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Head teacher’s message With Easter rapidly approaching we are now entering our busiest period. The exam season is nearly upon us and teachers and students are focusing intensely on final preparations. It is great to see so many students staying after school throughout the week to take part in extra revision and catch-up sessions. Thanks to parents / carers for your role in taxiing children home from these events. Preparations are building too for the summer production of Oliver, which promises to be as amazing as Grease last year. The Music Department is holding a Spring Concert on 2nd April (see ad enclosed). Mr Mythen and the new Year 10 cycle challenge team have started their after school training programme (look out for them on the roads Thursday evenings!). An enormous thanks goes to all the staff for their commitment and enthusiasm for giving our students these excellent opportunities - we are fortunate to have such dedication. These are tough times too for staff working in education, as I'm sure you are aware. I have advised parents / carers in recent Updates that the college is restructuring its staffing due to a

reduction in funding and rising costs. The college, working with the Local Authority, is in the process of making these changes. If you have any questions you would like to ask about the process or how any changes might affect your son / daughter we have set up a dedicated email address which you can use. We will aim to provide as much information in response as is reasonable in a timely manner. This address is questions@axevalley.devon.sch.uk I can re-assure parents / carers that everything will be done to ensure that the quality of your child's education is not compromised by staffing changes and that as a college we continue to improve and raise standards. Please could I ask parents / carers to speak to their son / daughter about the importance of showing extra awareness and consideration for staff during this period.

The Update

The Axe Valley Community College Newsletter: Friday 21 March 2014 - Issue 12

Diary Dates: 25TH March - SEND Parent Information event

Monday 31st March - ASPIRE Law Project Tuesday 1st April - Spring Concert (please note this

event was previously advertised on the wrong date) Thursday 3rd April - Year 10 Parents evening

3rd - 6th April - ASPIRE French Trip Friday 4th April - Staff INSET day

Tuesday 22nd April - Start of Summer Term

ASPIRE students proudly display their work following their workshop with local potter Amanda Popham

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Please can I draw parents' / carers' attention to new clubs and activities that have been set up recently (see page 6). Film Club has been running now a few weeks and gives students a fantastic opportunity to have a cinema-like experience in college (pop-corn included!). Study Club provides all students with a really important opportunity to complete homework with access to computers and adult support. Lastly the new Photography Club offers students an amazing opportunity to work with a professional photographer. The late bus service also means that no-one should miss out from these opportunities.

Lost Property

Parents please note that we currently have a

large amount of unclaimed un-named lost

property in the student office at the moment.

If it is still unclaimed by the end of term it will

be donated to the ARC charity shop in

Axminster for resale.

Student Counsellor

As many of you know, we have, as part of our

Student Services team a school counsellor for

students at the college.

This is a confidential service and students can

be referred in several ways; either by Year

Leaders, Tutors, School Nurse, their G.P.,

Teachers or other staff at the college. Parents

and carers are also able to refer, and students

can refer themselves by asking a member of

staff or confidentially, through the post box in

the Student Office or by texting 0750 546

7578.

Sometimes students feel that one or two

sessions are enough, or they can see the

counsellor for a longer-term if appropriate,

Significant changes are being introduced nationally to how Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is organised. Parents / carers are invited to attend an information event on 25th March at 10.00am until 12.00 midday, where they can find out more. The college is working closely with the local authority to ensure there is a smooth transition to the new system. Lastly, well done to the many students celebrating success in this issue. On many fronts—maths, arts and sport—our students are really excelling.

Martin Smith - Head teacher

although there may be a waiting list for

appointments. At the moment the counsellor

is at the college on Fridays.

It is important to emphasise that counselling

is voluntary and that the student must want

to come to counselling even if they have been

referred by someone else. Unless any parent/

carer specifically objects to their child/ren

seeing the counsellor it will be assumed by

the college that consent is given.

Cath Dewolff - Student Counsellor

School Notices

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Student News UK Maths Trust Team Challenge

Students: Harry Herbert (Yr9), Sam Slade (Yr9) , Layla James (Yr8) and Stuart Johnson (Yr8) A big well done to the four students (above), for representing the school in the UK Maths Trust Team Challenge on Tuesday 11th March, at Exmouth Community College. The students had to work together to solve a range of maths problems, complete a crossnumber and take part in a maths relay race. They finished within the top 20 schools in Devon - a fantastic achievement. A great day for all four.

Rachel Fell - Maths Department AS Photography Fun

Students Max Guppy, Annalene Salter and Mel Ayres pose for Alex Trenchard’s AS level Photography coursework.

