Head's Newsletter 11 December 2020

Dr Jamie Frost

Poetry Competition

Dr Jamie Frost has been working tirelessly to create and maintain his maths website drfrostmaths.com a teaching resource full of videos and exam questions that anyone can use for free. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools all over the world, DrFrostMaths became a lifeline for students learning from home. Within a week, the site’s pageviews had jumped from 0.4 million to 1.3 million per day. Jamie spent every free hour he had coding to adapt the site to meet the needs of students and teachers in this new environment, developing virtual white board software and tools to help teachers monitor students’ progress in real time. The site has now had over 7 million resource downloads and is used worldwide. Dr Frost was shortlisted for the Top 10 in the Global Teacher Award, an award presented annually to an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession. This is in itself a remarkable achievement, but to be awarded the prize of COVID-19 hero by Stephen Fry is a superb accomplishment. Consequently, Jamie received an enormous amount of media coverage some of which caused a huge stir at school, such as when the BBC Breakfast News came to interview him alongside some willing students. You can view the clip here alongside many others here including Sky news, and BBC Newsround.

Interested in performing or poetry? This year, the English department is delighted to announce the Poetry By Heart competition will be running in school. Poetry By Heart is a national poetry competition in which pupils compete by performing poems they have learned by heart. The winners from the school will go on to compete nationally with other schools, with a chance to compete in the final in front of top UK poets. In addition, year 12 and 13 have the opportunity, if they go through to the national competition, of being asked to represent the nation in an international poetry event in Canada. The competition is open for years 7 to 13, with winners taken from each key stage. Entry closes on 18th December, with the heats taking place in the new year. If students are interested, they should sign up on the form previously sent by email. The previous winners' performances are available on the Poetry By Heart website.