Term 4 / Week 2 Update
Dear Parents/Carers,
Thank you for your continued support during the first two weeks of the term. The purpose of this letter is to provide further updates and to get feedback from you on how to improve communication further (see parent/carer survey at the end of this letter).
World Book Day 2025
World Book Day was a huge success last Thursday with lots of great activities across Year Groups aimed at promoting a love of reading. We were also delighted to welcome back author (and former Hanham Woods Librarian) Lis Jardine to speak to students and run workshops.
Our second annual Festival of Culture is taking place on Wednesday 12th March: To read the letter sent home earlier, please click HERE
All students can wear non-school uniform on the day with a donation of £1. Year 7 and 11 should wear clothes comfortable for practical activity due to some elements of their day. The non-school uniform we would love to see expressed are colours relating to our students’ and families cultural heritage. Some staff will be in their traditional cultural dress on the day. If this is not possible then we ask that students wear Red in support of ‘Show Racism the Red Card’: https://www.theredcard.org/
- Year 7 will be exploring culture through the arts with our Art, Drama and Music teams;
- Year 8 will be exploring culture through language with our English and MFL teams;
- Year 9 will be exploring cultural celebrations with the Humanities team;
- Year 10 will be exploring culture, technology and enterprise with our DT and Science teams;
- Year 11 will be exploring culture through wellbeing with our PE and Social Science team.
The Friends of Hanham Woods will also be in the Academy at break time selling tuck for £1 a bag.
MCAS (MY Child At School) App Update
Thank you to those parents / carers in Years 7, 8 and 9 that have already signed up to the MCAS app. We are continuing to roll out the implementation of MCAS following the plan below:
- Year 7 – Monday 20th January 2025
- Years 8 & 9 – Monday 24th February 2025
- Years 10 & 11 – Monday 24th March 2025
When it is your turn to register for the app we will be sending instructions to you via email (using the email address we currently have on our system). If you have recently changed your email or believe we may not have the most up to date email address for you, you can update your email using this form: https://forms.office.com/e/KHAnC8xCPH
Once the roll out of MCAS is complete we will transition to all Academy communication being provided via the MCAS app, so it is important that you sign up. If you have any issues please do get in contact: [email protected]
Feedback on Current Communication Methods
We aim to communicate with you in a range of ways in a timely, informative manner so that you can feel part of your child’s educational experience and part of what is going on in the Academy. Below are some of our current methods of communication including:
- Text messaging (this will cease to exist once MCAS is up and running for all Year Groups)
- Academy letters, shared via the Academy website
- Academy website
- Academy social media
- Termly newsletters
- Regular Safeguarding newsletters
- Parents evenings
- Parent/Carer forums
- Direct contact with Year teams (which may result in meetings)
- Direct contact with teachers
We are interested to get further feedback from you on what communication channels work for you, what would you like to see more (or less) of and whether there are alternative forms of communication that we don’t currently have in place, which could be explored.
Please take a couple of minutes to complete this short survey: Communications Survey
Once we have collated your views, we will look to feedback to you on how we can improve communication further.
Dream BIG // Work Hard // Be Kind
Mr O’Callaghan | Principal
