Year 8, you deserve real praise for the focus and maturity you have shown while studying Animal Farm this term. You approached a challenging and thought-provoking text with curiosity, resilience, and a willingness to think deeply. Your discussions showed growing confidence as you explored characters, themes, and the powerful messages behind Orwell’s writing. Many of you demonstrated impressive focus when analysing language and symbolism, making thoughtful links between the novel and ideas about power, leadership, and fairness.

You listened respectfully to different viewpoints and supported your ideas with evidence, which is a key skill you continue to develop well. Your written work reflected care, effort, and an improving ability to explain ideas clearly and thoughtfully. Most importantly, you showed that you can stay engaged with complex ideas and rise to academic challenges. Keep this focus and determination going - you should be very proud of the progress you have made this term.

We are extremely proud of Ayaan in year 11 who has earned a Blue Peter Music Badge following the submission of a piano performance he recorded.

Ayaan has frequently shown us his incredible technical skill and musical performance, so it is no surprise that the Blue Peter team has rewarded him with this prestigious badge. Not only that but they have also invited him to perform on the show. This is an incredibly fantastic opportunity and a significant accomplishment. We hope with how busy he is with his Year 11 studies he will be able to find the time to attend.

The Blue Peter Music Badge is awarded to young musicians who demonstrate talent, dedication and creativity and there is no better person to award it to than Ayaan and his hard work and commitment to music.Well done Ayaan on this exciting success and we look forward to seeing where your incredible music talent leads you.

In the last two weeks of this Christmas half term our 30+ strong school choir has taken part in several carol concerts across the local community sharing music, joy and goodwill with a wide range of audiences. The choir have performed in several venues including Saxon Court, Longbridge Baptist Church, Austin Rose Care Home and Limes Care Home as well as a special performance at Turves Green for a small number of staff and pupils.

These performances have not only given the boys an incredibly opportunity to perform and sing in the real world to help develop their confidence, team work and professionalism, but it is also incredibly important to show our community spirit and commitment as a school; especially during this festive season.

The concerts were all warmly received with audiences praising the choir’s enthusiasm and respectful conduct. With this being the third year of these carol concerts it is becoming a staple of the festive season for the local community.

We are incredibly proud of the boys for representing our school and involving themselves with our continued community work through music. Their maturity and generosity reflect their strong commitment to the Turves values and the meaningful impact our young people have on the local community.

Turves Green Boys’ School hosted it’s second annual Young Musician competition. An evening to showcase the outstanding musical ability and dedication of our pupils. The night was run as talent competition where pupils have the opportunity to present themselves professionally performing to a live audience.

16 students competed in the night with a wide range of performances with a variety of different instruments pupils have been learning in their music lesson, peripatetic lesson and at home with their own practice. The event was attending by parents, staff and fellow pupils who all came together to support the performers.

Our panel of judges, including Miss Harrison and other musicians from the Birmingham area, had a hard time picking a winner looking at each performer’s professionalism, musical talent, fluency and expression through each performance.

First place went to Alfie in Year 11with his incredible vocals closely followed by Oscar on the saxophone and Jacob on the drums (both in Year 11). A final special mention also goes to Oliver (Year 11) for his vocal and guitar performance.

The judges praised all the competitors for their professionalism and commitment to learning and performing with their chosen instrument. The evening was a tremendous success and really celebrated the musical talent within our school, and we look forward to next year.

Our Year 11 Prefects have been developing their pupil leadership roles this year by supporting the library and our annual National Literacy Trust Bookbuzz Reading initiative.  Each year, we ask pupils in KS3 to select a book from a list of bespoke top selling books for children.  These books are ordered, and our Prefects have been an incredible help this term by sorting them into individual pupils' form and gift bags.  They will help to deliver these books at the end of term as gifts from TGBS to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to improving reading for all pupils and fostering a love lifelong love of reading.  2026 is the National Year of Reading, our pupils at TGBS are ahead of the game in terms of progress made in reading, but all support at home is welcome!

This term Year 9 have had to opportunity to carry out a practical science investigation with researchers from the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham.

Researchers ran classroom sessions with us back in October to help us set up an investigation into which classrooms are exposed to the most pollutant particles.

