News Roundup 12th May 2020

Life and learning in lockdown has been a challenge, but our students have been thriving and we’re not short of content to share with you –

Our co-curricular offer is going from strength to strength with students from all years taking part in house music competitions, drama competitions and creative writing challenges. The TV and film quiz has been a hit as well as the Ratcliffe Bake-off, whilst weekly thinking challenges and sporting activities have all kept the community alive and connected.

Our online music lessons are hitting all the right notes. Prep pupils are responding well to their new lesson format and enjoying making music with their teacher again. We’ve had some really positive feedback from parents too!

One of our Year 7 Science classes have been engaging in practical experiments at home using everyday items. In this practical they’ve been investigating the rate of diffusion in liquids at different temperatures!

Some other Year 7 Design and Technology students have been working on creating phone holders as part of their distance learning classes, here are some of the fantastic results:

There have been some delicious results from the practical Food Preparation and Nutrition classes too!

Our Eco Committee are looking towards achieving a Green Flag Award and have set the challenge to students to come up with a school ‘Eco Code’. This is a mission statement or motto that explains positively and clearly Ratcliffe’s commitment to Eco-Action. It’ll be exciting to see what brilliant ideas our Eco Warriors have come up with over the coming weeks.

Some students have been getting particularly creative and from those with a keen eye, we have received some lovely pictures. This image of the Super Moon by Roger Bradshaw captures an enormous moon peeking over the Ratcliffe College rooftops.

And amazingly Year 1 pupil Niyam Chauhan took the following photograph of the Sun, noticing a slightly odd object to the bottom right of the sun, Niyam told us it is Venus and it can be seen with the naked eye at certain times of the year! As well as being fascinated by space and our solar system, he has developed an excellent eye for photography during lockdown too!

Congratulations to Evie Ashford in Year 7 for winning the Leicestershire County Cricket Club “Design Charlie Fox’s T-Shirt” competition!
Evie and her family will be invited to a fixture of their choice when appropriate with Evie being a mascot for the day. She will also present Charlie Fox’s new shirt, watch the coin toss with both team captains and receive a signed bat by all the Foxes.

We’ve also started to receive photographs of how some of our families celebrated the 75th VE Day Anniversary Bank Holiday weekend and well, and who doesn’t like cake and dogs?

An update from star student James Howling – he has now reached a milestone in his PPE production endeavours with a whopping 5,000 masks now produced, as always we are thankful to him for his hard work and dedication to the helping Key Workers in the fight against Covid-19.

To wrap up this news update, we’d like to share some photographs which were captured on site over the Bank Holiday. Some of the photos feature less obvious elements of the school grounds and it was good to share these with students and staff who may have been missing their school which always looks so pleasant in the sunshine!