Autumn Term 2

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff team for their excellent work across the school, in what has certainly been a difficult year. Staff have managed the pupils emotions and uncertainties extremely well.   Our attendance figures this term have been better than mainstream schools across the country, this demonstrates the strong connection and bond which pupils have with the school.  Thank you to all parents and carers also for doing your bit to ensure attendance remains high.  I am very proud of just how well all of our boys have coped and what they have managed to achieve through these unprecedented times.  The resilience and determination which all of our pupils have shown has been impressive. 

A huge well done to everyone who participated in the Muntham Christmas performance.   I am glad to see that even Covid did not stop our pupils having fun and enjoying the festivities across the school!  Thank you to Mrs Purdy, our Music teacher, for once again creating a wonderful Christmas performance.

I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope that you all enjoy some great family time over the festive period.

Best wishes

Mr Anderson

Principal    

Because of the restrictions in place due to COVID-19 we have created the following Virtual Tour for parents and carers. Please click on the video below to access the Virtual Tour and I hope you will enjoy seeing all of the positive changes that have been made to the school. 

It has been wonderful to see Hever residential floor open for primary aged pupils.  The bedrooms and residential facilities are amazing.  Fantastic age appropriate resources have been selected to create a home away from home for our pupils to enjoy.  A cinema room and arcade are in place for social time once pupils have finished their homework and evening activities.

Residential accommodation is now available for pupils aged from 5 years of age who live a long way away from school or need the support and structure which our residential accommodation and staff provide.  

The lovely new fountain has been placed at the front of the school on the roundabout creating a great centre piece to the school.  The fountain helps to create and maintain tranquillity across the school. 

The farm has had another busy few weeks since returning from half term.

We have harvested a large crop of beetroot, carrots and spinach, which the pupils thoroughly enjoyed tasting during lessons. We have provided Chef with spinach to add to the salad bar as well as beetroot and celeriac. 

Arundel floor have benefited from carrots and spinach towards their dinner. 

So far this term we have planted broad beans, onions and garlic ready for the spring and have started sowing some flower seeds ready for a cutting patch.  As well as this, we have planted bulbs around the farm to try and brighten up the winter gloom. 

We have also been visiting our local dairy farm where we have been lucky to interact with some of the cows this term. They are so approachable and the pupils love to stroke and have close contact with them.  We are very grateful to live in such a lovely area. 

We have a new addition to the Muntham Canine Therapy Centre, our pupils have loved working with Buzz and now have the option to work with Omah too. Omah is a 5 year old, female Pedigree Labrador who adores spending time with our pupils and loves the attention and endless treats our pupils supply. You just have to look at the picture to see how much Omah enjoys the company of our pupils! Omah passed a behaviour assessment with flying colours, this tested Omah’s listening and attention skills as well as ensuring she will be a positive and safe member to our team.

Through Omah and Buzz the pupils are learning coping strategies, they are developing their empathy and compassion as well as learning valuable dog ownership skills. Between Omah and Buzz we are able to deliver timetabled sessions as well as drop in sessions for those who are struggling. Sometimes there is nothing quite like a cuddle with a dog!

We are looking forward to developing and growing our team at the Canine Therapy Centre to ensure we are providing the best programme for our pupils.

This half term the pupils have been practicing their carving skills by carving mini mushrooms. This has been a great activity to see the pupils take part in. What could be better than sitting around a fire whittling wood! The pupils have also started to investigate the many things that grow in our woodland starting with fungi. They have learnt about the more common varieties of fungi that can be found and what benefit it might bring to humans. 

With winter now upon us, and the weather getting colder, it's been great to see the continuing enthusiasm from the pupils to get outside and engage in Forest School. The need to stay warm in winter will see the pupils learning how to forage for food, in the next term, and cook it over a fire.

To expand the activities our boarders have the opportunity to take part in an after school activity. I have started to deliver this every Wednesday afternoon at Forest School. The pupils will take part in similar activities to those pupils that have Forest School as part of their curriculum. However, as it's an after school activity the emphasis is for the pupils to relax around a camp fire with the freedom to take part in whatever they wish during this time. Whether that be sitting around the fire, whittling, exploring the woodland at night time or relaxing in a hammock.

Accelerated Reader Rewards

Reading is a life skill, all our pupils at Muntham House School are encouraged to be able to do the following things to support their lifelong learning and access to the world around them…

• Pleasure and enjoyment for reading
• Understanding the vocabulary, they read
• Understanding of the texts they read
• Inference of texts
• Read a wider range of texts
• Work out meaning based on context
• Developing vocabulary for talking and writing
• Using texts to fulfil tasks e.g. reading a recipe or instructions of some kind

As a school we continue to find new ways of enabling our pupils to achieve, embed and progress with these skills.

