Headteacher Welcome and Updates

Dear Parents and Carers,

It is that time of year when we allow ourselves to begin to think ahead to Christmas!  You are warmly invited to our school carol service on Monday 16 December starting at 7:30pm at St Mary Redcliffe Church.  The Friends of SMRT will be providing mince pies and mulled wine at the end.

I am very proud of our students and the richness they bring to our school. We were visited by Challenge Partners earlier this month, which was a great opportunity for us to have external colleagues supporting us in evaluating our practice. This was an incredibly useful experience in validating our self-evaluation, highlighting the strength of relationships between students and staff, and the impact of our ALIVE Model of Learning. Our students are excellent ambassadors for our school, themselves, and their families.

Our attendance continues to be above the Bristol, Southwest, and National averages, which is due in no small part to your support and engagement. Thank you.  More information on our attendance processes and the support available can be found here

We value our Christian distinctiveness as a school and have been blessed to host and experience a range of exceptional events this academic year, including a parent/carer prayer trail, House Eucharists, a Day or Prayer, and a range of student groups. Massive thanks to Chaplain Josh for his work with students, staff, parents/carers, and external partners. Also sincere thanks to Mr Davies and the Music Department for the superb Autumn Music Concert. The student performances were exceptional, and it was great to see so many families supporting the event.

Newsletter (new format)

As you will have noticed this is a new format for our newsletter. Please see the October newsletter for the reasons behind the change. Thank you to Mr Varney (Learning Technology and Marketing Manager) for his role in coordinating this development.

Year 11

Well done to Year 11 for engaging so well with the mock examinations. They have acquitted themselves with real distinction. Staff have been marking the mock papers and will use this information to refine our support for each student.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s tutor.  

Policies and Procedures

I would like to draw your attention to the procedures/policies which can be viewed here on our website.

Wake up Wednesday

Every week we send out our 'Wake Up Wednesday' (WuW) safeguarding update, which covers a range of topics and themes that empower and equip parents/carers with the confidence and practical skills to engage in conversations with young people. These topics have included online safety, mental health and wellbeing, and climate change. Previous editions of our updates are available here - https://www.smrt.bristol.sch.uk/students/keeping-students-safe.  We know that many parents/carers find these updates helpful. Do take a look!

Community News

Ms Garrard (English) has started her maternity leave, and her teaching is being covered by Mr Tallack.

Congratulations to Mr Harris who has been appointed as the permanent Head of Business Studies. Mr Harris has been with us since September on a temporary basis.

I am delighted to announce that we have appointed a full-time permanent School Business Manager. We will welcome Mrs Melanie Bunce as our new SBM in late January 2025. We have had an interim arrangement since January 2024, and I would like to put on record our sincere thanks to Mrs Tracey Farwell who has supported the school on an interim basis. Mrs Farwell will continue at SMRT until the end of this Term.

Congratulations to Emily (Y13) who was selected for the Scotland Women U19 football squad and played in the U19 European Championship Qualifiers in Hungary, playing against Sweden, Hungary and the Netherlands w/c 25 November.

Congratulations also to our former student Bradley Burrowes (Class of 2024) who represented England U17’s last weekend against Belgium in a 1-1 draw! 

Do keep a look out for any teaching or support staff posts we may be advertising.  These are all posted on the Eteach recruitment website and often on LinkedIn, and you can set up an alert so that you know when we have posted a vacancy.  We welcome applications from our wider community of parents/carers and places of worship, so do let your friends and family know.

Please visit the website regularly if you don’t already as it is a useful source of information.  Ms Ward, my PA, monitors the enquires@ email address and will forward any emails that come in direct, or via the ‘contact us’ form on the website, to the most appropriate member of staff.  If you are emailing about a student absence, then you can email our attendance team direct by using attendance@smrt.bristol.sch.uk.  Do encourage your children to speak to their Tutor, Head or Deputy Head of Year, subject teacher, or a trusted adult in school (e.g., the Year Group Learning Mentor and our Chaplain, Mr Newton whose office is on C Floor), if they are concerned about anything or just want to ask a question.

Finally, I would like to share this press release about the inspiring work of a former SMRT student. Lucy attended St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School from 2005 to 2010. She then went on to study at South Gloucestershire & Stroud College, before going to study Business and Events Management at the University of the West of England.

She is now supporting modern slavery survivors this Christmas by launching a campaign called Stand With Survivors This Winter. 

Well done Lucy!

