Year Twelve CVs

Please bring a paper copy of your updated CV to Dr Rayment or I in your EPQ/Study Skills lesson in the fortnight beginning Monday 6th November.  Our next lesson will involve planning for Work Experience in the summer.

Feedback on Lectures in Oxford

If you went to any of the lectures recently advertised on the blog in Oxford, or to any other talks (e.g. Christopher de Bellaigue at St Antony's on 20th October), please let me know how they went.

Many thanks

DGi

Action Needed from Year Thirteen Applicants: Cheney UCAS Deadline was on 16th October

Please press on and pay and send your UCAS forms. This gets your form to Cheney, not to UCAS, and we can send the form back to you as many times as is needed, without your paying again. 

Please stay in very close touch with your tutor about your progress. Make sure they have references from work experience, coaches, volunteering etc. so that they can produce the most supportive reference possible.  It takes at least an hour for your tutor to get your references from subject teachers edited into a single document, and your assistance with this process is very important.  You must cut and paste your qualifications, choices and personal statement into an e-mail to your tutor, along with any details of out of school activities which it would be worth mentioning in your reference.

Proof read your Personal Statement carefully - your tutor or I can advise on content, but we don't have time to check that every capital letter is correct and every spelling accurate.  Remember that the admissions officers know all about the subject you are applying for, and want to know everything possible about you - don't tell them what lawyers or engineers do because they know that already. Use specific evidence to show your suitability for your course.

We will send UCAS forms on to UCAS in roughly the order they are paid and sent - there is likely to be a large queue - apply as soon as you can to get to the front of this queue.  Please be aware that it usually takes us two weeks from the moment you pay and send to your form being sent on, as staff have other commitments, not least A Level teaching. The sooner we can get the forms done, the sooner you will start to get offers.  We don't want to hurry anyone who has difficult decisions to make about their choices, but we definitely need to get moving.  If you have any questions or concerns, please talk to your tutor or talk to me.  Good communication is essential for the best possible outcomes.

World War One Collection Afternoon: training and event

This coming Friday 3rd November, between 3 - 4pm, Oxford University History and Digital Faculties are sending in a small team to train any students who would like to be involved in the World War One Collection afternoon that the Rumble Museum is holding on 10th November, 2 - 5pm. The training will involve how to record stories and examine and digitise World War One artefacts, amongst other things. 

It will be an exceptional experience for students interested in History and Archaeology, as well as students interested more broadly in Community Service. We are very keen for students with photography skills to be involved, as every artefact will need to be photographed.

If you would like to come to some or all of the training (which will take place in L14), please let me know - you would be very welcome! 

Details of the Collection Day event itself are at:

http://rumblemuseum.org.uk/index.php/what-s-on/119-lest-we-forget-world-war-one-objects-event-10th-november

Thank you.

Classics Centre Talk: Roman Love Elegy

On Monday 30th October, from 5 until 6pm, Dr Tristan Franklinos from the University of Oxford will be delivering a talk on Roman Love Elegy. The talk will take place in the Classics Centre (L14).

This talk will include a general overview of Roman Love Elegy - a literary movement which thrived in late first century BC Rome - and a detailed exploration of some of the key poems. The talk is aimed at A level Latin students, but all are very welcome. The talk will be followed by drinks.

To book, please email info@irisproject.org.uk

Thank you

Stephen Hawking lecture tickets

Congratulations to Alex Stamper, Poppy Lindesy-Cook, Will Peacock and Hayden Davies-Busby who have a ticket for the Stephen Hawking Lecture next Friday (27th October)!

Would these 4 students please meet me at 4:30pm outside the Mathematical Institute (accessed from Woodstock Road).  IMPORTANT: If you can no longer attend please let me know asap so that I can give your ticket to someone on the wait list.  I look forward to seeing you all next week :)

Anyone else whp interested, can watch the lecture online via the following link: https://livestream.com/oxuni/hawking

Any questions, let me know via email.

Dr Spence

Message from Dr McHugh at St Hilda's

These lectures have been very much enjoyed by Cheney students who went last year.  Do take up the opportunity if you are interested.  

I just wanted to give you a (final!) reminder that St. Hilda's College will run another event in its Neuroscience/philosophy seminar series on Thurs 19th Oct 5-7.15pm entitled 'Perception and the Brain'. Please pass the information on to any 6th form (or younger) students, or teachers that you think might be interested and please ask them to register (for free) on the link below if they would like to come along.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/perception-and-the-brain-tickets-38533937043?aff=es2

Venue: Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, OX4 1DY.

