7.1 ‘Our First Week’ Blog

As far as starting high school for the first time goes, we – the new year 7s – have had a challenging time. Not being in the classroom since March had left many of us feeling anxious about starting secondary school, but luckily for us, here at WBCA, we had already been introduced to many of our, soon to be, new teachers through the exciting summer school programme. But still, first day jitters are normal and meeting our teachers and new peers was happening for real.

We were asked to line up in our classes and our teachers soon appeared from the big, shiny building. Eagerly, we waited to see which teacher would come for us. Ours turned out to be Miss Whitehouse.

We were taken to our new classroom where we were received our planners, lunch cards and other high school essentials. Our headteacher, Mr Faux, did not allow Coronavirus to stand in his way and even though we were not able to meet as a year group for our welcome assembly, he welcomed us warmly to WBCA through his virtual one. Miss Whitehouse took us on a tour of the school and by lunchtime we already felt quite at home. We got to sample the school meals and one class member, Ayaan (7.1) described his chicken and rice choice as ‘top notch’. We went outside and had fun using the MUGA and the playground (practising shooting and racing). By the end of the first day, our jitters were well and truly forgotten.  Before we were dismissed, Miss Whitehouse asked us if we had enjoyed our first day and not a single person said no. We left filled with smiles and already looking forward to the next day…laptop day!

We were all very excited about receiving our laptops. Miss Whitehouse explained how we should take great care of these and reminded us how lucky we are to have such valuable and useful equipment. Aarzoo (7.1) said “I feel privileged” and everyone agreed. We got started by exploring Word, PowerPoint, Teams and the Student Portal. What was really nice about this part of our day was seeing how helpful and kind the people in our class are; nobody was left to struggle. We felt ready and prepared to begin our first L4L theme: Citizen Me.

Citizen Me is all about understanding our roles as citizens: in school and in the wider community. We have already considered our responsibilities as WBCA citizens and collectively agreed on a Class Charter (a collection of rules we agreed to abide by to make our experience of school the best it can be). We agreed to show respect to each other by listening to each other’s contributions; we agreed to offer a helping hand to someone when we are able to and we agreed to persevere, even when things are really hard – because as Mr Faux said, “if you aren’t finding your work a challenge, you aren’t really learning anything new”. We will be continuing with this theme for three weeks and we are excited to develop our L4L competencies and look at a range of subjects through our L4L lessons.

We have been to other subjects too. We have met our maths, art, science, languages and P.E teachers and had fascinating times already in those subjects – we’ve even tried to teach Miss Whitehouse some new German words, but we think she needs to practise. There have of course been some tests for us to do, but we’ve tackled those with commitment and confidence because we are keen to show our teachers what we already know and what we are already able to do.

Today we were visited by the school photographers and we all looked really smart and sophisticated in our uniforms. We can’t wait to see what the pictures turn out like.

Miss Whitehouse asked each of us to decide on one word to summarise our first week at WBCA so we put our thoughts into a wordle for you to see.

It’s been a pleasure joining WBCA, from everyone in 7.1!