Mr Planter

Contents

You may have noticed that right across the curriculum we are increasingly making use of knowledge organisers as a way of making sure students have a really clear understanding of the subject-specific vocabulary that leads to academic success. The knowledge organisers usually consist of ten key words and five key questions that students need to know as they work their way through a particular subject. They are often set as homework in Key Stage Three and used as revision tools for GCSE and A Level. All subjects have been producing their own knowledge organisers and the feedback from staff and students has been really positive. They are really helpful for making sure students understand the (often) subtle differences between key words.

In my Year 9 History class, we are currently studying the campaign to get the vote for women in the UK, as we develop students' understanding of democracy and our Alive Values of "Justice and Respect" and "Diversity and Choice". We have focused on some of that key vocabulary and if you are a parent of a Year 9 student, you can test how well it is working, by asking them if they can tell you the difference between a "suffragist" and a "suffragette".

Throughout term 2 we have had a real focus on feedback in our lessons. Whether that is around questioning techniques and making sure that all students are engaging in their learning and answering questions; or through making sure students across the school really reflect on any written "green pen" feedback that they might receive when they complete an assessment. Our recent INSET day focused on developing teachers' skills in these areas. 

There have been some exciting opportunities for students to develop their learning beyond their subject lessons. I recently accompanied a group of Year 7s to do some active learning in Somerset Square with Mr Killen and the Geography Department. Despite the cold, it was great to see our students working interdependently to understand more about the Geography of our local area. We use our Pastoral Curriculum sessions during tutor time to extend learning that takes place in lessons.

Earlier this month I visited Year 8 tutor groups who were busy demonstrating their knowledge of the Gunpowder Plot, just in time for November 5 sharing what they had learnt in their History lessons to explain some of the background to the story of Guy Fawkes. In the Sixth Form, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Dr Julian Baggini, a Bristol-based philosopher who enthralled the ninety or so students with a talk about free will and determinism - it's so encouraging that so many of our students exercised their free will and chose to stay after school to attend this event!

Staying with Sixth Form we also enjoyed significant success in the Bristol Schools Maths Competition, about which there is more from Mr Cross elsewhere in the newsletter, but a huge thank you to him for all of his work in making this event happen.

Mr Taylor

The Bristol Schools' Sixth Form Team Maths Competitions took place this term. We had a record 70 students competing across the Single Maths and Further Maths competitions, all teams puzzling and persevering through the perplexing problems, one of which was - without a calculator! - "how many positive whole numbers less than 1000 are not square numbers?".

Over 120 students came to SMRT to enjoy the Further Maths competition - from Clifton College, QEH, Bristol Grammar School, Redland Green, Collegiate and Badminton, and a particularly joyful moment came for SMRT Team C when they topped the leaderboard at the end. Well done to them, the champions of Bristol!

 

 

Mr Cross

On Tuesday 26 November we held our annual Day of Prayer. This is a day where we have a variety of different activities in the hall for students to use to help them pray.  Students sign up in advance and then spend one of their lessons in the hall. This year the theme was ‘the different names of God’. There were many activities from using glow sticks in the dark (God is light and with you in the darkness) through to using binoculars to look for tiny figures around the hall (God sees you).  There was also an opportunity for students to write their own prayers and spend some time reflecting on how they see God. The event was totally ‘sold-out’ in 40 minutes and the students had a wonderful time! We will do another event in a similar way just before Easter.

Mrs Duzniak

Every week we run a worship session in our tutor groups, and make these available on our website for parents and carers to view.

Each newsletter will feature a Weekly Worship we would like to highlight from the previous month.

Three amazing Year 11 geographers from SMRT took on 15 other comprehensive and private schools from the local area in the Geographical Association Quiz at Bristol University in November. Navigating rounds including general geographical knowledge, map skills, unpicking aerial photo locations and fieldwork, our 3 amazing team members, Ayman M, Albert S and Seb M managed to top the leaderboard against top opposition to claim the epic trophy. They now move on to the regional finals. Fingers crossed they continue to smash it.

Great work lads, you have done the Geography department proud. According to one source within the department who shall not be named, you probably would have beaten the geography teachers from SMRT too.

Mr Killen

On Thursday 21 November, we were lucky to have two superb poetry workshops provided by our excellent former LSA Liam. He ran two excellent sessions with Year 7 and 8. The students listed below took part and were a credit to the school with their engagement and creativity. It was a really wonderful experience for everyone involved.

Year 7
Oliver I
Isaac C 
Josh N
Annie V
Dana J
Zion R 
Atipa F
Zachary H
Wema N
Keon A
Harvey L
Bea R
Sophie B
Vivienne A
Theo S
Ellie G
Florence R

Year 8
Will P
Roxanne P
Arthur I
Amelie W
Mia S
Brook R
Donald A
Ava D
Finn L
Julia W
Anna W
Erin O

Year 9
Jack F

Poetry Competition
These workshops were followed by this term's poetry competition on the theme of freedom. This was another lovely event with some wonderful poems shared and discussed in a supportive and enthusiastic atmosphere. The following students all took part and were great examples of what makes our school so great!

