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Early Years CPD at National Gallery

In March, colleagues took part in some fantastic training led by the Education team at the National Gallery. The session involved EYFS staff from Brixton Learning Collaborative, Windmill Cluster and Oval Learning and took place in the gallery spaces with colleagues exploring ways to use pictures to support storytelling and oracy development. Teacher comments:

‘Very inspiring!’
‘I honestly loved this CPD session and am excited to implement some of the tips and tricks for story telling’
‘I found it incredibly useful and inspiring and lovely to have something completely focussed on EYFS’

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Science Leads training with Ogden Trust

At the start of the year BLC science leads came together for a day of training funded and led by the Ogden Trust as part of an ongoing partnership with BLC schools to support the teaching and learning of physics. The focus of the day was Electricity and colleagues learnt some useful new strategies and tips to inspire their pupils to take physics further. They were all provided with a kit of resources for some exciting physics experimentation back in the classroom

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BLC St Gabriel’s Science Fair

This week teams from across our cluster came together to present the work they have been preparing since February, for the St Gabriel’s BLC Science Fair. This is a great annual event which involves year 5 children from our primaries working in the science labs at St Gabriel’s and the teachers from the faculty, supported by year 9 science mentors. It was fantastic to be able to do a lot of these sessions face to face this year, whilst making the most of virtual means of support, through fortnightly googlemeet surgeries where children could discuss their work back in school with a secondary science teacher. The standard was higher than ever on the day, and the judging panel had a very hard job. Congratulations to this year’s winners from Stockwell Primary for their Super Slime entry. All the teams though deserve congratulations for doing some truly excellent work. This event was supported with some funding from Ogden Trust as part of our 4 year partnership. Many thanks to all the staff involved, especially to St Gabriel’s Science Faculty for giving the children this opportunity.

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Science Take Away activities for families, supported by the Ogden Trust

Children in Reception and year 1 from St John’s Angell Town Primary had an opportunity to share their investigative learning in science with their families at half term, as they took home some simple experiments to do at home.
This is an opportunity we have been able to deliver as part of our brilliant science partnership with The Ogden Trust, supporting teaching and learning in Science.
The children were excited about what they learnt, enjoyed taking their experiment materials home in their special Take Away tote bags and brought some lovely learning back into the classroom.
More schools will take part in these opportunities over Easter and in Summer half term.

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BLC Spanish speaking secondary students visit research labs at UCL – cutting edge vaccine work

Just before half term, students from St Gabriel’s College and Evelyn Grace Academy spent a full day in the research laboratories at UCL, working alongside the scientists and research students to learn the work they are doing on producing vaccines to combat major diseases such as cancer.

Many things made this day special: the whole day was conducted and led in Spanish, by Spanish speaking scientists working in London for Spanish speaking students. In addition all the teaching staff were women, to celebrate Women and Girls in Science day.
This opportunity was organised by Dr MJ Martinez-Bravo from UCL and generously supported by the British Society for Immunology.

We aim to give more opportunities to students to learn the opportunities available to them in London, in science.

Thank you to everyone for their support, engagement and enthusiasm for the day.

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Confident Creators at St Saviour’s – sculpture in paper and foil

This week we welcomed artist Laura X Carle to work with children from St Saviour’s, delivering an Art workshop which used Art to support children’s creativity and wellbeing as part of our Summer of Wellbeing. The children made fabulous pieces using just pens, paper, tape and foil. We hope you enjoy these examples of their work.

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massive well done to our Spelling Bee children today!

Every year St Gabriel’s College puts on a spelling bee for our primary schools and this year we were delighted to have Christ Church SW9, Loughborough, St Savour’s and Jessop take part. All the spellers did brilliantly with St Saviour’s winning Last Man Standing round (well done Camille) and Jeantai from Christ Church getting the highest score in the Quick Fire Round. Looking forward to another competition next year – maybe virtual, maybe in person!

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Sharing a Smile amongst school – box swopping day!

As we near the end of term, our well being ambassadors have been looking into the boxes their partner school sent to them, encouraging them to smile and be happy! Yesterday I returned the boxes to their original schools so the return messages could be read. Looking forward to seeing all the well being ambassadors online in our final meeting of the term next week.