Bronze Awards

Following their successful DofE Bronze Expeditions, seven groups of students gave presentations to staff, students and parents about their expeditions. This was somewhat nerve wracking for many of them as presenting to an audience of 50 is not something many 14 year olds have to do!

Presentations ranged from Video Blogs through to PowerPoint presentations and booklets tracking their expeditions and their completion of their aims. The effort they had gone to, both during the expedition and in preparing for the event was really obvious and made for some very entertaining presentations. For some participants this was the final aspect of their DofE awards and so they will be getting their certificates early in the New Year!

UKMT Senior Challenge

Last month, our top A Level Mathematics students, plus our most talented Year 11 student took part in the UKMT Senior Mathematical Challenge. These star mathematicians faced 25 multiple choice questions covering a broad range of topics that severely tested their problem solving and reasoning skills.
This is a nationwide competition in which the top-performing participants receive a gold, silver or bronze certificate. Birchwood achieved one gold, three silver and 15 bronze certificates with Sam Sloan (Year 11) achieving the school’s highest score. With his gold-winning performance, Sam has qualified for the next round, which is an incredible achievement.
Well done to all those who participated and a huge congratulations to all of those who achieved a certificate. We are very proud!

Christmas Card Competition

Well done to all the students who took part in this year’s Christmas Card Competition. We had a phenomenal amount of high class entries this year. Congratulations go to Alexia Popa, Sydney Godden and Maddie Jennings  for their winning entries, they each receive an Amazon voucher and the winning entry received 20 printed cards as well.

Christmas trees raise funds for PSFA

Dear Parents & Carers
The Birchwood PSFA has been invited to take part in an easy fundraising scheme for our school. For every Christmas tree bought through Squires of Stansted located at Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers CM24 8GE, they will give £5 to the PSFA. It’s that easy!!! You can either print off the attached flyer to take with you, or just mention Birchwood High School at the point of sale and they will set aside £5 for the school.
Also, don’t forget that tomorrow is the December deadline to purchase Birchwood Bonus Ball numbers. If you are looking for an easy stocking filler, why not buy someone a number in the Birchwood Bonus Ball this Christmas? If you buy a subscription for the remaining 9 months, it will be a one off payment of £18. You should make a direct transfer into the PSFA account (Sort code 20-25-19 and account number 23298728) and email birchwoodpsfa@gmail.com confirming your payment reference by Friday 14 December for your payment to be acknowledged and a number allocated to you by email on Saturday 15 December.
For full terms and conditions please see the school website. Please note that we are closing the subscription date earlier than normal this month.
With thanks for your continued support of the Birchwood PSFA.

The PSFA committee.

Stonewall Bronze Champions

Since December 2016, Birchwood High School has been a Stonewall School Champion. Stonewall is Britain’s leading LGBT+ charity, campaigning for the equality of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people. Belonging to the programme demonstrates our school’s commitment to tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying and celebrating difference and diversity in education. This has seen Birchwood staff and students start an equality group, present assemblies to raise awareness, build links with other schools in our community and work to ensure that acceptance without exception is a central part of school life. Last week was the culmination of a lot of hard work when Birchwood received the news that we had been granted the Stonewall School Champion Bronze award. As a nationally recognised award, we can all be very proud of what has been achieved to date, working and learning in a school where difference and diversity is respected and celebrated. The work now begins towards gaining Silver status in the new year.

Christmas Fayre

The PSFA would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supported our first ever Christmas Fayre. Following on from our request for tombola prizes we were overwhelmed by the generosity of staff, students and parents. The PSFA team were helped on the day by some marvellous volunteers and we couldn’t have done it without their support! The event was really well attended, there was a lovely Christmas atmosphere and we’ve had some great feedback from stallholders. The event raised approximately £1200 and we will be asking staff and students for project ideas to put the funds towards.