Dear Parent/Carer

Welcome to our March Newsletter.

I hope you find this edition of our newsletter informative and inspiring as it showcases the great things that are taking place at SMRT. Easter is such an important time of year and we have been preparing with a devotional series entitled ‘Tender Hearts, Open Hands’ which you can access here. We are grateful to our Community Chaplains who have contributed to this series. I hope everyone connected with our school community has a refreshing Easter break when it arrives.

Attendance

Thank you to parents/carers and our students for your support and resilience in ensuring students attend school regularly. As a parent myself, I appreciate how much work can be required. Thank you, and please do visit our attendance page here for information on the support available and processes we have in place.

Uniform

As we prepare for a two-week break, I would like to firstly thank all students who wear the school uniform with pride. This is a basic expectation, but nonetheless, it makes such a difference to the sense of community and belonging.

We know there are barriers for some families in terms of access to uniform. We have effective processes in place to help overcome these barriers, and we therefore expect our students to wear the correct uniform in line with our Behaviour and Good Relationships Policy. Here is a link to our uniform page. We will notify parents, carers, and students when we move to the summer uniform, but in the meantime, we ask for your support as we enforce the expectation of the correct uniform being worn appropriately throughout the school day. If you need any support, please contact your child’s tutor as the first port of call.

Do check the school calendar for details of our regular second-hand uniform sales.  There is some very good quality second-hand uniform available, and we are keen to encourage the re-use of items which still have many good years in them!

Please remind your child/ren that we have strict rules around the wearing of jewellery, and that only one pair of stud earrings are allowed.  Electronics, like headphones and ear buds should not be worn in school at any time.

Neurodiversity Celebration Week

Neurodiversity Celebration week took place during 17 to 21 March.  My thanks go to our Learning Support Team and wider staff for all they do to make all our students feel valued and included.

Godspell

Congratulations to everyone involved in our musical which was performed in the Main Hall week commencing 17 March.  It was lovely to see so many staff and families supporting this event, which is a huge commitment in time for all those involved, whether it be in performing on stage or in the orchestra or choir, in supporting rehearsals, organising and serving refreshments, selling tickets, or setting up the hall.  It represents a wonderful experience for those students taking part.  If your child/ren is interested in getting involved in the future, do get them to speak to Ms Gill or Mrs Russ, our drama teachers.

Contact Details

Do remember to keep us updated with any change to your contact details.  You can do this using your parent/carer Bromcom link, and you will find instructions on how to do this via the school website https://www.smrt.bristol.sch.uk/parents-and-carers/supporting-your-child/bromcom-parent-carer-support (see specific options at the bottom of the web page).

Student Success

We are proud of all our students achieve, whether that’s in a lesson, exam, or an extra-curricular event.  Success looks different for everyone, so every achievement is worthy of celebration, and our staff work hard to award Alive points whenever they can.

Stephene, Year 9, continues her success in swimming, with several medals and personal best times at the Chelsea and Westminster Swimming Club and Millfield Grand Prix competition on 14, 15 and 16 March.  Her achievements require considerable time and commitment.

Congratulations to Mia, Year 8, who won silver (50m freestyle), Sophia, Year 10, who won silver (50m breaststroke and 50m backstroke), and Stephene, Year 9, who won bronze (50m butterfly) in the Bristol Secondary Schools Swimming Gala on 20 March, and to the staff who supported this event.  Well done to the other students who took part.  Getting involved is so valuable!

Congratulations to our Year 7, 8, 9 and 10 football teams who had 3 wins and a draw against Ashton Park School on 12 March.  Thank you to the staff who coached the teams, and to those who turned out in support of the players on the night.

Our Year 7 ad Year 8 football teams have reached the final of their respective competitions. We wish them the very best in their final. Information has been shared, and we look forward to seeing any parents/carers who are available to come and support the teams.

I wanted to highlight the work Darrius, Year 13, does as a Bristol City Youth Councillor.  He was featured in the local news after speaking to local councillors about ways to tackle youth knife crime and service provision.  My thanks go to him for engaging with such an important issue in our city.

Community News

Mrs Lane, our main school cover administrator is retiring at the end of this term.  We wish her all the very best for the future and thank her for all she has contributed.  We are currently recruiting for her replacement.  If you are interested in working at SMRT in any capacity, please do sign up for alerts for our school on Eteach, where we advertise all our vacancies.  They are also shown on the vacancies page of our website.

We welcomed a new Clerk to Governors, Ms Curtis, recently, and Miss McLean has joined our sixth form team as Cover and Enrichment Coordinator to replace Miss Hoskins, who left us for a Learning Mentor post at another school.  Miss Whyte has joined our administration and reception team.  We wish them all well in their new roles.

Contents

The run up to the Easter break is always a busy time. Over the next few weeks, students in Year 11 and 13 will becoming towards the end of the syllabus in many subjects and will be focusing on revision. The Easter holiday is an excellent opportunity for GCSE and A level students to put a really thorough revision programme in place. The time spent on effective revision over Easter is time saved closer to the exams and can have a huge impact on stress levels for students as May and June approach. There is lots of help available for students both in terms of revision guidance from subject teachers and support with exam related stress from the pastoral teams.