Jack F
Isaac C
Oliver I
Zion R
Dana J
Annie V 
Bea R
Sophie B 
Mia S
Vivienne A
Theo S

Mr Boswell

This week we collected some fiction books from Burges Salmon, as part of their charitable internal book drive initiative, where members of staff donated books to be distributed into the community, supporting a love of reading for pleasure.  This was indeed a generous act, and we were thrilled to receive them. They will be available in the library very soon! Several of the books in our selection were aimed at the under 5s and so those were given to Redcliffe Nursery in the spirit in which they were gifted to us. 

I would like to express my thanks to Burges Salmon for this kind donation.

Mrs Garmston 

Autumn Concert

Thank you to all those who performed at our Autumn Concert. Music staff thought the standard of performance was our highest for several years, and it was really good to hear so many students and styles of music. Our next concert will be in the spring and will follow a similar format.

Congratulations also go to Jasper L and Stefan F both of year 12, who played in the concert and also represented the school at the annual Bristol Rotary Music Competition, playing complex repertoire to a superb standard.

A Grand Georgian Christmas

On December 11 the internationally renowned Gabrieli Consort will be giving a concert with our school choirs and members of year 7. Grammy nominated Gabrieli are winners of the BBC's Choral Recording of the year 2024 and one of the leading classical music ensembles in the world. The concert is a recreation of Christmas as it would have been celebrated in the Georgian era (in many cases with familiar words to unfamiliar tunes and familiar tunes to unfamiliar words!).

Families and friends are very welcome to attend this event but note that tickets must be bought in advance via the following links: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/gabrieli/t-gapekdn  or by visiting these websites: Gabrieli or St Mary Redcliffe Church  Under 18s are free of charge.

We are offering 100 tickets for pupil premium students a discount code for £5 tickets. The code is: BRISTOL24. Please do allow time for city centre traffic and to park if you are driving and note that we lie within the CAZ.   

The School Carol Service

This takes place on Monday 16 December at 7.30pm in St Mary Redcliffe Church and, as usual, our musicians are working hard to provide music for our worship. The service will feature familiar and well-loved carols, all accompanied by the organ and our school Brass Ensemble, as well as contemporary carols for choir.

Rehearsals have been underway since October for our school production of Stephen Schwartz's (Wicked) first musical: Godspell, which will take place in March. Look out for details of performances in the new year!

Mr Davies

The Block 2 SEN Interventions and Support Menu will be emailed to parents and carers of SEN students in the final week of Term 2 (16–20 December 2024). 

The deadline for signing students up to interventions will be Wednesday 8 January 2025 and Block 2 interventions begin for the week beginning Monday 20 January 2025. 

Thank you to parents and carers who have kindly donated us games and stationery in recent weeks!  These are always very gratefully received for our Learning Support areas on both sites.

We are currently missing a number of Learning Support laptops. If your child has accidentally brought one home, please do return it to school - thank you!

We still have some places available for this. Students can join us in Learning Support to make some soap gifts and cards for family and friends! 

Each student will be able to make 2-3 soaps using the ‘Melt and Pour’ method, and the same number of Christmas cards. This enrichment activity is available to students on the SEND Register in Years 7-11, and will take place 3.30pm-5pm on 9 December 2024.

Please email learningsupport@smrt.bristol.sch.uk if your child would like to sign up.

Our next session will take place in school 10.30am-11.30am on Wednesday 18 December.

This will be an informal session with tea, coffee and mince pies.

Please let us know on learningsupport@smrt.bristol.sch.uk if you are able to join us! All welcome. 

Mrs Whittaker 

Each week we send out a 'Wake Up Wednesday' ('WuW') safeguarding update to parents and carers. These cover a range of topics and themes that empower and equip parents and carers with the confidence and practical skills to engage in conversations with young people. We also make WuWs available on our website here.

Here is the WuW update we would like to highlight this month.

Click here for the WuW

The Friends of SMRT held their Annual General meeting on Wednesday 13 November. It was great to see some new faces. Our next meeting will take place on Wednesday 15 January at 7pm. We hold one meeting each term and the dates are available on the main school calendar, so please put these dates in your diary and come along to meet other parents and carers. You can find out more about what is happening in our school and get your questions answered as a school representative will be attending each meeting. 

It will be lovely to see lots of parents and carers at the school Carol Service on Monday 16 December at 7:30pm where we will be giving out mince pies and mulled wine. If you have any queries about The Friends of SMRT, please email us at: friendsofsmrt@gmail.com.

Mrs Duzniak