Guest Speaker Lynn Brown for the National Citizenship Service This week Lynn Brown came to the college to speak to the Sixth Form students about the NCS community based project that will be running during the summer holidays. The project normally costs £1,600 per student but will be fully subsidised by the NCS. The programme runs for four weeks the first being a 5 night residential training course at Wenworthy, the second week includes 5 days at Bicton College and then for the remaining two weeks students will work in their action groups on a community based project locally.

The project qualifies as part of the Duke of Edinburgh award as well as qualifying them for a NCS award that is recognised by employers and universities. If any student would like further information please contact Mr Horn, Head of Sixth Form.

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Making it Local On Friday 21st March, Julie Fergusson from Making it Local chose to hold one of their consultation meetings at The Axe Valley Community College. Representatives from Axminster Tools and Machinery as well as Sixth Formers were invited to attend. The discussion started with an explanation of what Making it Local does for the community, where it seeks to share a part of the £140 million of European funding that is available across the UK over the next 5 years, and place that funding with projects in our local area.

The purpose of the consultation was to hear about the skills and training needs that the students felt were important for young people in our area. In addition they wanted to get a feel for the aspirations of the students in terms of their further education and ultimately if they were considering starting their own businesses. Making it Local want to use their comments to share their thoughts on how to keep young people in the area, when making their bid for further European funding for 2015-2020. “It was extremely interesting to hear about

the European funding and be able to contribute our opinions to the local community.” Annalene Salter - 12MBA

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eSafety Update The college has recently updated the website with two new eSafety advice pages one for stu-dents (axevalley.devon.sch.uk/students/esafety ) and one for parents (axevalley.devon.sch.uk/parent/esafety) In addition to this over the next few newsletters we aim to provide some guidance for parents on areas they can support their children in their use of modern technology.

eSafety Advice for Parents – Where to start? The advice from experts in this area is to take a balanced approach to your children’s online safe-ty. Doing nothing is a sure-fire way to let your kids get into trouble, whilst a heavy-handed ap-proach will make them all the more determined to do the opposite of what you tell them (as with most things in life!) Your child may well know his or her way around cyberspace better than you do: the advice from experts is consistent that parents should make it their business to find out more about the kinds of online interests that children of your kids’ age have (without necessarily snooping on them). A good way to do this is to ask them to show you how to do various things online. The Thinkuknow website (www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/Secondary/Conversation-Starters/ ) has some useful advice on conversation starters. Some more specific advice can be found: http://bit.ly/1cEA1YN and additional eSafety guidance can be found on the web sites listed on: http://axevalley.devon.sch.uk/parent/esafety

OneDrive Pro is an online storage area intended for your college work (in addition to your net-

work space). You can use it to share documents and work collaboratively from anywhere where

you have Internet access.

You can work on your Microsoft Office documents from OneDrive. If you don’t have access to

Office on your computer, you can still work on your documents using the Office Web Apps

Accessing OneDrive

To access OneDrive once you have log on to your Email account, click on OneDrive on the bar at

the top of the screen.

For more details on how to use OneDrive please check the college website http://

axevalley.devon.sch.uk/online-learning

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Film Club Over the last two weeks film club has shown Batman Begins and BIG with Tom Hanks. The students have voted for their favourite films and for the next two weeks we will be showing Millions, About a Boy, Inception and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The last film club showing for this term will be on the 1st April. The club will then resume in September. Study Club At lunchtimes and after school, study club is available in ICT3 for students to use the col-lege computer facilities to do their home-work.

The club is supervised by several of our teaching assis-tants who are there to help you if you get stuck with tricky questions. There are late buses available at 5pm (and 5.30pm on Tuesdays) so that you can get home afterwards.

Photography Club Following our recent clubs and activities ques-tionnaire, photography is something more than 100 students expressed an interest in. The PTFA have offered to subsidise a new photography club available to all students at the college. If you are interested in getting involved local professional photographer Martin Hall has agreed to come to the college to offer taster sessions after school on Wednesday and

Thursday 26th and 27th March. Students are asked to contribute £1 for the session. There will only be 10 places available at each session so please book your interest with Re-ception as soon as possible. The first session will cover various aspects of photography such as composition, lighting and special effects. You will need to have the use of a camera. If you are interested but don’t have one avail-able please ask Mrs Pemberton.

If the taster sessions prove successful, stu-dents will be able to sign up for a six-week course during the summer term.

