Newsletter

As you will see from the newsletter, it has been a very busy term. We have held a number of successful open evenings and events for prospective students and parents/carers for admission into NUAST for September 2022. Parents/carers have fed back positively about the students who have taken part in these events and they represented NUAST and yourselves very well.

I am delighted that we have been able to restart our enrichment and wider curriculum activities with students visiting universities and the theatre and attending Vex Robotic competitions. I hope that these activities will be able to continue and grow during the remainder of this academic year.

We are once again working with enhanced precautions following the Government’s introduction of ‘Plan B’. I receive communication daily from the Department for Education and will receive these throughout the holiday period. I would like to thank each of you for your support throughout the pandemic. Students are requested to take a lateral flow test prior to returning to lessons in January. In order to facilitate testing, the school will be closed to students on Monday 10th January. Students will only attend in order to complete testing. Further details will be communicated home by letter this week.

External examinations will go ahead for Engineering students in Years 10 and 11 during January. Students in Years 12 and 13 studying BTEC Applied Science will also undertake external assessment. It is important that these students spend time revising for these examinations during the Christmas holiday.

We will break up for the Christmas holiday at 2:30pm on Friday 17th December. Students will return to school on Tuesday 11th January.

I would like to wish you all a happy and restful Christmas break.

Mr White

18 students from NUAST have achieved the Gold Award in the annual Bebras Computing Challenge.

The competition takes place every year and asks students to solve a series of computational thinking problems. Over 300,000 students took part from around the UK and 50 other countries.  500 students from across the year groups represented NUAST.

Students who achieve the Gold Award are in the top 10% in the country and are invited to a further Oxford University Computing Competition held online in February.

The Bebras Challenge is structured as a series of 18 problem-solving questions where students have to solve as many as they can in a short 40-minute time limit. Questions are broken down in to three levels of difficulty with the harder questions receiving negative points if they are answered incorrectly. Students must gain as many points as they can out of a possible 200 in total.

Mr Wood, Head of Computing, commented: “It is great that so many of our students took part in the Bebras Competition this year.  We are really impressed with their results.  A special ‘well done’ to the students who achieved the top Gold Award. Problem-solving is a major part of our subject and we hope to see all of these students pursue careers in Computer Science in the future.”

Mr White, Principal, commended the students saying: “Well done to our Gold Award students. To be in the top 10% of students nationally is a fantastic achievement and we wish students the best for the next round of the competition.”

Students who qualify can start to prepare for the online programming challenge at https://oucc.uk/ where practice questions are already available. The competition will take place between 7th - 11th February 2022.

For more information about the Bebras Computing Challenge, please see the following website: https://www.bebras.uk/.

We are thrilled to have our new Library Champions in place.  Our team of Year 7s have been busy all term re-thinking our school library.  They have created a fantastic display promoting reading for pleasure, put together book boxes for Year 7 tutor groups and introduced the Read Ahead Award Scheme.  All Year 7s can be rewarded with house points for their reading habits and many have already completed their Bronze Awards.  The team is planning to create mini libraries within tutor bases in the new year. 

Year 7 students have also been reading the book 'Smart' by local author Kim Slater in tutor time.  This has been a great shared reading experience and we are finishing the year with a big quiz about the book.  

Book recommendation to get into the Christmas spirit: 'A Boy Called Christmas' by Matt Haig.

Year 10 have got off to a flying start, both academically and in their extra-curricular activities! They have coped extremely well with the transition into their GCSEs and a positive attitude has been shared across the year group, with many students having attended our ‘Breakfast of Champions’ as recognition of their efforts. They have also represented the school in a range of sporting events, including cross-country running and a number of football matches against competing schools in the city.  The football team has won two and drawn two games, with Amare Salazar Green and Ahmed Hassan being top goal scorers, and Celeste Bikoyi as ‘star of the tournament so far’. The year group is a strong team and full of character.  A brilliant start and plenty of promise for a successful year ahead!