DofE - Silver Award

Duke of Edinburgh  - Silver award completion:
It has been noticed that many students haven't completed the Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award. 

Could all Y12 students this applies to please come to J15 after school on Tuesday 17th October to fix this?

Miss Basterfield

Brookes Engage

Thank you very much for all the Brookes Engage forms which have been handed in.  Please remember that the deadline is this coming Friday, when I will be taking all the forms around to Brookes.  Let me know if you have any final questions.

EPQ

Please can all students in Year Thirteen planning to complete the EPQ this year come to a meeting in L14 at lunchtime on Monday 16th October.

History Lecture on Tudor England

This lecture might be of interest to Year Twelve or Thirteen Historians.

http://www.ashmolean.org/event/smashing-images-tudor-england-very-reformation-problem

Poverty and Inequality Talk

Thank you to everyone who attended the talk.  Agnes Norris Keiller was very impressed by your attentiveness and the excellent questions after her university-style lecture - which she also delivered to Oxford University students earlier in the day, I think.

References

Early applicant references have been much enriched by comments from work experience supervisors, coaches etc.  If you have a former supervisor, coach or other relevant adult who has worked with you and can send a few short sentences, ideally from their work e-mail, for inclusion in your reference, that can give a broader idea of your skills than we can provide just from a school perspective.  Please ask them to send such a short reference in plenty of time to your tutor, copying me in.

Personal Statement Help for Year Thirteen

Oxford Brookes will be here again tomorrow morning from 8.30 to 11.00 - please see me today asap if you would like a one-to-one slot to get help with your Personal Statement.  The Cheney deadline for submitting your form is Monday 16th October.  There is some flexibility about this deadline, especially if you have more Open Days to go to during half term, and have not finalised your choices. However, please bear in mind that I will deal with forms in the order they come in, and our usual ten day turnaround time - the time it takes from you paying and sending to me forwarding to UCAS - sometimes has to be extended in late October and early November because there are so many forms.  Please keep your tutors updated on your progress so they know when you will pay and send.

Note: paying and sending sends the form to Cheney, not to UCAS, and we can easily send your form back to you if you need to make changes. I will meet with each of you individually to check your form, reference and Personal Statement before it goes - though please be very careful to have everything 100% accurate from spelling, punctuation and grammar - missing capital letters in your part-time work make a bad impression - to ensuring that all your exams are down for 08 of the year you took them.  Next summer's exams should be put down as 'pending'.

Public Lecture. Vaccines. Headington Girls School. Thurs 12th October. 1630.

This year Headington Girls School are running a series of public lectures on STEM careers and topics as part of their "Year of STEM". The second lecture in the series is THIS WEEK. 

Professor Simon J Draper

·         Date: Thurs 12^th Oct. 2017

·         Time: 4.30-5.30

·         Venue: Headington Girls' School Theatre

·         Title: ‘New Frontiers in Vaccine Development – a Tale of Malaria, Ebola and Biochemical Superglue!’

Simon is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow, Lister Institute Research Prize Fellow, Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Medicine and Supernumerary Fellow, Merton College at the University of Oxford. His research interests include studies of vaccine-induced malaria immunity as well as the optimisation of antibody induction by vaccines, in particular for those against malaria as well as other diseases such as Ebola. More recently he has played a key role in the start-up of a new company, SpyBiotech, focussed on the development of the next generation of worldwide vaccines produced using biochemical superglue. In his talk he will share findings from his ground breaking research into vaccines for malaria and Ebola and why this work is so important in preventing diseases in the developing world. 

To sign up head to headington.eventbrite.com and use the access code YoSTEM

Lecture tomorrow Wednesday 11th October

Poverty and Inequality

Agnes Norris Keiller

Institute for Fiscal Studies

Period Five

Wednesday 11^th October 2017

Assembly Hall

All Year Twelves and Thirteens taking Geography, World Development, Economics, History must attend unless they have a Chemistry lesson (Year Twelve, LEL) or an English lesson (Year Thirteen, GSN). Any questions to DGi please.  

Safe Drive Stay Alive Trip

We have booked places for Year 12 students to see the Safe Drive Stay Alive production at 1:00 pm on Wednesday 29 November, leaving Cheney at 12.30 pm by coach, to return to school by approximately 3:00 pm (Students from Cheney that are retaking Year 12, who went last year, need not attend). 

