Spencer and the Princes Trust Achieve programme

Over the past 10 weeks, Spencer has been participating in the 'Achieve' programme with the Princes Trust in Southampton. The course focuses on five different strands:

Personal development, life skills, active citizenship, preparation for work and also includes an enterprise project.

Spencer has demonstrated resilience throughout and completed the course with flying colours. We hope the skills he has learnt will help him as he transitions onto further education in the future.

Well done Spencer!

A well deserved celebration!

Awesome work!

Engagement Centre Geocaching

The boys in the Engagement Centre were superb whilst Geocaching this morning. Over the past three weeks we have been hunting the different caches around the Southampton area. Today's challenge was a tricky find! The boys were able to practice their navigation skills and map reading whist using GPS to guide us along the way!

An amazing spot by Deacon - a cache made to look like a snail!

Of course Geocaching wouldn't be the same without our school dog Finn

The Polygon team leaving their mark inside the cache.

Replaced ready for other Geocachers!

Making progress- three finds 'logged'!

Winners of the Cyber Crime Poster Competition

Huge congratulations to the three winners of the Citizenship Cyber Crime Poster Competition!

Fantastic ideas and art work. 

Look out for the posters around school. 

Year 9 - PSHE Drugs Awareness

Year 9 have not only undertaken some fantastic research on drugs but have also given presentations in class to their peers sharing information they have discovered. 

Excellent maturity was shown by all members of the class!  

CDI Career Development Awards

 

 

CDI Career Development Awards

 

The Polygon School recently received the very prestigious honour of being shortlisted for a National  Award from the CDI (Career Development Industry). The school was shortlisted in the category of Best Careers Programme in Special School/College for our WorkSkills programme.

 

The Awards were held at the Queens Hotel, Leeds on 6th March 2019 where all Award nominees and members of the national careers network and CDI members gathered for their Annual Conference and Awards Dinner.

 

Whilst we were not successful in winning the award this was a great validation for our commitment to Careers Education across the school and was a huge honour to be recognised on a National level with our shortlisted nomination.

 

 

 

 

 





Practical Maths

 

 

Practical Maths

 

For the past week the pupils at Morris House Engagement Centre have been having their Maths lessons outside.

 

On a large scale they have been using measurements, angles and shape and space....as well as some spray paint.

 

The pupils have laid out and marked new car parking spaces in the Morris House car park.

 

They needed to measure all of the new bays to maximise the amount that would fit in the space we had. They then used chalk to draw the outlines and markers and spray painted the final bays in place.

The 7 new bays are already being used.

 



Make Your Mark - Art Project

Make Your Mark - Art Project

 

 

This week we were fortunate enough to be invited to take some of our pupils to the Solent University Showcase Gallery to view and participate in the Mark Your Mark - Alternative Mapping Project.

 

 

When entering the exhibition pupils were greeted with a scale map of Southampton to walk through. They were invited to "Make their Mark" in their own way on the map. Pupils found landmarks, their own home, youth clubs and locations that were important to them.

 

These "marks" can then be viewed and added to by other exhibition visitors to make up a living and interactive piece of art work.

 

This project also contributed towards evidence for pupils Arts Award.

 

 

 



Umbrella Arts Health and Wellbeing Festival

On Saturday 23 March 10am-4pm, Southampton Voluntary Services will be filling the NST City theatre in Southampton’s Guildhall Square with a health and wellbeing festival. 

Umbrella Arts includes: music, poetry, art workshops, yoga, creative activities and more.

The purpose of the festival is to highlight some of the amazing health-themed arts and conversation activity in Southampton. 

See the Umbrella Arts Festival website for more information.

https://umbrellafest.wordpress.com/

Governing Body meeting

This is a photo taken at the Governing Body meeting held on 21-03-19.

Parents are represented in the meeting by Kata Skapski and Christine Parsloe. Both parents can be contacted via the school office.

Staff are represented by Chloe Foster and Tolga Martin.

The Governing Body make strategic plans concerning the school.

They use information provided by the School Council to help make decisions.

Work Skills CV Writing

 

 

Work Skills CV Writing

 

 

This half term we have linked our learning in Work Skills with the PSHE AQA Personal & Social Education Award in the section - Applying for Jobs and Courses.

 

 

All of our KS4 groups have been planning CV's and then using their own templates to create their final CV.

 

 

These CV writing skills will be invaluable to our pupils when they embark on a work experience placement, apply to further education settings and enter the world of work.

 



Year 7's Guitar lessons

Every Thursday, Mr Brewer from Southampton Music Hub comes in to teach Year 7 pupils to play guitar.

Boys learnt very quickly how to remember the sequence of notes for each string using the following mnemonic device (begging with the lowest string):

Elephants
And
Donkeys
Grow
Big
Ears


Everyone enjoys learning to play the instrument and they cannot wait to play their favourite songs.

New Football Strip

We would like to say a massive THANK YOU to Gary and all the staff  at premier team wear for the amazing donation of our new football shirts and training balls. We look forward to our next fixture!

Robotics

Robotics at The Polygon School.

Recently we have purchased a set of educational robots for the Computing Department. We have two mBots and a mBot ranger. These are fantastic educational tools that work with Arduino Microboard. They allow the pupils to use both text-based and block-based programming. 

The boys used their coding skills to programme the robots through a variety of challenges. Initially they were able to instruct the robots to use their infra-red sensors to track a line of tap on the ground. This lead to them recreating their favourite F1 tracks in the hall. 

Next they took control of the robots remotely via bluetooth and a tablet. This results in the hall being used as a racing track itself.

Lastly the robots had their delicate sensors removed and became sumo wrestlers. The boys used the markings in the hall as their ring and tried to outmaneuver and out-muscle their opponents.

Group Cohesion in SEAL

Recently we have been working on group cohesion in SEAL lessons. The boys are trying many new challenges and are working as a team and communicating well to get the tasks done-well done boys your communication and language skills have been very impressive today!