On the 24 November six students from The Dorcan Academy; Vadim Zbierzak, Hayden Crisp, Hasan Hussain, Ali Abubaker, Dipesh Thapa and Thomas Hamilton went to Commonweal school to play the opening round of the English Chess Federation Schools Challenge. All the players played some great chess with a real ebb and flow to the games. It was a highly competitive tournament which belies the final score of 5.5:0.5. Hasan played to a hard fought draw against their best player. We learnt a lot of lessons which we will use to become better players and we have vowed to play more chess.

Chess club is in the Library Lunchtimes for free play, the Chess club meets on a Thursday afterschool in the Library for coaching and developing our game. It would be great to see more people.

Mr Robinson

• 

• 

• 

Last week students from The Dorcan Academy took part in the Swindon Youth Festival of Literature 2021. We welcomed the Carnegie award winning Anthony McGowan who inspired year 8s and 9s with several ‘chat and read’ sessions. He also visited 9FR1 during DEAR and read a chapter of their tutor read book, ‘Lark’, which he just happened to write! What an amazing experience!

Year 7 participated in a poetry workshop with multi slam champion poet Ash Dickinson. We had some epic poems written by our enthusiastic Year 7s by the end of the session and lots of them had a very different idea of what poetry is all about.  

The author Onjali Q Rauf recorded a special event for the Festival. Our Year 7s and 8s have been watching her inspirational talk during Library lessons and really enjoying it. Jacob in Year 7 who won the competition to redesign the cover of Boy at the Back of the Class was the lucky student who was able to ask Onjali a question on behalf of The Dorcan Academy. Well done Jacob.

We also had 2 winners in the Inter School Festival competitions. Faye in Year 8 was awarded 2^nd place in the poetry competition, judged by Ash Dickinson and Marshall in Year 11 came 3^rd in the Creative Writing competition which was judged by the award-winning author Tom Palmer. Congratulations to them both!

• 

• 

• 

Year 10 Food and Nutrition

The interactive Master chef style lesson in which the class was divided into teams and presented with a box of ingredients. The aim was to create a 2 course meal within the allocated time frame. Supported by the royal Navy team of Drew and Emmanuel each team had 15 minutes to discuss what dishes they were going to make. The class was then presented with a mystery box of special ingredients to make their dishes stand out from the others. The teams then had 1 hour to prepare, cook and present their chosen dishes. This was a great activity to demonstrate students’ initiative, teamwork, communication and time management and an even better opportunity to demonstrate the Dorcan Values of Personal Responsibility, Resilience, Self-Discipline and, of course, Gratitude.

The results were outstanding.  I have included here some of the comments from the students.

“I have been looking forward to this for such a long time and it did not disappoint, Thank you Drew and Emmanuel”

“I have always wanted to join the forces, but did not know how to start the process; this has given me the information I needed”

“I know Covid is an issue, however, we certainly should do more of this”

“I especially liked the Navy Team, Emmanuel was funny, and Drew was nice – learnt several skills I will now use in my next practical.”

“I wish all our lessons were as fun as this, really enjoyed the session, but I think we should have won”

I would personally like to thank all the members of the DT team who supported this event throughout and special thanks to Mrs Abbott. I hope to continue make this an annual event.

• 

• 

Congratulations to our Year 10 and 11 Bronze DofE students who received their awards this week. They confidently presented their DofE journey and experiences to Mrs Koza and Mr Tanner.

Well done all on this fantastic achievement!

The groups were:

Lads

The Girls and Kenzie

Squeaky Chickens

The Stationary Pebbles

Burrito Bandits

MB’s Team

The Girls and Arlo

Lewis is Cool

Bears

The Scrambled Legs

Mrs Koza and Mr Tanner

• 

• 

Congratulations to the Under 16 netball squad for gaining a place after becoming runners up in the Swindon round of the National school competition.

On 7 November 2021 the girls represented Swindon in the Wiltshire county tournament.

The girls did not win but played some lovely netball, stayed focused for 6 hours and showed self-discipline and did their best for the school and town.

As lead teacher I am very proud of the whole squad and enjoyed their company.

Congratulations to: Thea, Bethanie, Bryony, Livvi, Rylee, Leah, Tia and Kasey.

Congratulations also to Aliya as she played in round one and supported the team in becoming runners up to take us through to the county round.

Mrs Barton

Year 10 Geography students took part in a live lesson from COP26, Glasgow joining students from around the world in learning about the causes and impacts of Climate Change. 

One of our students (Ashley, Year 9) showed self-discipline by taking part in a Humanitarian Engineering course online over half-term. He is proudly displaying the water treatment device he made. This was a great opportunity to explore a potential career in Engineering. Well done!

•