Ms Strawson, Head of Year 10

All groups have made an impressive start to PE at NUAST this term.

Year 7 - stars have been Rio Salazar Green, Bintu Sumbuna

Year 8 – Abbala Nyakairu, Lee Cox, Omar Ahmed, Monzir Hassan, Safiyah Shah

Year 9 - Dominick Lubakii, Abi Mckenzie

Year 10 - Amare Salazar Green, Ahmed Hassan, Jack Bailey, Denisha Fisher

Year 11 - Amaan Mohamed, Izza Kamil-Okedara, Anujin Sodbayer

                                                 

We have enjoyed a fantastic term of sport and have regularly competed have been allowed to take part in fixtures with other schools.
Term 1 fixture results:

Year 10 Football -
NUAST V Bluecoat Wollaton = 0-0
NUAST V Free School = 2-0
NUAST V Fernwood = 1-1
NUAST V Emmanuel = 2-0

The whole team performed brilliantly.  Star performer so far though has been Celeste Bikoyi-Bouesso-Wenazo!!

 

Year 9 Football -
NUAST V Emmanuel = 1-0

NUAST V Emmanuel = 1-1

NUAST V Bluecoat Aspley = 1-1

NUAST V Bluecoat Aspley = 0-2

NUAST V Wells = 3-0

NUAST V Wells = 1-1

Our Year 9 team did NUAST proud throughout the tournament. Man of the tournament has to be Charlie Ball!!

Year 8 Netball -
NUAST V Bluecoat Beechdale = 7-0

NUAST V Bluecoat Wollaton = 3-0
NUAST V Trinity = 3-1
NUAST V Ellis Guilford = 1-1

NUAST V Fernwood = 0-0

NUAST V NUSA = 0-3

NUAST V Djanogly = 0-4
The team narrowly missed out on bronze by a goal difference (which I still think is amazing given this was their first ever tournament!) 

 

Year 10 Netball –

NUAST V NUSA Y11 = 0-13

NUAST V NUSA Y10 = 0-13

NUAST V Emmanuel = 0-9
Even though we faced defeat in all three games the girls kept smiling and showed great sportsmanship throughout!

 

Inclusive Cross Country –

Huge congratulations to all students who took part in the cross-country relay races on Tuesday 5th October, each student had to run a huge distance of 1500m around the lake at Colwick Park!

An extra special congratulations to the green team who came 2nd place!!! #GONUAST #SILVER!!

Asharn Graham

Monzir Hassan

Ezekiel Laugharne

Kieran Rathore

GCSE PE has started in Year 10.  The group of 18 students have made a fantastic start to the course. They have been studying anatomy and physiology, in particular looking at the bones in the body and synovial joints. They have also undertaken some practical fitness tests with some fantastic scores in the 12-minute run, the multi-stage fitness test and standing broad jump, in particular Jack Bailey jumping over 2.5 m from a standing position.

Students across the school are collecting plenty of House Points.  For last week, the totals for each year group looked like this:

Year 7 - 692

Year 8 - 510

Year 9 - 395

Year 10 - 384

Year 11 - 121

House Points are awarded for great attitude to learning, excellent work and superb contributions to the school and wider community.  We are striving to 'Work Hard, Be Kind'.  

                                                                                                                       

                                                   

This term, we have been focusing on our oracy across the school.  Being able to speak confidently and articulately is a really important skill at school, in the workplace and in life generally.  We have been using the SHAPE acronym to help us remember how to verbally communicate effectively.  

Year 12 and Year 13 students enjoyed a day of sharing and celebrating each others' cultures.  It was a wonderful experience and students relished the opportunity to learn more about the traditional dress and food from the wide range of cultures represented by our student body.

Design Technology is taught on rotation in  Year 7.  Groups learned the foundations of CAD software and used those skills to design and draw their own torches which were then laser cut.