Clubs and Activities

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Quiz Night at The Old Inn 16th March 2014 TAVCC PTFA Quiz at the Old Inn, Kilmington was attended by 75 quizzers on Sunday night. Many Thanks to Duncan and his staff at The Old Inn for laying on their usual warm hospitality.

Additional thanks must be offered to those offering raffle prizes including The Old Inn, Axe Valley Birds and the PTFA. Caroline Lambert and Jo Huscroft were kept very busy keeping score for the fourteen teams drawn from parents, staff and friends of the school. The winning team made up of parents of the Colyton Youth Under 12 football team, won with 104 points out of a possible 120, howev-er it was a close contest with all fourteen teams separated by no more than 20 points. An enjoyable and competitive night was had by all who attended the quiz and it is hoped that the next event at the Old Inn will take place in the Autumn. The newsletter will keep you informed with the date.

The quiz and raffle raised a fantastic £233.00 for the PTFA. Thanks to all who attended.

Jo and Martin Huscroft The Spring Concert - 1st April 2014 The PTFA will be offering refreshments to everyone attending the Spring Concert. We would very much appreciate some help from a parent or two on the night. Please contact Kate Pemberton at the college if you are able to come along. NEXT PTFA MEETING The next PTFA meeting will be on Tuesday 6th May at 7pm. Everyone is welcome! Old Axonian Network We are launching a new network of former students and teachers. This provides a fantas-tic opportunity for former students to recon-nect with old friends as well as support the college and its current students. If you came to TAVCC please join the Face-book group “Old Axonians” or email us to join the mailing list on: oldaxonians@axevalley.devon.sch.uk Our first fundraising launch event will be a fabulous and sumptuous summer reunion - the first Annual Old Axonian Summer Ball on

Saturday 5th July - Save the Date!! Full details regarding venue, tickets and tim-ings will be announced shortly. If you would like to join the committee to help us with the organisation and marketing please get in touch!

TAVCC PTFA Update

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ASPIRE General Law Project January – April 2014 We are nearing the final of the ASPIRE Law Project, which will be held at Exeter Universi-ty on the 31 March. The students have worked really hard to learn about Law and the last two sessions saw the students taking part in real life Mock Trials and Mooting. Such great experiences for the students and real life development of their skills - from communication and presentation skills to thinking on their feet and taking the initiative. The final event at Exeter University promises to be an inspiring afternoon. The younger students will get a chance to tour around the campus with current Law students and the older students will partici-pate in a seminar with the Law Lecturers. Please could all students make sure they bring in their SOE 3 Forms for the trip and meet at the bus park as soon as lunchtime begins. ASPIRE ARTS Art Workshops We are very lucky to welcome some artists this half term in school, working with the AS-PIRE ARTS Art students. The younger stu-dents spent a day with Amanda Popham learning the techniques used to work and mould clay into creative jugs.

Some of the students had never worked with clay before and learnt very quickly how to master the art of using water and moulding with your fingers to produce a smooth and professional finish on the sculptures. Once the pieces are fired and dried they will be ready for the painting – this may be another workshop after Easter. The Upper School artists on ASPIRE ARTS will be working with Ricky Romain on oil paint-ings, before the Easter holidays– another amazing opportunity to learn from a profes-sional artist and use a different medium. We are looking forward to the results!

ASPIRE Update

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ASPIRE French Trip – 3-6 April 2014 Everything is now in place for the first ASPIRE trip abroad! The itinerary is set and the trip to France has come upon us fast. We shall be packing in War cemeteries, Arromanches, Bayeux market and tapestry, Mont St Michel and a full day in Paris at Montmartre and Sa-cre Coeur, Montparnasse and drinking in the Champs Elysees, the Louvre and the Jardin de Tuileries along the way. We are all very excit-ed and trying to catch up on sleep now!

ASPIRE Coaching 1-1 Sessions – New Dates ASPIRE Coaches came in this week to help guide and mentor the students. An amazing array of professional and skilled people from the working world are helping the ASPIRE and ASPIRE ARTS students every half term and the dates for next term have been agreed – 19 and 22 May and 16 and 19 June. We hope even more of the students will sign up to this amazing opportunity to receive advice and guidance and support from pro-fessionals working in a mixture of roles that the students too may wish to join in the fu-

