NEWSLETTER
End of Spring Term 2021
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HEADTEACHERS WELCOME
Welcome to another bumper issue of our newsletter. Whilst current restrictions have curtailed some events, our students continue to get involved in an impressive array of activities both in and outside of lessons.
I am certain that you will enjoy reading all about the varied and exciting things our students have been throwing themselves into.
Our departments are ever evolving the services we can provide the students. This term saw the return of some of our after school sports clubs and The Hummingbird Team are back and training for their F24 races which will hopefully take place in the Summer Term. Ensure you check out the library section in this newsletter to read about the innovative way we celebrated world book day and the new system we will have in place to allow our students get the most out of it's valuable resources.
Do remember to visit our website to see our latest news and also to see what our wonderful student leaders are up to on behalf of the school.
I wish everyone in our community a happy and restful Easter Break.
Best wishes,
Simon Underdown.
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 | 30 Mar 2021 During lockdown Amira and her family completed their challenge, running the distance from Plymouth to London in aid of Macmillan. |
 | 29 Mar 2021 Lucy and her sister Molly have decided to raise money for the Stroke Association to raise awareness and support to people who have unfortunately been affected by a stroke. |
 | 25 Mar 2021 How did you pass the time during lock down? For Darcey and Elizabeth they used all of their free time to achieve their silver reading badge by reading and reviewing 25 books each! |
 | 25 Mar 2021 Following on from the Liz Earles 'feel the love' young artist competition, we just had to show you the incredible prize and catch up with Emma on her experience. |
 | 12 Mar 2021 Liz Earle Beauty Co launched their Young Artist competition across the nation and we are delighted that Emma, 7K has been announced as one of their winners. |
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22 Mar 2021 Pebble entries have been coming in thick and fast! | 15 Mar 2021 Following the launch of the Head Student Team's school challenge last week, some of our first entries have come in and have been hidden very near to school! Keep an eye out and see if you can spot any? Latimer have taken an early lead, but it's still very close. Good luck! |
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 | 15 Mar 2021 The Spring 2021 edition of the student magazine 'Hear me out' has been published today. |
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 | 26 Mar 2021 Today all PHSG staff and students held a mufti day to raise money for Comic Relief. We are delighted to announce that we raised a total of £461.80! |
 | 24 Mar 2021 This week has seen the final round of Lateral Flow Testing in school as all year groups have now completed their three tests and have been provided with their home testing kits. |
 | 15 Mar 2021 Following the Autumn term, PHSG have been awarded a certificate from the BBC Children in Need for their fundraising efforts. |
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 | 31 Mar 2021 A kit put together by the students, for the students, on how to balance school work with personal wellbeing and tips and tricks for revision and exams. |
 | 23 Mar 2021 There will be a national minute's silence at midday to mark the one year anniversary since the first coronavirus lockdown was announced. |
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Duke of Edinburgh Updates
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 | 08 Mar 2021 Despite the pandemic, PHSG DofE is hopeful that the planned Expeditions for Year 9(Bronze),Year 10(Silver) and Year 11(Silver) due to take place in May, June and July 2021 will still take place. |
 | 04 Mar 2021 Adele Yer 9, has been cleaning up her local beach as part of her volunteering section for her DofE Bronze award. |
 | 25 Feb 2021 PHSG students have been progressing their Duke Of Edinburgh Award scheme by conducting community litter picking as part of their volunteering work. |
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World Book Day
World Book Day was a bit different this year so we set up some fun activities for students to access remotely. There were cryptic clues to book titles, an emoji quiz, blurred book covers to guess, a book themed bake competition and the highlight was the ‘Masked Readers.’ Members of staff read a short book extract from behind a mask. Well done to Mr Davies- you stumped everyone with your fencing mask! Every correct answer earned a House Point and there were prizes for the top House Point scorers in each year group. Well done to:
Sonia T Year 7
Esther B Year 8
Francesca B Year 9
Caroline H Year 10
Hermione S Year 11
Lauren H Year 12
Zoe C Year 12
Well done to Kendall, your efforts have earned 256 house points!
We saw some delicious looking bakes so thank you to everyone who had a go. We had to choose two winners. Well done to Ellen S Year 7 for your ‘Monster Book of Monsters’ and Zoe C Year 13 for your Mandrake Cupcakes. £5 book vouchers are in the Owl Post!
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March Scholastic Book Club
Thank you to everyone who ordered from our latest Scholastic Book Club. We are delighted to let you know that thanks to your support we earned £32.96 to spend on books for the school library. All students should have been contacted to collect their orders. Please look out for our next Book Club to order great books at great prices and earn loads of free books for our school while you do.
