Page 18 - The Badger - Issue 8

THE BADGER Celebrating 125 Years of The Downs
Academic Report continued...
Overall, in the English Department it has been another packed year consisting of spellings, English skills lessons, grammar, creative writing, exam preparation, class readers, reading for pleasure, poetry and prose analysis and simply enjoying learning.
This academic year, the Maths Department has introduced a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), MathsWatch, for its pupils in Years 6, 7 and 8.
Pupils can complete their prep on the VLE, but more importantly, they can complete independent work and use the interactive questions and videos to prepare
for assessments. Every month, there has been a competition for the top three places on the MathsWatch Leaderboard, with pupils being awarded a Headmaster’s Commendation. This culminated in the top 10 students for the academic year receiving awards in the final Celebration Assembly. The Department has also
joined Eedi, a high-quality platform using diagnostic questions to check pupils’ understanding and highlight misconceptions. Pupils in Years 5, 6 and 7 can enter
the Question of The Day challenge over the summer holidays and can continue to practise their maths skills by completing the tasks set by their teacher, or through engaging with independent work on the platform. In addition, the department has invested in a variety of new resources and motivating games from Go Teach Maths.
In Maths Department meetings, we have continued to embed the Mastery approach to teaching Mathematics, and we have developed guidance for existing and new members of the team. This includes developing the features of what high quality Maths lessons include at The Downs Malvern.
In November, we hosted a Maths Challenge Day for
local Primary Schools. This year, we introduced a new, and extremely popular, Roller Coaster Challenge. This enabled the groups of mixed Primary School pupils to develop their teamwork skills, as well as their engineering skills. In the Autumn Term, many Year 6 pupils entered the Primary Maths Challenge, and in January we sent Year 5 and Year 6 teams to the Cheltenham College Maths Challenge Day. This was a competitive event, and our Year 6 team was awarded First Place.
In February, some of our Year 8 pupils spent a morning with Year 9 pupils from Malvern College working on problem solving activities. From this, two pupils from Year 8 and two from Year 9 were selected to form a team to enter the UKMT Maths Challenge at Haberdashers’ Monmouth.
During the Summer Term, 30 Year 3 and 4 pupils entered the First Mathematics Challenge, with several pupils achieving Silver and Bronze Awards. Nearly 50
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