Year Group Events

Key Stage 3

Year 7

• Took part in the UNRC Climate Action plea creating presentations and posters.
• Participated in a financial literacy workshop delivered by ‘MyBnk’. 
• Enjoyed a celebration breakfast at the start of the half-term which included hot chocolate and games. 
• Have an attendance above the national average. 
• Reached the quarter finals of Cricket cup and quarter final of County cup. Both are mixed gender. 
• Were the highest participants in extracurricular activities of all year groups. 
• Are participating in Rounders, Cricket, Football, Tennis, Badminton & Rugby fixtures.

Year 8

• Have had many pupils sign up and complete training for the next round of Wellbeing Champions.
• Three pupils were chosen as winners for the 'Through Their Eyes' poetry and short story writing competition. The winners were AL, GT and HB.
• Sporting successes include several Y8 girls becoming part of the College's first ever U13 representative cricket team and Y8 pupils representing the College in the District Athletics Championship.

Year 9

• Contributed multiple members of the Dance Live Team who represented Swanmore so well during the competition.
• Selected their GCSE options and are looking forward to starting their courses in September.
• Will be helping at the Year 6 Induction Day and have been doing tours for prospective pupils.
• Have been helping the college update its rewards and communication policies by completing Pupil Voice surveys and feeding back ideas and opinions.
• Around 50 pupils completed a gruelling expedition for their DofE Bronze Award. A big well done to all of them.

Key Stage 4

Year 10

• Successfully completed their mock exams and behaved fantastically overall. We have received positive feedback from the invigilators.
• Enjoyed a ‘Revision and Financial Literacy’ day, where ‘MyBnk’ delivered very engaging finance workshops. They learnt about different revision techniques to aid them with their exams.
• A new initiative has been launched. Pupils can bring in revision each week for 10 ICC points to promote engagement and progress within the year group.

Year 11

• Attendance continued to be above national average figures throughout the term and we maintained attendance above the FFT national average for the entire school year. This shows the prom points system, with a specific attendance target of 95%, is an important aspect of securing high attendance.
• The exam season went very well with lots of positive feedback from invigilators and the exam team. We had minimal issues and only the occasional late entry.
• Our Leavers Assembly was a fun filled event and many of the pupils have expressed thanks to the team for organising it.
• Prom was a huge success and our pupils thoroughly enjoyed themselves on the fairground rides and dancing the night away. A huge thank you to all the staff involved with putting this monumental event together.

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Across the Curriculum

Art

• Mrs Ostersen’s extracurricular Y8 ‘Bronze Arts Award’ pupils hosted children from Droxford Junior School on 10 June. We had a mixture of Y3 to Y6 children and our pupils ‘team taught’ a mixed media collage workshop inspired by the artist Clare Youngs. Our Y8 pupils documented the workshop and got the junior school children to give feedback as it is all submitted as part of their Bronze Art Award submission. They are almost at the end of completing the qualification and we will be facilitating this again as a year-long enrichment option.
• We are about to introduce a new after college Key Stage 3 art based extracurricular activity to replace the Bronze Arts Award slot. Mrs Ostersen will lead an ‘Experimental Drawing Club’. It will be for Y9 pupils and run in 6 weeks cycles for 10 pupils at a time. It will be a chance for pupils to learn how to draw from observation and imagination using traditional and more unusual materials and methods. They will gain experience of working using easels and at a much larger scale compared to a usual art lesson.
• Each year we encourage pupils to enter the annual Barton Peveril Art Competition. This year they had a theme of ‘Metamorphosis’. There is a wider gallery of all pupils’ work submitted and you can spot many of our pupils there! https://sites.google.com/barton.ac.uk/artcompetition2024

Dance

• Dance Live performers were placed 2nd in their first heat and performed against colleges and private schools in the finals, being the youngest school there and the only school to not audition performers.
• Dance company members have taught a total of 6 classes, after college, to Swanmore pupils. The classes were planned and taught by themselves.
• NS, ZD, EB, BA, LB SP and other Roynon Dance members performed at The Point.
• Choreographer and dancer, Charlotte Hannah, returned to Swanmore to lead a two-hour workshop to Y9 options takers and Key Stage 3 pupils.

Drama

• LH (Y8) performed at Thornden Hall with PQA in the musical ‘Matilda’ and played the role of Miss Trunchbull.
• 81 pupils are performing in our production of ‘80 Days Around the World’. A further 31 pupils have been helping behind the scenes. Fantastic pupil engagement.
• Key Stage 3 Drama Club have been making some fantastic set designs as part of the ‘We Teach Drama’ Shoebox Competition.