These are the new books we were able to buy for the library with the rewards. All available to borrow now:
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New Library Management System - AccessIT
With limited access to the library this academic year, we felt it was important to find a school Library Management System that would make browsing and borrowing books from home much easier. During the lock down we have been busy setting up an amazing new library system called AccessIT that we think students are going to love. Some of the new features to look forward to are:
- You will now be able to log into the Library catalogue anywhere you have a computer or smartphone.
- Find resources for your school work - including information books, fiction, websites, magazines and journals, links to other sources and more
- Find suggestions for good reads
- Reserve books and other items
- Renew online and keep on top of your loans
- Create your own reading lists
- Read and write book reviews (earn house points for your book reviews)
Ebooks - Wheelers
As well as finding a new Library Management System, we have added on an eBook facility that integrates seamlessly with AccessIT. This means that when students are browsing our library catalogue, they can browse and borrow any of our eBooks anytime and anywhere.
Wheelers will allow you to:
- Discover and borrow ebooks anywhere, anytime
- Access a huge number of titles and is very straightforward and easy to use
- Change the font, text size and background colour of text for all eBooks.
- Compile favourites lists and see previews of titles before borrowing
All of this will be available to use after the Easter break. The link to the web app will be made available from our school website.
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Student & Class of the Week
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 | 30 Mar 2021 Student of the week: Hazel, 7L. ''For writing a friendly, thoughtful and detailed letter for a year 6 coming to Plymouth High in September. She had obviously put a lot of thought and time into it and painted a really... |
 | 22 Mar 2021 Student of the Week: Leonie, 11K ''For a significant increase in effort and application. Making real improvements in her work. Excellent attitude''. Nominated by Mr Osborne. Awarded 10 Hou... |
 | 08 Mar 2021 Student of the Week: Lauren, 12MCA ''For stepping up to attend a Diversity Group meeting with DHSG, take minutes and represent her group, all at short notice''. Nominated by Mrs Hoyte. Awarded 10 House points.Class of the Week: Year 10 History class... |
 | 01 Mar 2021 Student of the Week: Ella-Rose, 7T. ''For amazing effort and time to produce a fantastic and geographical accurate model for her UK climate presentation''. Nominated by Miss Boyle. Awarded 10 House points.Class of the Week: 10A GCSE PE ''For an excell... |
 | 22 Feb 2021 Student of the Week: Grace, 8T. ''For producing an outstanding RS essay on women in religion and society, an inspirational read, making excellent use of all our class work and discussions.'' Nominated by Mrs Banks. Awarded 10 House points.Class of the Week: 1... |
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 | 29 Mar 2021 The time has come for the launch of the annual PHSG Student Planner competition. Each year, students throughout the school, submit designs for the following year’s Student Planner Front Cover. |
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Skills South West is the region's largest jobs and careers event taking place virtually on 21 April 2021 from 09:30 - 18:00.
About this Event
Skills South West is being held virtually. This free event brings young people, aged 14yrs +, from the region into contact with employers, training providers, colleges, universities and professional bodies.
Using a dedicated virtual platform, attendees will have the opportunity to navigate through different spaces to interact with our wide variety of exhibitors. Free to attend, the event helps young people transition into the world of further study, work or training by identifying their ideal career pathway.
For more information on the Skills South West event visit their website www.prospectsevents.co.uk
If you would like to attend this event after school, please cut and paste the link below;
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/skills-south-west-2021-family-individual-registration-registration-111790131292
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PARKING
Please can we ask Parents for consideration when parking near the school, there have been some instances where it has been difficult for our students to walk safely due to the volume of cars.
Be reminded that there is NO PARKING allowed on the double yellow lines outside the school main gates.
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HOME SCHOOL COMMUNICATION
Students may contact staff if they have queries, firstly by visiting them in their department area, and only contacting them using school email system if they really can’t see them in person.
Parents may wish to contact staff. The following outlines what the Headteacher regards as important considerations regarding home/school communication, particularly by email:
¨ All communication must respect the dignity of the recipient.
¨ Within 48 hours: receipt of an email will be acknowledged by school either by the person contacted, or the most appropriate person able to deal with the issue (term time only, not after 5pm nor over a weekend).
¨ Within 5 working days: school will provide a response to the email by telephone or in writing, or e-mail. This may include informing the sender that more time is required to provide a full response. If this is the case, staff should indicate a time frame for a response.
¨ Staff will not be expected to monitor or respond to emails outside their normal working hours (nor at weekends and published school holidays).
