4th October 2024
HEADLINES
By James Saunders
OPEN EVENING AND TOURS This week we held our annual Open Evening for current year six learners looking to join us in September 2025. On the back of two weeks of fully booked tours we have felt a real excitement about the prospect of these new learners joining us. The feedback we received was very complimentary and highlighted the impact of our focus on building positive and purposeful relationships and getting to know the learners as an individual with individual needs. I made it clear to families that we are a small school and have no ambitions for expansion. This is because our culture and ethos comes first. We don’t aspire to build a megalopolis where learners get lost in the crowd. We do not want our learners to become a number - they all have a name. Families embraced our traditional approach to standards and our high expectations which were very visible in the conduct of our thoroughly lovely and kind children who all acted as superb ambassadors for the school. If you attended the evening I hope you were able to gain a feel for the culture and ethos at Honywood. I would like to thank Jessica Wells (C8) and Freddie Brooks (C11) who spoke to families. Between them they represented the start and the end of the Honywood journey. They did a superb job. Due to high demand we are continuing to offer tours over the coming weeks. If anyone would like to book onto a tour please contact the school office who will do their best to find a slot to fit you in. WHAT ARE YOU READING? What are you reading currently? Fact or fiction? I have just ordered myself a copy of Exam Nation: Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone – and a Better Way to Think About School. It’s a bit of a departure from the usual fiction I tend to enjoy and a far cry from the dystopian literature I tend to gravitate toward.
It is so easy for reading for pleasure to become a lost art. With so much to distract us we could be forgiven for being seduced into seeking alternatives to reading. Television, internet, youtube and phones; each one offers an easily accessible passive experience where we don’t need to do much thinking or use our brains. However, reading is what feeds the mind and fuels the soul. It keeps us curious; it shapes our values; it deepens our understanding, and helps us to create meaning in our world. Reading creates great conversationalists. I recently read an article that explored what the most successful people in the world have in common. Guess what? They are all voracious readers. To not read is to deprive oneself of the opportunity to enrich one’s life. Carrying a good book around so that any spare moment can be seized upon to read is great practice. Bringing a book to school for quiet reading in LS5 or whenever the moment presents itself is essential. We are currently focusing on literacy within our LS5 programme and offer learners the opportunity to for DEAR/DEAL (Drop Everything And Read/Listen) time. NATIONAL POETRY DAY Mrs Bansropun has been leading on a range of exciting literacy based projects across the school. Most recently she has used DEAR and DEAL time to highlight the importance of poetry through National Poetry Day. ‘Finding a complicity with how you feel, expressed more elegantly than you could ever express yourself, can be the most helpful way of making sense of your emotions and helping you to process them.’ William Seighart, founder of National Poetry Day This year, the National Poetry Day theme is Counting. National Poetry Day is the annual mass celebration that encourages everyone to make, experience and share poetry with family and friends. Each year we come