.

In fact, I wouldn’t have them,

Resting in my hand at all,

If this alarm I spoke of,

Was like the bell at school.

Lord knows my friends would have seized them,

And squandered them all away,

But regardless of this sentiment,

I miss my friends still anyway.

A menial religion of ‘Scrabble’,

To leapfrog over the hour,

A military scramble,

To go to the shops for flour.

Heart on sleeve - I know I should do that essay I’ve put off,

The constant barrage of emails amplifies that well enough.

But what good is learning when it spells redundancy,

Everything we thought we knew tainted with uncertainty.

Yes, what’s the point of revision,

In these quote unquote ‘strange times’,

The point of learning another poem,

Or the LCM of eighty-nine.

What a wry concept indeed,

As the evenings tend to proceed,

With my pile of books teetering ever higher,

The eternity of Day simmers down to Night’s empire,

With the lull of the BBC’s sinister jingle,

An incoming bombardment of statistics signaled.

With the dismissal of all things seemingly democratic,

Cloaked in a faint hum of radio static,

Illness eventually creeps in like a half-disciplined,

Burglar with the future held at ransom in his grin.

Curious how in the sombre affair of a tie,

The news starts with a “good evening” drawl,

And then proceeds to unravel why,

It is not a “good evening” after all.

With time ebbing away at these fruitless spring days,

My handful of scattered sherbets seems to always go to waste.

By Ezra 11JC

Winning Poem

Home School

(Commended poem)

A week and a day

since the lockdown began

we're trapped in our house

there's a travelling ban.

No school to get up for

This should be such fun

Too much time on my hands

And nowhere to run.

Only five of us here

Alone and shut-in

Just a trip to the park

Would it be such a sin?

The government told us

We mustn't go out

Wash your hands keep, your distance

But loo roll there's nowt!

What's App and Email

It's just not the same

I'm missing my buddies

This is all just so lame.

Months without freedom

Could Covid be winning?

Our doctors are desperate

None of them grinning.

Let's look on the brightside

Get out of self pity

We're surrounded by country

Not stuck in a city.

We can walk from our home

And straight round a field

Take the dog for a stroll

We've no need to shield.

The crisis upon us

It one day shall pass

Then laughing and joking

We'll be back in our class!

James—7ABk

Summer Gleams:

As the sunlight shone upon the water, I glared at my ecstatic daughter, She played joyfully on the sand,

While in the distance, I observed a beautiful land, My picture was full of color,

Like a never- ending summer, I lay there in composure, with the picture tightly in my hand,

Never mind the hot, awkward sand, Looking up, I glazed at the clouds,

My mind was free, Bright and Brave like the wind or sea,

Summer gleams happily, As my daughter approaches me,

She asks to return home while it’s only three, I smile back at her and get my house key,

Tired and fatigued, we go to sleep, I follow her up to bed, to read her a story,

The one about finding dory, When she snoozes of to sleep,

Beside her, I lay her fluffy teddy sheep, As I close my eyes to rest,

I wonder, what a lovely day it has been at the sea.

by Fadi 10GGb (Commended poem)

Adjust

The morning sun filters through my silky curtains that struggled

throughout the night to keep away the persistent cold.

Thoughts race, pace showing no sign of stopping. Crashing, zooming. Unlocking questions in my mind that I look forward to answering throughout the day.

A sip of the water. Quenched. A rub of the eye. Satisfied.

Reaching for the window my ears perk up to the sound of angelic birdsong amplified amid all chaos going on inside my mind. “Did I submit the Geography? Did I accomplish this task to a high enough standard?”

I miss my daily commute to and from school. The thrill of meeting my friends every day and never getting bored of seeing them is cool.

Distraction lurks in every corner, whether that be in the form of the notifications popping up on your phone or the sound of the unknown.

Learning from home

Staying in the zone

Isolated and alone

We’re all adjusting to learning from home.

By Baaba (8TF)

Daniel 8DC

Winning Pictures

Fatma—7CM

Ferguson Family

Hampton Family

Harry—8SR

Katie—8TF

Erin—10RC

Nial—8AMl

Oxfordshire Book Awards 2020

Winner Announcement!

Best Secondary Novel:

Highly Recommended:

Many thanks to all of the students that took part in the Oxfordshire Book Awards this year by reading the shortlisted books, attending the lunchtime club in the library, writing book reviews and voting for their

favourite book.

https://oxfordshirebookaward.webs.com

We know a lot of our students love to read and, sometimes, we can get a little stuck when deciding what to choose

next. We would like to help! Every four weeks or so, we will recommended a book for each year group. If your child is

a speedy reader, they may wish to read a book from one of the other year groups in addition.

We’d love to hear how your child found the book so if they’d like to write a review, please send it through to

cekitching@fcc.faringdon.academy

Happy reading!

KS3 Recommended Reads

.

Y7 Bearmouth by Liz

Hyder

Life in Bearmouth is one of hard labour, the sunlit

world above the mine a distant memory. Reward will

come in the next life with the benevolence of the

Mayker. New accepts everything - that is, until the

mysterious Devlin arrives.

Suddenly, Newt starts to look at Bearmouth with a

fresh perspective, questioning the system, and

setting in motion a chain of events that could

destroy their entire world. In this powerful and

brilliantly original debut novel, friendship creates

strength, courage is hard-won and hope is the path

to freedom.

Y8 Monsters by Sharon Dogar

1814: Mary Godwin, the sixteen-year-old daughter of

radical socialist and feminist writers, runs away with a

dangerously charming young poet - Percy Bysshe

Shelley. From there, the two young lovers travel a

Europe in the throes of revolutionary change,

through high and low society, tragedy and passion,

where they will be drawn into the orbit of the mad

and bad Lord Byron.

But Mary and Percy are not alone: they bring Jane,

Mary's young step-sister. And she knows the biggest

secrets of them all . . .

Y9 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything,

almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. One

snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander

dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime.

That same evening a deadly virus touches down in

North America. The world will never be the same

again.

Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling

Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements

that have grown up since the collapse. But then her

newly hopeful world is threatened. If civilization was

lost, what would you preserve? And how far would

you go to protect it?

w/c Monday 30th March to w/c Monday 4th May