Whilst this is extremely rare, if a member of staff receives an e-mail or call which is of an aggressive tone, sets unreasonable demands or could otherwise be interpreted as harassing, they will refer this to a senior line manager in the school, who will decide if consideration needs to be given to dealing with further communication under our Complaints Policy.
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PARKING
Out of respect for our neighbours and for health and safety reasons there is NO PARKING on the school site or for collecting/dropping off students on the double yellow lines outside our school gates.
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SCHOOL NURSE DROP IN
Don’t forget for our students, the School Nurse visits school to provide a “drop in” clinic on Friday Week A at lunchtime. Just pop along to the Counselling Room.
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STUDENTS LEAVING SCHOOL DURING THE SCHOOL DAY
For safety reasons if your daughter has to leave school during the school day, and you are unable to collect her, she must have a note in her planner with clear instructions that you give permission for her to leave unaccompanied. Without your express instructions to this effect we will not allow any students to leave school unless they are collected by an adult from reception.
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NUT ALLERGY
Please be aware that we have students who are severely allergic to nuts and we would, therefore, appreciate where possible that you try to avoid putting nuts into packed lunches.
Although we are not going completely nut free, we have stopped selling packets of nuts as snacks in the canteen to try to reduce the risk to them and appreciate your support.
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SOCIAL MEDIA & ONLINE SAFETY
Our Children are spending more and more time on their mobile phones. Making them aware of the dangers of social media, and protecting them from these dangers can be very challenging. These are some of the better known sites that pose risks to children—are they on your child’s phone home screen?
To help safeguard your child please regularly take the time to talk to them about the way they use their social media apps:
Do they always know who they are engaging with?
Do they share their passwords?
Do they feel comfortable with what they are seeing and doing?
Do they feel pressure from “friends” to do/say things they don’t want to?
For more information please regarding online safety, please visit our website: www.phsg.org/
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Year 8 Parents Evening, 2nd Date, Virtual 3:45pm – 5:45pm | |
PTFA Meeting- Zoom 7:00pm – 8:00pm | |
School Nurse - Drop In 1:30pm – 2:30pm From 23 Apr and on Friday every 2 weeks until 29 May | |
DofE Bronze Yr 9 All Day From 27 Apr until 28 Apr | |
DipTP and Meningitis immunisations All Day From 27 Apr until 28 Apr | |
Yr 10 Parents Evening - virtual appointments 4:00pm – 6:00pm | |
School Nurse - Drop In 1:30pm – 2:30pm From 23 Apr and on Friday every 2 weeks until 29 May | |
DofE Bronze Practice Expedition Group 2 Yr9 All Day From 08 May until 09 May | |
Yr 7 Parents Evening- Virtual appointments All Day | |
DofE Bronze Assessment Expedition Group 1 Yr9 All Day From 15 May until 16 May | |
School Nurse - Drop In 1:30pm – 2:30pm From 23 Apr and on Friday every 2 weeks until 29 May | |
DofE Bronze Assessed Expedition Group 2 Yr9 All Day From 22 May until 23 May | |
DofE Silver practice Expedition Group 1 Y10 All Day From 28 May until 30 May | |
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2020-2021
Autumn Term:
Thursday 3rd September 2020 – Friday 18th December 2020
Half term: Monday 26th October – Monday 2nd November 2020
Spring Term:
Monday 4th January 2021 – Thursday 1st April 2021
Half term: Friday 12th February – Friday 19th February 2021
Summer Term:
Monday 19th April 2021 – Friday 23rd July 2021
May Day: Monday 3rd May 2021
Half term: Monday 31st May – Friday 4th June 2021
Curriculum Enrichment Week
CANCELLED
The non-pupil days are:
Tuesday 1st September 2020 (staff inset)
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 (staff inset)
Friday 25th September 2020 (staff inset)
Friday 23rd October 2020 (staff inset)
Monday 2nd November 2020 (commuted holiday)
Friday 12th February 2021(commuted holiday)
Date in June tbc 2021 (staff inset)
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2021-2022
Autumn Term:
Tuesday 7th September 2021 - Friday 17th December 2021
Autumn Half Term: Monday 25th October 2021 - Friday 29th October 2021
Spring Term:
Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Thursday 8th April 2022
Spring Half Term: Monday 21st February 2022 - Friday 25th February 2022
Summer Term:
Monday 25th April 2022 - 22nd July 2022
Summer Half Term: Monday 30th May 2022 - Friday 3rd June 2022
Curriculum Enrichment Week:
Monday 4th July - Friday 8th July 2022
The Non Pupil Days are:
Monday 6th September 2021
Friday 22nd October 2021
Monday 2nd May 2022 (Bank Holiday)
TBC June 2022
Monday 25th July 2022
Tuesday 26th July 2022
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