Students should wear appropriate clothing and have their lanyards on at all times. Students are asked for a contribution of £1.00 towards the cost of this event. Therefore, I would be very grateful if this payment could be made via ParentPay and the slip below returned to the Sixth Form Office by Friday 13 October. The title of the trip on Parentpay is “Safe Drive Year 12”. If you do not have a Parent Pay account, please can you contact Mrs Beesley in our finance department on finance@cheney.oxon.sch.uk as soon as possible. 

Students who return their reply slip promptly will be given a place. Although we anticipate that all students will attend, supervised study will continue in school for those who do not attend. 

Full Letter on School Website

Law Lecture Tuesday 11th October

If you have signed up for the Law Lecture this coming Tuesday 11th October, please come to the Lane Foyer at 2.15.  I am writing to teaching staff to ask for you to be excused from the last part of Period Five.  Please bring money for the bus in case it rains. We need to be seated in the Exam Schools by 3pm, so we will leave punctually at 2.20 I hope.

Poverty and Inequality Lecture, Assembly Hall, Period Five Wednesday

Agnes Norris Keiller, a former Cheney student, will be lecturing on Poverty and Inequality in Britain in the last fifty years, in the Assembly Hall, from 1.30 on Wednesday.  Unless you have a timetabled lesson, Year Twelves and Thirteens doing Geography, World Development, Sociology and Economics are expected to attend.  It will be a very interesting talk with direct relevance to your studies.  Please see me with any questions.

Year Twelve Assembly

There will be a Year Twelve Assembly on Wednesday in the Assembly Hall. Beckie Bartle-Gardiner from Oxford Brookes will be talking about the excellent Brookes Engage programme (for which the application deadline will be 20th October. As mentioned in my last assembly, if you visithttps://www.brookes.ac.uk/studying-at-brookes/schools-and-colleges/activities/brookes-engage/ you will be able to get lots of information and see previous Cheney students taking part.

Psychology Talk - Message from Dr Stephen McHugh

I just wanted to let you know that St. Hilda's College will run another event in its Neuroscience/philosophy seminar series on Thurs 19th Oct 5-7.15pm entitled 'Perception and the Brain'. Please pass the information on to any 6th form (or younger) students (or teachers) that you think might be interested and please ask them to register (free) on the link below if they would like to come along.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/perception-and-the-brain-tickets-38533937043?aff=es2

Venue: Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, OX4 1DY.

 

Please take up opportunities

Please read the blog regularly and look seriously at the many opportunities which are available.  The Professional Degree courses conference this Saturday has a superb programme for students interested in Law, Computing, Psychology, Engineering and Architecture, but uptake has been very limited.  Please make the most of the excellent free opportunities which are here on  your doorstep. If you are keen to enter highly competitive professions, you need to do your research.  

Science Department Review - Student Panel on THURSDAY

Dear Y12/13,

The science department is having its biannual review next week, and as part of this the school leadership team would like to canvas student opinion on science lessons and teaching. To this end, could the following students please come to BR31 (the meeting room upstairs) at 11.40 on Thursday 5th October for a 30 minute discussion with Mrs J Kirby and some members of the school governing body. (Sorry I put Tuesday before - it's definitely Thursday!!!)

Year 13 Students

Sanjana Narayan

Jithin Varghese

Hannah Wade

Fergus McKirdy

Amaani Rizvi

Elorida Nuzi

Year 12 Students

Habiba Begum

Taklima Begum-Ali

Jack Grayson

Andrew De Sousa* (you have a lesson with KRO and will need to miss the last 20 minutes)

Poppy Lindsey-Cook

Tia Cudd

I have looked at your timetables and you should all be free at this time. I have passed your names to Mrs Kirby, so she knows to expect you.

Thank you for your help with this, it is much appreciated!

Yours

Ms Elias

Cover work for Mr Richard's H&SC P1 and P2

Mr Richard is off today. Please complete the cover work below:

Students should watch an episode of 24 Hours in A&E

This can be seen on Click View by searching for “24 Hours In A&E” or using the link below

https://clickv.ie/w/o_Oh

The students should then write down as many different roles that they could see from the episode and explain how they worked together to provide the care.

If the link doesn’t work then the students should use the Pearson BTEC Health and Social Care text books.

Student should :

Read pages 86-99 and make notes by completing the “pause point” activities as they go through.

Note down the Key Terms with definitions and create a glossary.

At the end of the chapter on page 99 there is a case study. Answer the questions in full answers.

If they finish all this they should write a paragraph that explains which role in the Health and Social care industry interests them the most and why. They should support this with information from what they have learnt on the course already.