Dear Parent/ Carer,

This week marks Children’s mental health week. I’m sure you will agree looking after mental health has never been so important. The website https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/ provides information and activities for you to do at home with your children if you so wish as well as activities the children can do independently.

Children’s Mental Health Week

Children’s Mental Health Week is taking place on 1-7 February 2021. This year’s theme is Express Yourself. Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. This could be through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film, and doing activities that make you feel good.

Please feel free to watch their Royal Patron HRH The Duchess of Cambridge’s video message to mark the start of the week and explain more about it.

There are free resources which can be adapted for home schooling or independent learning.

CLICK ON THE LOGO BELOW FOR MORE

Dear Parent/Carer, 

SwanseaMind will be delivering a zoom for parents on supporting their children with workload stress and emotional wellbeing on Tuesday 2nd February. Please see details attached. Kindest regards Mrs Altman

Please find attached a letter from Qualifications Wales outlining changes to the plans for GCSE, AS and A level assessments in the Spring and Summer terms 2021.

I previously wrote to you in December sharing the Welsh Government’s plans to cancel summer examinations in their normal format and replace them with the following:

• non-examination assessments such as coursework or oral assessment (where these are already part of the qualification)
• internal assessments which will be marked by teachers, and
• external assessments, marked by WJEC

Due to the current school closures, the internal assessments which were due to take place between February 22nd and April 23rd have been cancelled.

At this time the non-examination assessments and the external assessments will still go ahead. The external assessments are planned to take place between May 17th and June 29th.

As you can appreciate, things are changing constantly. I will share with you any information I receive from Qualifications Wales on the planned assessments.

I will communicate further with all students via a recorded assembly which will be placed on the Teams group for their year.

Rest assured that the staff at Morriston will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that all students are the best prepared they can be for the challenges that lie ahead to ensure they fulfil their potential.

Thank you for your continued support.

**- CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE LETTER FROM QUALIFICATIONS WALES – **

Current Dragons, Wales, Lions and former student Ross Moriarty is setting you the 2km challenge.

You must walk/run 2km as fast as possible and record your time and then email it to Miss Norkett- [email protected] .

The winner will receive a signed Wales shirt.

You can record your times and distance through the app “Strava” on your mobile phones( free to download). Take a picture and email your times to Miss Norkett.

Happy new year to all our students and parents. I have waited until today to write to you in the hope that I would have more information and clarity regarding how school will operate this half term.

Today the Education Minister for wales has announced that students will continue to stay home and learn remotely until at least the 29th January

Download the letter to read more…

As you will already be aware, the Swansea approach to returning to schools in January had been revised, with us delaying the return to face-to-face learning until 11 January at the earliest. Last night the Welsh Government, in consultation with the WLGA and Colegau Cymru, has agreed that all schools, colleges and independent schools should move to online learning until  January 18th.  Open the document to read more…

Prizes were given at the end of the term for pupils in every year group. Awards were given for the pupils who have improved the most throughout the year, for 100% attendance and the most improved attendance as well as pupils who have gone over and above throughout the academic year so far. See information attached for prize winners. Pupils who were not in school to collect the prizes (due to self-isolation) will be having them delivered by the wellbeing officers this week.

Congratulations to all of the pupils named and, as always in Morriston, there were so many other pupils nominated for awards, it demonstrates the superb young people in the school.

Enjoy the Christmas holiday, stay safe and a we wish you and your families a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.

On Thursday 10^th December 2020 Morriston Comprehensive School took part in a Christmas Jumper Day. The school raised £252.98 for charity and the money donated will be split between Save the Children and the Swansea Food bank. They will receive £100 and £152.98 respectively.

In addition to the monetary donation to the food bank, the pupils in all year groups have been collecting food to be able to donate to the food bank. The collection of food is being collected on Wednesday by Swansea Food bank.

The sixth form have also bought and delivered 50 selection boxes delivered to the children in Morriston Hospital’s Oakwood ward. The children and staff were very grateful for the presents.

Please find links below to important information from Swansea Council, and Mr M. Franklin

On Friday year 12 geographers visited Mewslade Bay as part of their topic on Glaciated Landscapes.

The trip started with a ‘near-miss’ as Mr Todd, driving the school minibus dropped us off and left before we’d gathered our clipboards and equipment. Luckily, he returned a few minutes later.

The trip began with a 1/2 mile walk down Mewslade Valley from Pitton Cross. Here, students gained a good vantage point to observe the asymmetrical dry valley at Mewslade and learnt about how it formed during the last Ice Age. Next the students learnt about the formation of the scree slope at Mewslade and conducted a series of surveys to explore its structure and the role of freeze-thaw weathering. Students descended the scree slopes measuring the size and roundness of scree ‘clasts’ as well as the percentage of vegetation coverage. They will present these finding in class using a range of graphs and charts and use them to answer a series of research questions.

Following the scree survey, we ate packed lunches sat on the bank in the sunshine before walking, or rather ‘slipping’, our way along the 2mile stretch of coastal path to Rhossili, where we were collected.

Thanks to all the students involved who were keen and enthusiastic throughout, to Mr Todd for driving the minibus and to Nick Felstead, Lecturer in Physical Geography at Swansea University, who helped us out on the day too.

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