Rewards

We have seen an incredible uptake of reading for pleasure, academic progress made with reading using Accelerated Reader and throughout the years we have been developing ways to reward pupils for their efforts.

The reward at present is the 100% Club, this is celebrated each term. Every time a pupil passes an Accelerated Reader Quiz (based on a book they’ve read) with 100% their name gets added to the raffle box, one name is chosen at random from KS2 and KS3/4, the pupil chosen wins a £20 Amazon voucher!

Muntham House show gratitude for the fallen

During November, the pupils at Muntham House School learnt about the ‘Great war’, and some of the heroic sacrifices past generations made for our freedom and liberty.

The pupils learnt about life in the trenches, armistice day, why we wear poppies, as well as a dog considered to be the first ever rescue dog - named Rip. We took some time to try to understand what it might have been like for the soldiers and their families, from all sides.

The pupils looked at poems from the trenches, and also wrote letters to loved ones whilst pretending to be evacuated from their home towns.

On Armistice day, the pupils also held an exemplary two-minute silence across the school, and showed a real understanding and insight into the huge losses of human life and the tremendous courage and resolve shown by mere mortals in the face of the greatest adversity.

A huge well done to all the pupils and staff at Muntham House School for showing such honesty and integrity during this reflective time - Lest we forget.

This half term has been a fun and interesting time for the Infant and Junior classes, we have been learning about the different celebrations from around the world and how they are celebrated.

We have used this opportunity to explore the different types of cuisine such as Sushi and Egg Fried Rice which the pupils have enjoyed making and eating (some for the first time) during our creative curriculum.  

The pupils have also enjoyed learning new skills that have been required in the cooking process, such as the cooking of different types of rice, rolling the Sushi using Nori and using the rolling mats.

Our Muntham House pupils have worked really hard this half term, collecting their daily points to reach gold for the week allowing them a reward time on Friday afternoons. With so many pupils working so hard and achieving gold each week we decided to treat all the pupils that had achieved gold for 3 weeks running to a special trip out to Southwater Park.  This was such a fun time for the pupils, allowing them to build stronger bonds as a team and help to develop new friendships.  They were working as a team against the Teachers and LSA's in a game of Tag, needless to say the pupils were most definitely the champions!

Christmas fun at Muntham House School is always a special time of year, the classrooms are decorated ready for the Infant and Junior’s best dressed classroom competition and the pupils have really enjoyed joining in with decorating this year.

We have also enjoying lots of festive activities, we made candy cane hearts and festive take home boxes for all their festive work. They have also made some beautiful natural table decorations at the Farm. 

Useful Information from the Careers Department.

Hi everyone. I hope that you are all safe and well and would like to share a few useful websites with you all.

I have picked a few to start with which past and current students and parents / carers have found useful. Please contact me if you would like to discuss any of these sites or would like me to look into anything else.

Mr Hellyer

[email protected]

Chichester College

[email protected]

Brinsbury College

[email protected]

Greater Brighton Metropolitan College

[email protected]

Crawley College

Facebook.com/ucasonline

Twitter - @ucas_online

UCAS

Nationalcareersservice.gov.uk – webchat

National Careers Service

National Apprenticeships

www.gov.uk/apply/apprenticeship

Together we have created and completed some remarkable activities such as:

Remembrance Pop Up Art Instillation

To instil the importance of commemorating the lost souls of war, Year 7 made paper poppies, remembrance posters and solider silhouettes.

A Christmas Carol

This term our topic has been ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens.  Not only have the Year 7’s read an abridged version of the Victorian classic, they have also watched two of the film versions and learnt about a Victorian Christmas by playing traditional Victorian parlour games.  Our favourites being Hunt the Thimble and Blind man’s Buff.  To add to our Victorian experience we forged and gathered pine cones in order to decorate our classroom in a Victorian Christmas theme.

PSCHE

We explored the ideas of friendship and community using Anti-bullying Week as our focus.  We took this opportunity to take a trip to Horsham skate park, giving the pupils the chance to work on their teambuilding and communication.  We will finish this topic by thinking about how we can help others by supporting Save the Children Charity and wearing Christmas Jumpers on Friday 11^th December.

Dojo Reward

As a reward the Year 7s were given the whole afternoon in the Sports Hall.  They chose to organise a Nerf War, including community team games such as Capture the Flag.  We all had a brilliant time!

Returning to Muntham House School after Lockdown was walking into the unknown with each year group living in a bubble of their own.

Our bubble felt lucky from the outset, with two computer rooms, a staff/quiet space and, most importantly for our energetic sporty year 9’s, a window view of the sports hall enabling us to make maximum use of it.  

