St Brendan's News Flash 18.06.21 | St Brendan's Sixth Form College

Friday 18th June 2021

Dear Students and Parents/Carers

In a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, St Brendan’s won two awards in the category of Covid Above and Beyond and were runners up in the Independent Learning category. Our IT team won an award for Covid Above and Beyond, as well as our a whole College staff body. In addition to this, Bea Honap-Baker was positioned as a runner-up for the brilliant work that is done in our Futures programme which supports careers and progression. This is a great achievement by both our staff and students and a well-deserved sector award by the teams involved.

Next week is the deadline for Thank a Teacher nominations. These nominations can be entered for any member of staff at St Brendan’s, for those who have encouraged and inspired you to achieve your best, no matter what your goals are.

Finally, many of you will be aware we are currently seeing a sharp increase in infections both in Bristol and across the country. Can we please continue to stress to students the importance of following our Covid protocols. Please make sure that you test yourself twice a week using lateral flow tests. We have plenty of tests here at College if you are running out. Please also make sure that you are using hand sanitiser and wiping your work areas. Face coverings must still need to be worn on public transport.

Marian Curran (College Principal)

Remote Working

Remote working 28th, 29th, 30th June

On the 28^th, 29^th and 30^th June we will be welcoming our new students on to College site for their taster days. This means all current students will be working remotely for these days and will be set work to complete at home, rather than coming in to College.

Teaching Learning and Assessment

FAO Year 13 and ATL3 students

Weightings on Markbook.

As a result of some conversations with parents and students, it has become apparent that some students can see what looks to be a suggested weighting on their assessments in Pro-Portal mark book. We wanted to advise you all that these weightings are numbers created by teachers much earlier in the year for use as part of our internal assessment and in-year reporting measures (KAG reports etc) and have no bearing on the TAG process whatsoever. We have looked to see if we can remove them from visibility to save confusion but unfortunately doing so would impact on our ongoing work with year 12 students and thus they need to stay in place and visible.

So, in summary, if you can see any resemblance to something looking like a weighting on your mark book assessments please ignore it in relation to the TAG process. They are not being used for TAG.

Teaching Learning and Assessment

FAO Year 12 students

Students will be aware of the up-and-coming New Student Days (NSD) on the 28, 29 & 30 June. All year 12 students will be working from home on these days on tasks set by their teachers. Lessons will not be running, instead the activities are asynchronous (meaning you can work through them in your own time and speed).

Please be advised that when we planned these days back last year we took in to account any possible impacts of COVID and blended learning and extended the end of the College year by a week, meaning you finish on Thursday 15th July rather than the 8th, in order to ensure no 'lost learning' days from the NSDs.

Careers News

'Careers News' - featuring the latest apprenticeships, university and college opportunities, career-related events and much more. Highlights of the 16^th June edition include:

St Brendan's Careers Week commencing 21st June
RE:ACTION 24/7 - boost confidence in your capabilities and potential
BBC Young Composer 2021 Competition
GSK Work Experience Day
i Newspaper Journalist apprenticeship scheme
University Open Day listings
UCAS discovery week
1:1 Music Mentoring sessions with Industry Professionals

Careers News

St Brendan's Careers Week 21st, 22nd, 24th, 25th June

Four days of live virtual talks about the wide range of opportunities available after St Brendan’s
Some sessions are compulsory and teachers will be streaming these during lessons
Summary of the timetable is here
Teachers may also be streaming optional talks if relevant to their subject
Students can also join independently if not in a lesson or request permission from their teacher to attend during lesson time if they feel the talk is beneficial for their future career plans.

Click on this link further details and to join the live Teams event:

https://virtual-events.stbrn.ac.uk/careers-week-21st-june

students may use the linked Padlet to ask questions before or during the event

Note: Recordings of the March Health Careers event are available HERE

WE'RE BACK!

Sport Enrichment is back!

Running throughout June & July - everyone welcome!

If you don't have a lesson at these times, head to the sports centre (E building) to join in.
If you can't make these sessions but would like to play next year, email: Jake.Britton@stbrn.ac.uk to let him know.

Café Max and Café Min - Important Information!

Good news - both cafes are open!

Opening hours are 8:30 am - 3:30 pm Monday- Friday.

Whether it's breakfast to kickstart your day, a snack at break time or a tasty lunch, the Cafe Teams will be happy to serve you.

Newsflash Events Full Length Image support

Click Here For Support & Welfare Information

BAME at St Brendan’s

Adah Isaacs Menken

As Menken told so many versions of her origins, including name, place of birth, ancestry, and religion, historians have differed in their accounts. Most have said she was born a Louisiana Creole Catholic of mixed race, with European and African ancestry.

Click here to find out more about Adah Isaacs Menken

Message from the SU

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all well

To celebrate pride month the SU team have organised a rainbow area to be displayed in Café Max. Students are able to submit their experiences through the below link or the qr code in Café Max to be displayed on the rainbow - either anonymously or named if you wish. We would really appreciate it if you could do this, this will be a great way to celebrate pride month and educate ourselves of experiences people have had. The rainbow will be up by the end of this week. If you have any experiences feel free to share them! 😊

To add experiences or stories relating to Pride or the LGBTQ+ community, please click here: https://forms.office.com/r/EeE...

The SU Team

The Return of Societies!

Society Sessions are continuing to launch!

Sign-up for the coming week of sessions HERE

If you would like to create a new society, just email swi@stbrn.ac.uk and we can begin to promote the group to the student body!

New groups and sessions will continue to be added via the bulletin, and all sign-ups will be added to individual Teams channels for each group for more direct information about sessions.

To note, please fill in the form even if you have already previously registered interest- this allows us to manage attendance and numbers at sessions which is still extremely important due to Covid!

Looking forward to some fun sessions 🙂

Student Engagement Officer - Stanford

Click here to sign up

Get Involved!

Medical Schools Council Summer Schools

Medical Schools Council is working with four leading medical schools across England to offer a series of free summer schools. The initiative is funded by Health Education England and is aimed at young people from areas of England where few students apply to study medicine. There is a particular focus on reaching young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

At an MSC Summer School, students can learn about becoming a doctor or health care professional and whether it would be the right career for them. They will receive the information, skills and above all the confidence they need to submit a strong application to medicine. The summer school will take place during the week of 5 July 2021. Applications for this summer are now open and can be made here

Improving Wellbeing – A self-study course for students

Dr Iro Konstantinou at The Tony Little Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning (CIRL) has created 8 x 10-minute well-being sessions for school students to do in their own time and at their own pace. The link to the sessions is here