In the couple of weeks since the half-term holiday I have been in and out of a lot of lessons and it has been a pleasure.

This week I really enjoyed a Year 7 English lesson in which students were studying Patrick Ness’s novel A Monster Calls. The text is hugely engaging and students explored characters and themes, predicting what they thought might happen, finding out about the history of the yew tree and myths about three particular monsters. Students read fluently, were enthusiastic in contributing and thought deeply about the text. Equally, in a Year 10 English lesson students were working on Jane Weir’s poem “Poppies” – which is of course timely but is also a core part of the GCSE syllabus. The way in which they unpacked imagery, worked together to explore meaning and produced carefully considered responses was very impressive indeed.

And, of course, it’s not just English. In DT Food the activity and sense of purpose as Year 11 students prepared dishes for their coursework felt almost like a professional kitchen. In Year 13 Art students worked in silent reflection preparing their coursework pieces. In a Year 9 languages lesson students were challenged and pushed in their use of the target language. And last Friday afternoon I passed by one of our PE staff delivering an inspirational talk to a red-faced and sweaty group of Year 7 boys who had just completed their activity – it was about the importance of trying your best, giving everything a go, embracing new things and fresh challenges and not worrying if you find things difficult. It was great.

All of these lessons are part of the wider fabric of our school and they were a really good depiction of our school “in action” at this point in the school year.

Today we mark Remembrance Day with a minute’s silence and a playing of the Last Post. It is also Parliament Week and we look forward to welcoming our local MP, and Children’s Minister, David Johnston, to the school to speak to our older students.