Blog Author: S Hinkley

On Monday we welcomed in local musicians Nick and Helena Bazley to perform various pieces of folk music on their instruments.  They were also joined by a special guest, Maya in year 7! Thank you for playing for year 8 and helping us to understand how folk music has evolved over time.

Mrs Sutterby and I are very excited about our up and coming trip to Dove Cottage in November with year 9.  We'll be exploring The Gothic for the day, touring William Wordsworth's cottage and getting inspired with an exhibition and some creative writing.

Year 11 have been preparing their compositions for their brief task. One of the choices is to compose a piece of music for a new Robin Hood film.  Here are some initial storyboarding thoughts and ideas. 

Year 9 have been working hard to learn different pieces of iconic film music on keyboards including The Imperial March from Star Wars and the Indiana Jones theme.  They have been learning key terms such as 'Leitmotif' along the way. 

Year 9 have been demonstrating their skills of teamwork, planning, adapting. leadership, problem solving, creativity, listening and speaking to create their music festival pitches.  I have been really impressed with their focus and engagement.  Perhaps some ideas for future careers will also…

Part of our literacy sessions at SKS involve learning and revising subject-specific spellings.  This week the focus was DT and year 9 worked in teams to compete for the most correct spellings.  Well done year 9.

Year 8 have been busy translating a scene from Romeo and Juliet between Capulet (Juliet's father) and Juliet.  Translating Shakespearean language is a challenging skill, but the students were able to give it a good go and they hopefully now understand the relationship between these characters…

Year 7 have been learning to identify instruments of the orchestra. They used images of instruments around the music room to help them, and they came up with this way of working in the process! Well done year 7!

Year 7 have blown me away today with their composition skills. We have been learning about different musical forms including binary, ternary and rondo.  Today's final task of the unit involved learning the Pentatonic Rondo (using 5 notes of the scale) and composing a section B in response to it. …

Year 9 have been working on their free music compositions and many students have chosen to use Band Lab to produce their music.  There has been everything from video game music, to science fiction film music.  Keep up the creative work year 9.

Wow! What a creative week we have had in the English department! As part of National Storytelling Week, our Key Stage 3 students have been writing their own lyrics and songs about issues that are important to them.  The work they have produced has been phenomenal and Miss Sutterby and I are very…

Year 10 have blown me away with their GCSE poetry analysis this week.  They have been comparing Percy Shelley's 'Ozymandias' with William Blake's 'London'; both Romantic poets, and both giving strong messages about the abuse of power.  Keep up the great work year…