The University of Birmingham are hosting FREE Physics lectures in conjunction with the Institute of Physics! Please see the attached flier which is also placed around school. These would be great for our GCSE Physics pupils and anyone looking at studying Physics at A Level.
We are very pleased to welcome our new Foreign Language Assistant to Turves Green Boys’ School. Mr Bugnet has joined us from Lyon in France and will be working with pupils at our school. He will be helping pupils in all year groups to improve their spoken French which will in turn help them with their listening and writing in the French language. Mr Bugnet will be here with us until the end of May 2025. He has prepared a presentation that he will deliver to pupils this week and is a huge sports fan. He is a keen gymnast and also enjoys football.
Bienvenue, Monsieur Bugnet!
Reading is the core priority for Year 7s at Turves Green, whether it be through the Accelerated Reader Programme, Classroom readers, Library readers or the 16 x 16 programme or – best of all – boys enjoying a book of their own because they love to read a good story. Literacy is at the heart of all our learning. But what if you live in a place where books are banned? During Banned Books week – which runs through the last week in September – Year 7s have been taking the chance to learn about where and why books have been banned both in countries as far apart as the United States and China.
Boys have been surprised to learn that much-loved stories, such as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ have been banned in some places for what they reveal about the difficult issues of racism and injustice. They have also discovered that a key Year 8 text, ‘Animal Farm’ was once banned in the Soviet Union for what it seems to say about Josef Stalin. Most shockingly of all, they have discovered that not only ‘Witches’ by Roald Dahl, but even the Harry Potter series have been banned in some countries for promoting witchcraft.
Luckily all these books are available to our boys, helping them not only to immerse themselves in great stories and enjoy the fantastic worlds of imagination to which they can be transported by a writer, but also to understand the complexity of human life and experience by thinking about some of the issues which spurred the writer to create them in the first place. Year 7, who are currently reading ‘Ghost Boys’ paused their reading for a lesson or two this week to consider the reasons behind censorship and the implications while some have been exploring the displays and activities on this vital topic in the library.
30 September
After a full month on Mathswatch students have attempted over 2700 questions as part of their homework tasks.
Each month students compete for top of our leaderboard with the total amount of marks they have achieved in Independent Activities and their assigned homeworks. This month our top scorers were:
1) K. Lei Abrahams 7A2
2) D. Pere-Enaregha 9T2
3) A. Imtiaz 10T1
As well as the homework students can attempt questions on any topic they have done (or are about to do) in maths. This means you can find your own revision to refresh yourself on topics you have done previously or look ahead at topics that are about to appear.
Any student stuck on a homework question or questions they are attempting independently can watch the videos attached to any question to help them answer it or leave feedback for their teacher to see.
Science homework on Seneca is live again! Those in year 8 and above will remember the platform and be used to it’s well chunked, animated design. For those of you who are new or need a refresh, here’s the detail.
You go to senecalearning.com and log in with your school email and password. If you have forgotten your password, you can reset it using your school email and follow the instructions in the email link. If you haven’t logged on before, check your emails. Once you have been placed in a class, you will receive an email giving details of how to log on. Still not sure or having trouble? Speak to your science teacher, we can reset passwords for you!
The benefits of Seneca?
As an added extra, you can revisit any past topics covered and even complete sections in your own time if you fancy an extra challenge. Happy learning!
We are very much looking forward to welcoming the Onatti Theatre Group to Turves Green Boys’ School on February 12th 2025. Our Key Stage 4 pupils will have the opportunity to watch a French play, Prendre Sa Revanche. This will help pupils to improve their listening skills in French as well as enjoying the performance. Prior to watching the play, pupils will receive a workbook with all of the key vocabulary and a synopsis of the play.
What is the play about?
It’s not all about the really entertaining story or the twisting plot, although they are very funny, no, it is all about the participation from our students.
Two antique dealers try to fool customers by passing off fake artefacts as real, but this time it is them who are made to be the fools! Revenge comes when they try to con someone who’s quick thinking turns the tables on these two unscrupulous dealers.
This very amusing play can only be performed with the help of the audience who will help the actors in various ways during the performance. We are looking forward to seeing how our pupils engage with the performance!
We continue our ‘feel good’ Friday lunch time rewards this week. Heads of House select one pupil per year group for a multitude of reasons to be celebrated at lunch time and presented with a token to select a book from our reading rewards vending machine. Senior Leaders then select one pupil from each year group.
This week’s winners were selected for the most class charts points in their first week?
An additional award was given this week for F Grainger for his exemplification of the Turves Values in the community and helping a member of the public in distress.
Year 7 students have been learning how to heat and mould plastics. They have used CAD software to design a logo, using a laser cutter to engrave their designs onto phone holders.
Year 8 students have been learning about lamination and experimenting with different categories of wood. They have also been using forging techniques to bend metals.
Year 9 students have been learning about electronics and how to solder PCB circuits. They are currently learning about the different units of power for electronics and the various types of circuit.
Over this week and last week all maths classes will be introduced to Mathswatch. Most students will have seen this website before as the maths department has been using it for the last few years to set maths homework. Homeworks will once again be set on matswatch from Thursday to Thursday each week and will be a great opportunity for students to recap what they have learnt in the week as well as get hints at what topics will be coming up in the future and what core maths skills may be needed for those lessons.
As well as being able to set homework that will be instantly marked for pupils at home it also has a vast array of other resources our students can use to further their maths education. Clicking on videos at the top right will let you find any topic you can think of, view a video to help you with that topic and also some interactive questions that will be marked for you. As you watch videos and get involved with your learning you will earn points that will be tracked on a school wide leader board. There will be shout outs and prizes to those students who have completed the most extra lessons for that half term.
If you are struggling to log in to Mathswatch please talk to your maths teacher before or after school or at breaktime and they can log in with you.
7×1 have glided their way into secondary school and have settled in wonderfully! All boys are putting in their best effort, and trying their hardest. 7×1 were given the task of article writing 13/09 which they all took too really wonderfully. In year 7, the boys look at a text called ‘Ghost Boys’ which highlights racism and the unjust social system of America.
They were asked to write a short article making people aware of how Jerome was unfortunately killed and they had to make sure they included emotive language. Three boys did this in particular, these were: Theo E (7A1), Christopher F (7A1) and Joshua H (7A1). Their writing was superb and allowed themselves to venture outside the box.
They all created their own metaphor to allow their readers to feel captured by the emotion they feel. Christopher F did this spectacularly through a series of rhetorical questions: “Why did he get killed? Why? Why?! Why?!!”. Well done to all of these boys! Moving from year 6 to year 7 isn’t an easy task, but they have made it look easy with their written work!
Turves Green, Northfield,
Birmingham, B31 4BS
Contact Number: 0121 483 2890
Email: postbox@tgbs.co.uk
Monday - Friday: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm
