Turves Green Boys’ School are seeking to appoint members to their Parent Advisory Forum.
The Parent Advisory Forum is vital to the success of our school. Our Forum members have
an important role to fulfil that directly affects the education and wellbeing of children and
improves standards throughout school.
You will:

• Consider parent and community engagement within school.
• Increase parent and community engagement between the school and Trustees.
• Represent the Trustees on Pupil Discipline Committees.
• Report through the Headteacher to the Board of Trustees.
• Contribute to school improvement.
• Provide advice to Trustees.
• Be required to attend a minimum of three meetings per academic year.
• First and foremost, make a difference to Turves Green Boys’ School

If you are a parent and are interested in joining the Parent Advisory Forum then please send
an email to: postbox@tgbs.co.uk

On Wednesday 1^st May, a group of our Year 9 and 10 pupils visited CITB in Kings Norton, a construction-focused training centre. This opportunity is part of our wide and varied Careers programme and this visit was planned to support our pupils when making their post-16 options. Pupils thoroughly enjoyed the visit and had the opportunity to try their hand at a number of different construction based practical activities.

Our reading rewards vending machine continues to be a focal point of our weekly celebrations on a Friday lunchtime. Pupils from all year groups are considered and selected for a range of approaches to demonstrating our TURVES Values.

Winners this week include:

Year 7

Austin: W Priestley - impeccable behaviour since day 1 of Turves

Boulton: C Hamshaw – For making an excellent start since starting recently and getting stuck in with different extra-curricular activities

Tolkien: N Overthrow - consistently good effort in all subjects

Year 8

Austin: A Adeyemi - consistent improvement and valuable contributions as well as an excellent photoshoot

Boulton: M Scarfe – Most praise points this week and for not giving up when finding things difficult.

Tolkien: T Calvey - Consistently meeting Turves Values

Year 9

Austin: D Batoschi - Modelling Turves Values

Boulton: N Bosco – Excellent effort in all lessons and for writing a great speech in English.

Tolkien: A Spencer - Consistently meeting the values and expectations of TGBS

Year 10

Austin: B Abaka – Consistent upholding of the Turves Values.

Boulton: S Faultless - Excellent effort and for always showing the Turves values.

Tolkien: M Ford - for the amount of positives received this month and excellent effort in French/English/science

Year 11

Austin: D Robson – consistently excellent effort in revision

Boulton: C Leo – Excellent attitude towards exams.

Tolkien: A Field - His resilience and his excellent effort in English

Pupils may be an aspiring writer looking for an opportunity to showcase their talent. They may have a story or journal entry they’ve been eager to share. So, pupils have been given an opportunity to express themselves by entering our creative writing competition.

This competition has been organised by the Creative Writing Club (run on Thursday’s afterschool) and offers termly opportunities for pupils to engage with their writing skills.

Categories currently include:

• Short Stories: Let pupils’ imagination run wild to create a captivating narrative.
• Journal Entry: Express their thoughts and emotions directly to the reader.

How to Enter:

• Pupils to write up their piece using the submission template in the library
• Submit to Miss Cotton in the library

The winner’s work will be published within the Library Bulletin for all to indulge in the exceptional writing!

We have already had some fantastic submissions from J Jones (7B1), S Scott (9A1), H Smith (9Y1) and T Shafiq (9A2).

Now, we are awaiting the final submissions and are anticipating our winner!

Happy Writing 😊

Baroness Diana Barran MBE visited Turves Green Boys’ School to see for herself the transformation that has taken place there since the school joined Matrix Academy Trust in April 2021. Headteacher James Till led a tour of the school, which recently was regraded by Ofsted as ‘Good’. It was ‘Inadequate’ when he took the school on. Baroness Barran was particularly interested in finding out how attendance has gone from being very low to above national figures. She was impressed with how rigorous systems, parental engagement and the school culture have led to such rapid improvement.

You can follow Baroness Barran on X here: https://x.com/dianabarran

In the year 9 Big Ideas in Physics topic, the pupils have been learning all about where our domestic electricity comes from as well as useful tools like how to wire a plug, how a fuse box works and how to calculate your energy bills! Needless to say some were quite shocked how much money it costs and how much energy is wasted by keeping your games console on when in school. Hopefully they’ll be making some more sustainable choices from now on!

Year 7 and year 8 are celebrating an amazing success in the UK Maths Trusts’ Junior Maths Challenge. Two weeks ago students completed an hour long set of maths challenges in exam conditions and have now received the awards. Our students did fantastically, achieving 2 Gold certificates, 4 Silver certificates and 12 Bronze certificates! Congratulations to everyone who took part who all walked away with a certificate of participation. And especially to those who earnt one of the three awards.

Bronze awards were achieved by:

D.Cartwright-George 7A1

L. Connolly 7B1

L. Ellis 7B1

E. Griffiths 7B1

C. Jones 7B1

J. Smith 7B1

W. Bates 8T1

D. Daio Viana Da Conceicao 8T1

J. Davies 8T1

J. Dunsmore 8T1

K. Hussain 8T1

C. Murphy 8T2

Silver awards were achieved by:

G. Thomson 8T1

M. Walker 8T1

A. Williams 8T1

A. Abaker 7B1

And the 2 gold awards were achieved by:

R. Singh 8T2

O. Aboukharroub 8T1

Now is also our chance to celebrate the success of the year 9 students who took part in the main UK maths challenge a couple of months ago; specifically J. Choi 9A1 and S. Scott 9A1 who each achieved a bronze award. 

Congratulations and thanks to J Boyle, A Dunmore and O Flannagan in Year 11 for attending a voluntary period 6 revision session today. We looked at essential topics that could be on the listening and reading exams on May 14^th. The students worked extremely hard and were treated to some French snacks for their efforts. We wish all Year 11 French students the best of luck on Tuesday and look forward to the revision sessions on Monday.

Period 6 sessions will take place on Wednesdays until the final French exam on May 24^th. All students are welcome to attend.

Two cadets from Year 10, accompanied by Mr. J Kelly, visited the church to retrieve a donation as a gesture of gratitude for the support the school had provided them throughout the past year. The congregation of the church had been instrumental in various forms of assistance to the school, such as attending school events and hosting gatherings in the warm space, and on the school premises. During the latest gathering, they interacted with choir members and Music pupils who, following their performance, joined them for tea and shared their experiences from a recent trip to Oxford University.

We have been very much enjoying the quality of composition and creativity evident in Gothic stories written by Year 8s over the past two weeks.

For their mid-term ‘Key Piece’ in English, each student has been tasked with writing an introductory descriptive paragraph to a Gothic story. The results have been stunning, not to mention sinister, Devilish, ghoulish and creepy. Like this from L. Thompson-Clarke (8T1) who finds ‘the crackling of leaves’ sending ‘a shiver down’ his ‘spine’ as he ‘approaches a dark, gloomy abandoned mansion’ when suddenly ‘a light flickers on’ and he ‘hears light footsteps faintly in the distance’.

There are many fine examples of students using tricks, techniques and structures that will help them develop into confident authors by the time they finally arrive at GCSE. At this stage, though, the students clearly find writing in a creepy Gothic style as much fun as they do hard work. Like L.Cullen (8T1) who finds the ‘breeze is cold and harsh,’ his ‘cheeks numb and ‘his eyes dry’ as he approaches his ghostly mansion, the ‘isolation’ of which ‘he finds unnerving’. He moves ‘on to one of the steps leading up to the door but immediately retreats’ when he hears ‘a loud unsettling creak.’ He then ‘regains his composure’ and heads on into the house to face the horrors within.

These are just two, but there are many such examples of young Stephen Kings in the making, all of them creating a classically scary atmosphere – enough to give an English teacher - tasked with marking them - nightmares!

WELL DONE!