We learned about different pollutants that exist and the effect that they can have on our respiratory systems. We then worked together to plan a fair investigation, as such pupils of all ages may have spotted clipboards dotted around the school collecting particulates in different classrooms.

We are incredibly fortunate that this is the third year that researchers have come to carry out this investigation with Year 9. Every year we are made proud by our pupils response to this opportunity. This year in particular Year 9 have impressed us with their curiosity and the interest they have shown to the worlds ever-changing atmosphere.

In January researchers will visit us again and we will analyse the results. We can’t wait to see what our boys come up with.

What a fantastic start to the year science club have got off to. We have been delighted to have returning members and so many new members from Year 7 who have brought so much curiosity and enthusiasm to the group.

We have spent time developing our skills in all three sciences including making batteries, using microscopes and preparing slides, speeding up reactions using catalysis and measuring rates of reaction using the iodine clock reaction. We celebrated Halloween by making non-Newtonian fluids (slime!), bonfire night by carrying out flame tests and Christmas, well we won’t ruin the surprise in case anyone gets these as presents!

Next term we will be continuing to develop our skills by extracting DNA from fruit, working with the Discover Materials Group and learning what Calix[4]arenes are that Dr Patchett keeps talking about.

Well done science club for all for your effort this term, wishing you all a fantastic Christmas break and see you in 2026!

This week pupils in the X1 maths sets got the chance to attempt the GCHQ Christmas challenge 2025. Created by GCHQ (the Government and Communication Head Quarters), who are usually tasked with protecting the UK from cyber threats and hackers.

This year's Christmas Challenge features seven puzzles designed to test everything from codebreaking and mathematical analysis to lateral thinking and creativity – the same blend of skills GCHQ use every day to keep the country safe.

Working in teams of 4, pupils spent time looking at each of the 7 puzzles, showing resilience and determination in the face of some very difficult questions. The maths department where very impressed by how many puzzles pupils were able to complete and bringing those answers together pupils were able to attempt the final puzzle, though no individual team was able to get the final answer by themselves.

By attempting and completing the challenge pupils embodied our Turves value of self motivation as we strive to build the resilience of pupils through the maths curriculum. Anyone who took part in the challenge should be very proud of themselves and we look forward to the next challenge next year.

Some of our very self-motivated to achieve pupils have attended yet another fantastic lecture at the University of Birmingham.  Here, Cian in 9S1 has summarized the entire lecture for us so any who weren’t able to attend are able to learn from this amazing lecture.  Thank you Cian!

“100,000 light years across the Milky Way. ‘The galaxy us nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters’ -Galilea Galilei 

Galactic archaeology is studying the history of the milky way using stars- Where, What, When? 

Where 

They used to figure out how far stars were from how bright they were. Astrometry and the structure of the milky way. 4 main components of the galaxy, thin disk, stellar halo, bulge, and thick disk. We got the data from a European space agency mission when they launched a spacecraft called Gaia, starting its mission in 2014, ending on March 27^th, 2025, because it ran out of fuel for its thrusters. It is so defined that it could pinpoint a pound coin on the moon. Gya has observed over 1 billion stars, not even 1% of stars in the galaxy. Studies the movement of stars over time. 1% of stars in galaxy lets us see precision 

What 

Stars shine as they fuse hydrogen and helium in the core. The star doesn't change over time on the outside. We always see the same ??? the outline. A star is a collapse of gas to form a star. The cloud of gas is what the galaxy was made of. We can see the material that made the Milky Way long ago. The universe was formed with an even distribution of many elements. Processes of nuclear fusion inside the star. The energy of the star is blown off over time. During death of star during supernova, energy is released violently and quickly, possibly making new elements 

When 

Fuses hydrogen INTO helium*. The outer layers of sun look redder as they cool down. The time when it fuses hydrogen into helium is the longest phase of its life, about 10-20 billion years. We can work out the age of a star. How to work out the size of a star?  Each section in the picture is the size of Texas (Picture). Noise gets trapped inside the star as the sections move. Can't hear noise in space, how do we know the frequencies of stars then?  

The disk of the galaxy is formed from the inside out. Stars formed in the middle first, died first, allowed elements to spread further ad make more stars further out. Stars interact with different galactic structures like gas clouds. We can figure out that the sun was born towards the center of the milky way because it is too metal rich compared to where we are located in the galaxy.”