Design Technology

• Y10 have made a great start on their GCSE coursework in Engineering, Product Design and Graphics. All selecting the products they will make to solve the problems posed by the examination board.
• Enrichment has once again shown a high sign up in Design & Technology related sessions, with Mrs Payne’s Enrichment creating a variety of products for SwanFest.
• Mrs Illsley and Mr Mount took 10 Y9 prospective Engineering pupils to a STEM event at the National Oceanography Centre. All were very engaged in the various STEM activities, as well as receiving information about future STEM careers.

English and Media Studies

• Y7 and Y8: this half term, all Key Stage 3 pupils wrote an entry for a national poetry competition called 'Through Their Eyes'. Pupils were taught to use emotive language and experiment with creative perspectives when writing their poems. The English team were so impressed with pupils' engagement with the challenge that we held an internal competition, with winners in various categories from 'Best Word Choices' to 'Most Interesting Perspectives'. Well done to all our budding young writers!
  Congratulations to our winners:
  • Most Creative Perspective: HB (Y7) / Best Poem Structure: JC (Y7)
  • Most Emotive Poem: GT (Y8) / Best Word Choice: AL (Y8)
• Y9: Pupils have completed their spoken language endorsement presentations. 48 pupils achieved the top grading ‘Distinction’. All English teachers were very impressed at the quality of the speeches.
• Media Studies: MM, ZS and BG have all produced outstanding pieces of coursework this term. They created a DVD cover and theatrical film poster for an original horror film - each individual aspect created from scratch using Adobe Photoshop and their own images. Each have created industry standard products.

Geography

• Our Y11s finished well with the exit survey showing that 37% have decided to take Geography at A level. 13 pupils from Y10 are having an A level taster session soon. We have arranged for the Head of Geography at Barton Peveril to give the session.
• Our Y10s went on 2 days of fieldwork a few weeks ago, giving them an opportunity to see Portsmouth’s need for regeneration and Hillhead’s need for coastal sea defences. They were a credit to the college, as mentioned by the local police in Portsmouth, who pupils interviewed as part of their fieldwork!
• Y9s have just finished a topic on glaciation, looking at previous ice ages and their impact on the UK landscape. They are now starting a unit of work about energy with a particular question about how we secure our future energy supplies in the UK, considering geopolitics across Europe and the Middle East.
• Y8s have just finished a topic on globalisation where they discovered the benefits of shared culture, information and resources and the costs of exploitation, unfair trade and inequality. They are now learning about how tsunamis are formed and how they impact countries in various ways.
• Y7s have spent this term learning about biomes, which has included fieldwork carried out on the college fields.

History

• Y7 have been studying the Holocaust, via our newly accredited scheme of work as a Beacon school. Lessons look at the forgotten holocaust of the traveller community.
• Y9 have been conducting their own hot air balloon debates to decide the greatest reason for people voting for Hitler in 1933.
• The GCSE season is over and with that 2/3rds of the department are marking for the exam board. The department are looking forward to September and the new literacy lessons, allowing us to discuss how accurate historical literature can be, how we know this, and why some facts are altered.

Mathematics

• Pupils from Swanmore achieved one gold in the Senior Mathematics Challenge, eight golds in the Intermediate event and 9 golds in the Junior Mathematics Challenge!
• We are working on embedding more problem solving/challenge into our curriculum.

MFL

• We had a successful trip to Paris in May half term.
• We are visiting Swanmore Primary School again this year where six of our Y9 pupils will be delivering a French lesson to Y6 pupils.
• Spanish pupils will be going to Seville again in October 2024, following a successful trip in October 2023.

Music

• Swanmore Jazz Band represented the college at the annual Newtown Church Fete in May. They have received lovely feedback about their performance.
• We held a feeder school music concert to inspire younger pupils to get involved with music. Pupils in Y5 and Y6 came to watch the concert with Key Stage 3 pupils performing bands, duets and soloists on a range of different instruments.
• Swanmore had three acts who all went through an audition process to perform on the main stage at SwanFest. Venture (Y8 band), Crypt (Y9 band), LH (Y10), AP (Y10) and DG (Y10) all performed really well and received a great reception.
• GT (Y8), LH (Y10) and AP (Y10) all performed well at Celebration Evening, providing vocal performances whilst pupils arrived at the event. There were two great performances from EW(Y8) on piano and EM (Y8) and JN (Y9) with a violin duet.
• The ‘Rock 2 the Beat’ enrichment, run by Hampshire Music Service, has been a success again. Pupils involved had their debut performance at the Summer Concert.
• Pupils involved in Mr Fitzgerald’s theatre tech enrichment activity have enjoyed practical experience with involvement in Dance Live and responsibility for the sound and lighting for the Feeder School Concert and Summer Music Concert.
• All ensembles, run by Mr Archer, Mr Fitzgerald and Miss Humby, along with some soloists and small groups, worked very hard preparing for the Summer Music Concert. We were excited to showcase the musical talent and hard work of all pupils over the course of this year, with over 100 pupils involved.