Spending all day in the same space with the same people was a big change, however any fears were swiftly calmed as the two groups 3E and 3F started to blend nicely, we noticed many benefits to the new set up. Both groups would be all together in one room and would separate into their work stations after the input. The rooms being so close together allowed for fluidity of movement within the structure of the day.  

The successes have been many, new friendships sparked, many very peaceful lessons with great attention and input from the pupils, we have seen great participation particularly in Science, English, Humanities and Art where there have been excellent class discussions and wonderful work produced. Introducing a weekly careers class has started to create a bridge between what they are doing now to their future and to become positively introspective, and for us a fresh insight to their dreams and interests. 

We have made Music, Art , a video , Eco-Systems, made each other laugh, listened to stories, played board games, cards, Football, Ultimate Frisbee, Badminton, Dodgeball, Golf walked many many Muntham Miles, been on mountain bikes and skate boards, and so much more.

The willingness of the pupils to adapt to and accept the changes has made this term enjoyable, it has been a pleasure to see how much diversity and talent there is within this year group. We have amongst us some fantastic sportsmen, researchers, storytellers, ICT guys, artists, animal and nature lovers, musicians, peacemakers and of course comedians! 

We are looking forward to what the Spring and Summer terms bring. 

Year 10 / 11 pupils have been busy working on their GCSE course this term.

Pupils have been undertaking their GCSE major projects, to research, design and manufacture a product of their choice.

The pupils have been using Tinker Cad software to model and develop their ideas to help achieve the highest possible marks for their projects.

The projects chosen show a wide range of the pupils interests using their skills learnt in year 10 working with wood and metal in our school workshop.

The Young Enterprise Pupils have completed the first phase of the pond project. They supported Mr Pusey by cutting trees and replacing the fencing. In addition, pupils have been designing a bridge and fishing platform. This project will start again in the spring where the pupils will start planting new vegetation and begin construction of their bridge and fishing platform. On completion of the pond project the pupils will be able to maintain this wonderful conservation area using it within their science, outdoor education and life skills lessons. 

*Due to the mud and clay that is present in the pond area. For safety, please remember to stay clear until spring.  

Hever have had a great first term!

All our pupils are settling in well on the new refurbished floor.

Its been a strange time as COVID-19 has restricted what we can do in our leisure time but we have managed to do some baking and lots of Lego making! Thankfully in the last couple of weeks we have been able to return to flip out in Chichester and we also had a trip out to the cinema which the pupils loved.

The pupils are looking forward to Christmas and we have some fun Christmas activities planned for our last week in school.

The pupils enjoyed a baking activity. Kion and Matthew baked Nutella and Kinder Blondies. James and Oliver baked Chocolate chip Flapjacks. All the pupils enjoyed the activity and the bakes went down a treat with all the Bodiam boys! 

Lockdown Take 2!!

Well an even tougher term with stricter lockdown rules didn’t stop the Arundel Masterchef’s!

The pupils all decided they wanted to cook for the whole floor, they chose a meal and worked out the menu using their maths skills to calculate the recipe to feed 10 people.

Through mayhem and kitchen chaos and with very little support from staff they produced a wonderful Japanese Ramen.

Bingo/Quiz Nights

Due to COVID-19 we have been restricted to stay on floors and have had to use our initiative to keep the pupils entertained. For the past 4 weeks we have held weekly bingo session’s which the pupils have loved, it has brought us all together and the pupils have worked well and have absolutely loved these evenings with them all having their eye on the winning prize.

We have also enjoyed Quiz nights which has seen the pupils working so well as a team, it was so nice to see them engaging with each other and what fun we had competing against the other floors, again prizes were won which they shared with all their team mates. 

Callum continues to complete excellent work in the schools Lego department.  This London project has 1,686 pieces and is recommended for children aged 16+.  Callum, at 14 years old completed this bus model in no time and continues to impress us with his efforts and achievements.

This week saw all the residential pupils enjoying The Great Muntham Bake Off. Pupils from each floor worked hard creating delicious desserts for their floors entry into the competition. 

Our Deputy Principal Mr van der Watt enjoyed tasting the competition and praised the pupils for their hard work. Hever floor made amazing Gingerbread and Arundel a delicious Banoffee Pie but the winner was Bodiam floor with a wonderful Chocolate Cheesecake.

Please click on the video to see our Christmas performance.  Well done to all pupils and staff involved in creating this, particularly our Music Teacher Mrs Purdy who, once again, has managed to get the musical best from our pupils.  It is certainly great to see so many pupils enjoying performing and making Christmas magical at Muntham House.

The pupils have enjoyed the lovely Christmas trees around school, helping get everyone in the Christmas spirit and start to celebrate our festive period at Muntham House School. Thank you to the staff who have superbly decorated our trees again this year. 

Some of our pupils wore their own clothes to school and raised £25.63 towards Children In Need.