It was a pleasure to show the SIAMS inspector around the school last week and give him a flavour of our Alive curriculum. It was great to see empowered learners in a range of different subjects from across the different year groups and offered us a chance to show off how our classroom lessons help to develop the skills, qualities and character of the young people in our community. Whether it was learning about sustainability in GCSE Geography, discussing the morality of the atomic bomb in Year 9 History, demonstrating creativity in Year 11 Photography or grappling with the complex political themes of Animal Farm in Year 7 English, it was great to see so many students engaged and inspired by their teachers.

Mr Taylor

Around 20 A-Level Geography students attended a talk by the writer and Oxford University professor Danny Dorling on the 6 of March at Bristol University as part of the geography department's ties with the Geographical Association. The talk delved into the growing severity of inequality in the UK, comparing it to nations across the planet. A brilliant talk enjoyed by all.

The talk brings to a close the GA lecture programme for the academic year during which students attended lectures on African stereotypes, climate change in the Arctic, urban regeneration and volcanic prediction modelling.

Great to see so many students attend these various talks.

Mr Killen

We have now closed the form for Year 9 Options and will be checking back in with students where there are queries over what has been submitted such as multiple entries being made. Once that is complete, Term 5 will be relatively quiet on the options front while we work behind the scenes to match up choices with classes and teachers. We will be back in touch with students and their parents and carers at the start of Term 6.

Mr Taylor

As we draw towards the end of Term 4, it's great to celebrate students doing well.  This year, Years 7-11 have accumulated just over 170,000 positive Alive Points for doing everyday things right. That's an average of 152 per pupil.  We are really pleased to recognise the everyday efforts of students in their learning behaviours and how they interact with each other.  

Mr Morgan

We have been pleased to see the response to last week's assemblies on phones and accessories, hoodies and earrings.  Thanks to parents/carers for their support and please continue to reinforce the messages students hear in school at home. 

As per the Behaviour and Good Relationships Policy they uniform policy changes in Term 5.  Until then, students are expected to be in full school uniform as usual.   The 'summer uniform' can be worn from the May Bank Holiday until the end of Term 6. The summer uniform code is: 

• SMRT blazers with logo, are not required to be worn. 
• SMRT red jumpers are not required to be worn. 
• White collared shirts with a SMRT tie must be worn (and worn appropriately).  If a student has a permitted reason not to wear a tie, they must wear a school jumper or blazer instead.
• Black, plain, polishable footwear must be worn
• Trousers or skirts as normal must be worn (shorts are not permitted)    

We are continuing to review our approach to mobile phones. Thank you to all parents/carers who took part in UWE's survey that was sent out recently.  We will update you further on this topic in Term 5.

Mr Morgan

We do hope you have enjoyed our Lent devotionals this month.  Most of these have been written by our student chaplains which is such a great example of student leadership.  We have been so impressed with their enthusiasm and ideas.  The theme has been 'unconditional compassion' and next week we are encouraging students to be 'doers' - there will be small prizes for students who show unconditional compassion to others.  

We have also been supporting our Muslim students through Ramadan.  We have had prayer spaces available for students at lunchtime and are keen to expand this in the future.  We would welcome ideas from our school community so please do get in touch with us if you have any ideas.

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.

Four of Year 10's top mathematicians travelled across Bristol to compete in the Maths Feast, four courses of delicious problems consisting of a variety of mathematical ingredients.

Based on 'Would I Lie to You?', the first round was about mathematical truths; one question asked them to Fermi estimate how many bathtubs of water they would drink in their lifetime (though not from a bathtub). The second round was about wrapping ribbons around patterned cubes and required a great deal of insight - fortunately, Thomas P, Ben H, Nathan D and Jazleen R had plenty of this. With meticulous care, they calculated the lengths and properties of the ribbons and by the end came up with a generalisation that involved tessellating the plane with nets of cubes.

Broken calculators were the theme of Round 3, before the final relay which required the fastest maths and best communication. SMRT finished with time to spare and were clapped to victory by fifteen teams of opposition, including Bristol Grammar School. They collected pockets full of Easter eggs as prizes and left cognitively and gastrically replete.

Mr Cross

We had a wonderful World Book Day on Thursday 6 March. Lots of Year 7s and a number of staff took part in dressing up as characters from books for World Book Day. This was a lovely celebration of books with the Year 7s deserving a lot of credit for their excellent costumes and sense of fun on the day. Here are some pictures of staff in their costumes!

Mr Boswell

The house point totals as we reach the end of this month are as follows:

This year we marked Neurodiversity Celebration Week with a range of events including a Year 7 assembly and poster competition, an awareness stand with giveaways for students, and posters celebrating neurodiversity displayed in year group areas.   The standard of poster entries was very high - thank you to everyone who took part!  The Learning Support team also dressed up in the colours of the rainbow, to make the event. 

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 is the WuW update we would like to highlight this month:

Click to read the WuW

Our next Friends of SMRT meeting will take place in the library on Wednesday 23 April, starting at 7pm.  This is a great opportunity to learn more about the school.  We are working towards having a greater presence on the website and an easier way for parents and carers to contribute financially.  Thank you for all your support.