Rough Notes – June 2021

Dear Parents, Carers and friends of The Woodroffe School,

Thank you for taking the time to read our latest edition of ‘Rough Notes’, we hope you enjoy the content.

In the last edition, I paid tribute to our fabulous Year 11 and 13 students who, at the end of last month, left us, following the completion of their ‘milestone’ assessments. We wish them well and know that whatever and wherever they go from here, they will be amazing.

We will see Year 13 for their results day on Tuesday 10th of August from 8:30am and Year 11 on Thursday 12th August from 10am. Until then, we hope they enjoy the time they have with friends and family before the work starts again!

As soon as we returned from the May half-term break, our Year 8 students were able to experience some of the more normal activities delivered as part of our wider curriculum. On Monday 7th June and Tuesday 8th of June, all Year 8 students had the opportunity to visit Carey Camp over in Wareham, where they took part in a range of outdoor and team building activities. It was great to see our students enjoying themselves in the sunshine whilst engaged in physical and fun activities. I have to admit, as a helper on day two, I managed to have a little go on the activities myself!

Whilst not the full experience of Carey Camp, we managed to pack in a lot across our time there. When I asked the students for their favourite experience, the answers varied from climbing to bivvy building. I would like to thank the staff who made the visit such a positive experience for our students and Miss Trunks who did an amazing job in making this all happen.

On Thursday 17th June, the Dorset ‘Safer Schools’ Police team spent a whole day with us at Woodroffe, the first full day event that they have done in a Dorset school. Across the day, the team worked with all year groups as part of their project on delivering educational sessions covering a variety of key issues that have been affecting communities and individuals across Dorset and beyond. The key themes visited were hate crimes, online behaviour, and anti-social behaviour. The workshops included a mixture of presentation and question and answer sessions. I would like to thank the Dorset Police team for their input and Mrs Lemon for her hard work in making the event possible.

The building of the new teaching and learning block at Woodroffe continues. Stepnell, our contractors, are currently constructing the concrete floors and walls to the rear of the cut away bank in preparation for wall building. The recent good weather has allowed them to make good progress, long may it continue!

I would like to extend my congratulations to William Stidwell in Year 12 who was a recent joint winner in a National Geographical Association, ‘physical geography’ photography competition, for his photo entitled; ‘Sub-aerial scarp with deep distant origins’.

I hope you enjoy our latest edition of ‘Rough Notes’. Should you wish to find out more about our school, news, or events, please visit the school website, which I am sure you will find useful. In addition, for regular updates, why not look at our social media outlets: Woodroffe can be found on Twitter and Instagram.

The Woodroffe School Headteacher can be found on Twitter - @HeadteacherTws
The Woodroffe School can be found on Twitter - @WoodroffeSchool
The Woodroffe School on Instagram – woodroffeschooldorset

Finally, I would like to thank you all for your continued support, your messages and kind words mean a lot to the staff at Woodroffe and help during these challenging times.

Take care and stay safe,

Dan Watts
Headteacher