ture. ASPIRE Met Office Science Camp – 9 /10 May Details are going out shortly to the Year 7 students, who are invited to participate in the Met Office Science Camp at the beginning of May. This was an amazing event last year, learning about the Met Office and how they forecast and predict weather as well as learn-ing about climate change. This starts at about 5pm and goes on through the evening with overnight accommodation in small tents in the Conference Rooms. All food is included and much fun, challenging activities and en-joyment is expected. The Met Office put a lot of time and effort into this great event – one on the calendar that the students will never forget. Look out for the details and please get the forms back to us ASAP. ASPIRE ARTS Lower School Residential 18 – 20 June 2014 We shall shortly be sending details out to stu-dents and parents about the forthcoming ASPIRE ARTS Residential in June 2014, open to all the ASPIRE ARTS Lower School stu-dents from Years 4-8. Last year we took the students to Beaford Arts and this year we are going closer to home and taking over Weycroft Hall. Please look out for these letters and we look forward to immersing ourselves and the stu-dents in a few days of creative artwork.

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National Schools Cross Country Championships Congratulations to The Axe Valley Community College Year 10 student, Tony Pinder for com-peting in the 2014 National Schools Cross Country Championships at Castle Donington

on March 15th. The course was long and very rutted under foot making it a challenging 5.2km. But as ever Tony gave it everything he had and being surrounded by 345 other runners is a daunting experience. His final placing was 276 which is a very creditable result considering Tony is running alongside Yr 11 boys. Having achieved the hon-our of competing at the

Nationals 2 years in a row, the College hope that Tony will be able to make it a hat trick in 2015.

Year 7 Netball The Yr7's experienced their first competitive matches at the East Devon Tournament on Thurs 20th March. The weather conditions were cold and very windy which hampered some of the passing however, the girls com-peted well with some thoughtful passages of play. Well done to: Rosie Windsor (capt), Jemma Hoare, Darcey Souttar-Stone, Rebecca Smitham, Leanne Coalter, Hannah White, Katie Burnett, Jasmin Voysey, Maia Booth and Ellen Turner. Year 8 Netball The Yr 8 netball squad have shown a good commitment to attending training sessions since January and have been involved in the local East Devon league and Tournament over

Sports Update

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the past 2 months. All matches played in the competitions proved to be challenging with some superb athletic and ball handling skills on display from the opposition. The team showed their best progress during the tournament in March when they halved their deficit against all teams compared to their league results. Anne Cruzado made nota-ble defensive contributions which certainly troubled the opposition. Next season will re-quire the girls to up their fitness levels and work hard on their reactions times to improve the speed of their decision making when in possession of the ball. Well done to everyone for their commitment and desire to improve. Devon Ability Games The Awards finally arrive: Leah Cozens (Gold), Tia Webber (Silver), Abbie Dayman (Silver), Tilly Taylor (Bronze) and An-nie Harris (Bronze) have now been presented with their Indoor Rowing medals achieved in the Devon Schools Ability Games. Sports Kit The sports department would very much wel-come any 2nd hand sports uniform to loan to students who turn up to lessons without their kit. If you have any spare kit please hand it into Reception. Many thanks!

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Want to coach football?

Start here with the…. 1st4 Sport Level 1 Award in Coaching Football

Ivybridge Community College, Harford Road, Ivybridge, Devon, PL21 0JA

Induction ……………………………… ..................... Monday 7 April 2014 10 am—1 pm Safeguarding Children ............................................. Tuesday 8 April 2014 10 am—1 pm Emergency First Aid ............................................... Tuesday 8 April 2014 1.30 pm—4.30 pm Practical ................................................................... Wednesday 9 April 2014 9.30 am—5.30 pm Study Support .......................................................... Thursday 10 April 2014 10 am—1 pm Final Assessments ................................................... Friday 11 April 2014 9.30 am—5.30 pm

Special course fee for PE Teachers and students of just £90 To book your place, please contact Annie Watts at Devon FA, Newton Abbot on

01626 325914, or email on annie.watts@devonfa.com

Open to all PE Teachers and students aged 16 and above Awarded by 1st4Sport Qualifications and developed in partnership with The Football Association, this course is the ‘first step’ along the coaching pathway and is a nationally recognised qualification providing you with an introduction to the organisation and delivery of safe and enjoyable coaching ses-sions.

This course for people aged 16 years and above is delivered over 30 hours and is designed to provide a basic in-troduction to coaching of young players up to 16 years of age. There is a balanced mix of practical and theory, including Emergency First Aid and Safeguarding Children in Football workshops. Our experienced team of FA qualified tutors provide a quality service designed to support candidates through the course ensuring that individual needs are catered for.

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