PITTVILLE SCHOOL NEWS

Issue 27 - 12 February 10

‘Hats off’ to the Art Department who organised a creative art session with Cheltenham Museum

Students in Mr Chilman’s Art class work with the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum to produce ‘hat’ portraits

As part of their approach to make art lessons more creative the art team invited the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum to show off their wide range of hats from their collection from the past. Students have been drawing each others portraits and looking at the symmetry of the face, and the addition of hats into the mix makes the composition livelier and more varied. The museum brought hats of all types including top hats, boaters, bowler hats, trilby’s and fedora’s. Faye Little, from Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum was on hand to help out and to talk about the history behind the hats and how they were worn. The students found the whole experience really useful as it added another dimension to their work. Many excellent pieces of art work were produced.

Dance department prepares for its next performance with intensive preparation and rehearsal

Ed Perrins practices for the Cheltenham Dance Festival at the Town Hall

‘Looking after Number 1’ was the theme for Year 9 last week as students experienced a very different focus day, based around the theme of ‘healthy living’. Across the day students also took part in a session on how to say no to smoking and also a session on sexual health education. Relationships and health were also discussed during the day.

In the last few days, Dance at Pittville has been very high profile with two key events taking place. At the school, students were preparing to take part in the latest dance extravaganza, where on Thursday a number of dance performances were reprised from the Michael Jackson Tribute concert. In addition to this a number of students had rehearsed very hard in order to showcase their GCSE exam pieces which were featured in the school’s dance gala so that students could satisfy the requirements of their exam board. As well as the school’s own dance gala, students such as Ed also took part in the Cheltenham Dance Festival, which took place on Wednesday evening at the Town Hall. This was a great opportunity for the students from Pittville to show their many talents in the area of dance. Well done to all who took part in both festivals!

Year 7 and 8 have the chance to join the schools first STEM club. STEM stands for Science, Technology Engineering and Maths and will be run after school as an extra curricular activity. Students should return any consent forms for this as soon as possible.

‘Lights, camera, action’ as the Performing Arts backstage team get a training day on ‘lighting’

Students enjoy their reward trip to Cineworld - on Tuesday 9 February, 235 students from Pittville took part in our February reward visit to the cinema. All the students taking part had not only demonstrated a perfect behaviour record but also had to collect a number of praisestamps for working well in class, in order to be eligible for the visit. Well done to all.


The students from 7S and 8S with the goods for their table top sale, which took place on Thursday

Last Friday the Pittville Stage Crew had a lighting training day with Starlight Theatre Services, who are one of the theatre lighting specialists in this region. The idea behind the day was for the performing arts students to gain the skills to light and set up our future performances, which will include dance festivals and our summer musical, Bugsy Malone. By the end of a very long day the students had learnt how to rig lights, use different types of lighting, use a manual and pre-programmed lighting scheme as well as discuss plans for the lighting of the various school productions. It was a great opportunity for them to boost their team-working skills, as well as their technical knowledge, and was great preparation for a number of the assignments they need to complete for their Performing Arts (Production) BTEC course. Many thanks to Norman and the technical team at Starlight for giving us their time and to Miss Mitchell for organising this valuable and increasingly important element of the students training, in this area of the performing arts.

On Thursday this week the students from 7S and 8S held a table top sale for charity. The students prepared well for this event by displaying posters around the school. The money raised will be donated to Sue Ryder Care, a charity chosen by the students. Many thanks to Mrs Wilkinson and Mr Apperly for their help with the organisation.

Pittville Sixth Form launch - on Tuesday evening Year 11 found out about the new Sixth Form opportunities available in September, here at Pittville. Students and parents were given a talk by our new Head of 6th, Mrs Fletcher-Sykes and by the Headteacher, Miss Cheshire.