Year 12 students win first prize in the Welwyn Hatfield Community Youth Champion Competition

The Community Youth Champion Project is run by the Welwyn and Hatfield Council in partnership with local secondary schools competing to raise awareness within their school in one of four key areas of youth welfare: increase awareness around mental health and wellbeing; raise awareness amongst young people around drugs, substance misuse and its impact on individuals; healthy relationships or on-line safety e.g. bullying/grooming/identity fraud/coercive behaviour.

A team of eight of our Year 12 Life Skills students chose the theme of ‘Healthy Relationships’ and worked diligently as a project group over 8 weeks from October to December 2021 to raise awareness of the topic across the school. Our Community Youth Champions planned and delivered various activities including presenting Life Skills lessons for Year 7 & 8s and prepared posters, a film and slides. The team also created a ‘suggestion box’ for the school Library for students to post anonymous questions which would be answered in a newsletter to Forms termly. Toilet door posters signposted girls to support organisations, and for the older groups, the slides and film were posted on the Sixth Form Hub, the information platform for Years 12 and 13. The judging panel, which included members of the Welwyn Hatfield Community Safety Partnership, stated: “The Bishop’s Hatfield team tailored their approach very effectively to the different ages of their audience. The team is now looking to take the project further in school over the coming year, following their success!”

Congratulations to: Darcie Lawrence, Samara Miller, Isabelle Weinstein, Muna Knight, Nebbe Hashem, Ellie Kovachky, Charlotte Bean and Holly Rowe. Each team member received a certificate for taking part in the project and a £20 gift voucher for 1st place.

Find out more in the March issue of the One Magazine, a Welwyn Hatfield Council publication which is sent to all residents of the borough.

Year 13 investigate Elizabeth I’s Golden Age

On Monday 7th Feburary, Year 13 visited Westminster Abbey and the Golden Hinde to support their Tudor England studies.

Students visited Westminster Abbey to learn about Elizabeth’s Religious Settlement. This consolidated student’s learning and helped them conclude their enquiry into the Mid-Tudor Crisis that they had been investigating since their visit to Hampton Court last summer.

Students then had a tour of the Golden Hinde ship and learnt about Drake’s circumnavigation of the world; gaining an understanding of Tudor Piracy and exploring whether Tudor exploration is really worthy of being considered a ‘Golden Age’.

Year 9 visited the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War.

Pupils from Year 9 visited Bletchley Park which provided a unique opportunity to enrich their learning of both History and Computing. Year 9 enjoyed a full-day of interactive activities with a focus on mathematical coding, ciphers, encryption and the history of World War Two.

Pupils got the opportunity to tour Britain’s codebreaking centre and learn about the people who helped to change the course of history. As part of an interactive workshop, pupils from Year 9 become codebreakers and used mathematical encryption and encoding techniques in a code-breaking challenge. Pupils also got to see a genuine, working Enigma machine and learn about its role in World War Two.