Physical Education

Football

Champions: Y10 Boys Football Team won their Football League.

Champions: Y8 Girls Football Team won their Football League.

Champions: Y9 Girls Football Team won their Football League.

 

Cricket

• U15 Cricket Team are on course to win their league, they are unbeaten this Summer.
• U13 Cricket Team made it to the cup semi-final and narrowly missed out on a final place by 9 runs.
• Swanmore history was achieved this term with our first ever girls’ Cricket fixture taking place. In lessons, at the start of term, Hampshire Cricket Club came to deliver sessions to girls in Y7 and Y8 which led to an after-college club.
• We have attended festivals run by Hampshire Cricket Board and have had many pupils participate in Cricket this Summer.
• Successful T20 Cricket Trip took place in June. Pupils experienced a live game taking place, unfortunately this was cut short due to rain, but they had a lot of fun.

Athletics

• Our U13 Athletics team have qualified for the track knockout plate final.
• Some of our Athletes attended the Athletics County Championships with success: PC in Y9 is Hampshire High Jump champion. ZR in Y10 is Hampshire 400m Champion.
• PC and ZR are also competing in the National Schools Athletics Championships in July for the second year running. This is an incredible achievement.
• We took 42 pupils to the District Athletics Championships. Standout performance was IS in Y7 who won her event.

Tag Rugby

• Y9 pupil AS has been selected to represent Southwest England in the U14 Junior Team for Tag Rugby. A great achievement for her and we are proud to hear this.

Sports Leaders

• We have 89 pupils signed up to participate in our Sports Leaders course which will run in Y10 Core PE lessons. This starts in September; pupils will use their qualification to assist in Primary School Events on site and at the local Primary Schools also.

Tennis

• We are looking forward to our first-ever Swanmore trip to Wimbledon, where we will be watching from Court One, on Friday 5 July.

Religious Education

• The incoming Y10 options numbers are positive. This includes three GCSE Sociology classes and one GCSE Religious Studies class.
• It was pleasing to be recognised by County for our GCSE Religious Studies public examinations results for 2022-2023.

Science

• Y8 Trip to Williams Racing, Oxford. We were fortunate enough to secure a fully funded trip to visit Williams. Places are very limited, plus there is a selection process and criteria that we had to meet. The trip was offered to all pupils in Y8. Expressions of interest were high and 40 pupils were fortunate enough to be chosen (random). The day consisted of a workshop looking at research, design, development and marketing, a tour of their museum and time on the racing simulators.
• Pupil rewards continue to be successful, with regular Superstar Weekly nominations week on week and awards for the British Science week poster competitions along with winning posters being displayed in the S Block corridor.
• National Scientific Thinking Challenge – Y10 pupils took part in this and secured a high proportion of top places.

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Enrichment 2023-24

• We offered 46 - 50 different activities each term. In the summer term for example, we offered: 9 Active, 6 Life Skills, 8 Media and Entertainment, 6 Performance, 11 Subject and 6 Wellbeing based activities to pupils from Year 7 to Year 11.
• All 1339 pupils who took part were given one of their five choices every term. This was supported by pupils being able to vote for five different activities each term rather than all three terms in one go. No one was asked to take part in an activity they did not select.
• All pupils who required a change in activity, once each term had begun, were accommodated with communications sent home to support both pupil and carers understand the process and outcome. This allowed each pupil to be in an activity that supported their own interests and wellbeing, always.

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Summer College Events

• Y11 Prom – Our ‘Mamma-Mia’ themed Prom took place on 26 June and was a huge success, with over 230 pupils in attendance = 90%! Y11 enjoyed music from a DJ, a Fun Fair, delicious food, activities including a magic mirror, candy floss, popcorn, sweets and an ice-cream van.
• Reward Day – Pupils enjoyed time at the Fun Fair which was on site on Thursday 27 June. Pupils from Y7 – Y10 attended with a special session Period 5 & Period 6 for chosen pupils from each year group.
• ‘SwanFest’ – the local community was treated to a fabulous day of music, funfair, food and glorious weather. Everyone on site had a wonderful time and the atmosphere on the day was incredible.
  
  Special thanks go to our Site Team who worked tirelessly to ensure that all events on site ran smoothly. This is not an easy task in such a short space of time and is very much appreciated by us all.