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Issue 13

BBC Share Your Story Careers Event!

The BBC came to school on Tuesday 25th October as part of their Share Your Story careers event. Hosted by BBC news presenter Aimee Thomas, the event saw Al Lewis (Musician), Izzy Morgana Rabey (Director) and Llyr Tywydd (Weatherman) talk to pupils about their education, lives and careers to date. It was a really informative and inspiring day!

PSE Lessons

PSE lessons have been continuing this academic year and we have been lucky to have some excellent guest speakers into school to talk to pupils. We've had Marc Williams from EPIC delivering a lesson to Year 10, Debbie Harries from NPT Youth Service delivering a lesson to Year 7, Mel Beynon from CAMAU delivering a lesson to Year 8, Simon Dickerson from NPT and Jodie Gow from St Joseph's Sixth Form both delivering a lesson to Year 11. Our thanks goes to our visitors.

International Club!

It has been a busy few months for the International Club.

Prague

Back in June, the International Club visited Prague, as part of Turing Project working with International Links involving Satilites to track Global Warming. Reha (Year 10) tells us more:

How do I summarise this trip? Brilliant, not quite. Amazing, still not there. But experience, adventure, culture, passion, beauty, faith, significant impact, honor, memories, YES, YES, & YES! In addition to brilliant and amazing. Even if my friends and I produced hundreds of words, they would never be enough to express how grateful and privileged we are for this wonderful trip and how we will forever cherish it.

We as a school were incredibly proud to participate in a NASA educational outreach program that enabled us ten individual students, two wonderful teachers, and our international club the opportunity to study Earth from a unique perspective from space. Yup! Read that again! NASA, we, YCB worked with NASA!

Creating infographics from the NASA ISS satellite images at Bila School in Prague with the teacher Lenka and the very talented Vitek.

Prague was not only a lovely location, but it was also full of historical and cultural traditions. which, in my opinion, was rather interesting since it caused me to seriously consider how I viewed my two cultures, particularly the Welsh part of myself. I felt welcome as I observed their people, culture, cuisine, language, and the individual differences in people.

Hannah, Thomas and Elodie give their views of the trip:

My name is Hannah, and I went to Prague. My favourite part was the visiting the Astronomical Clock (Orloj) and the Zoo because it had all kinds of animals, and the clock was nothing like I'd ever seen before.'~ Hannah, Year 10

'I went to Prague and my favorite part was the boat trip, because there was so much to see, we got to learn about the history of the beautiful buildings and the creativity and architecture behind them and the entertainment given to us by one of the Czech students was amazing.' ~ Thomas, Year 10

'In my opinion, the best thing about my trip to Prague was learning about their culture and how they live their lives. It was very different to back home and a massive culture shock, but in such a good way. I loved visiting the city and seeing all the beautiful buildings that were all around. It also gave me a good experience of travelling without my parents and gave me an opportunity to be independent and brave which I very much appreciated! I had the best time and it's definitely going to be one of the highlights of my year.' ~ Elodie, Year 10

Welcome Marta!

Hello, my name is Marta. I'm a Ukrainian student in Ysgol Cwm Brombil.And this news about me and my life in this school.

It all started because of the terrible circumstances in the country. Because of which my family and I came to Wales. It is a beautiful country with very kind and nice people. After a few weeks I was enrolled in school. And after a week I went to Ysgol Cwm Brombil. At first, it was very difficult with the language and the rules that were not clear to me. But luckily there was a Ukrainian Lisa Nazar, who willingly helped and supported me. A month later, she returned to Ukraine, and I was left alone.

I was helped by teachers who understood my situation. I also joined an international club where I was warmly welcomed.

After some time, I found friends. These are friends from an international club. Then Fatima, her sister Meriem, my sister Uliana, and Lisa joined the school. Thus, now I help them adapt to their new school.

Spanish and Colombia Visit!

During the first half of the Autumn Term, two groups of Foreign Exchange students have joined up from Spain and Colombia.

Kai (Year 10) tells us how beneficial an opportunity it has been to have these students in school:

It is such an exciting experience to have exchange students in our school!! This is because sometimes we form friendships with them and become close within that time that they are here, which then makes it hard to say goodbye to them after spending so much of our day with them. I think it is such an amazing opportunity that the pupils of this school get to have!! It also helps both us and them. They learn English more and we learn parts of their language too.

Nuira, a Spanish Student who was part of the exchange, added:

These last few weeks have been incredible for me. I have made many friends and have learned so many things. I would recommend this experience to all students. I have had such a good relationship with my buddy and her friend. Also, I have made friends with the Colombian students. I found the group presentations very interesting, and I loved the day as we said goodbye to all of our new friends that we have made over the past three weeks.

Thank you to Mrs Stead for helping us with all of our problems and always tried to help us as much as she could.I have loved this experience and I would love to come back here someday. Even better, if my friends came to visit us so that we could show them all the great things that are in Spain.

In addition to the Spanish group, we also have had two Colombian pupils join us on a long term exchange. Jacobo is one of our long stay exchange students. He is 14 years old and comes from Colombia.

Jacobo is staying with a local host family and has settled very quickly into life in Wales. He has made many friends and is a hard working student.

Here, he is presenting life in Colombia to members of the International Club. He then went on to deliver this presentation to an audience of over 100 people including the Mayor and Mayoress of Port Talbot.

A wonderful end to a busy 3 weeks. The Mayor and Mayoress came to meet the Spanish students. We had presentations about Spain and Colombia and we waved good bye with the promise of staying in touch!

Show Racism the Red Card

Year 7 members of the International Club worked on the Show racism the Red Card day and raised the profile within the school. There were bands, badges and pens given out to pupils on the day and 'Red Cards' were displayed around the school. Next year, they aim to make the event bigger. A great start to joining the club and we look forward to working with you over the coming years.

Self Care Week

This week at YCB we have had morning assemblies on self-care. This is the practice of looking after our own health using the knowledge and information available to us.

What does self-care look like?

• Eating well and regularly

• Keeping hydrated on low sugar, caffeine free drinks

• Getting enough sleep for your age and developmental stage

• Being active everyday

• Visiting the dentist regularly

• Visiting the optician every 2 years

• Practicing good posture

• Taking any medications as prescribed

CHOOSE WELL

USING THE NHS

Your guide to choosing the right NHS service if you become unwell or injured.

Extra Curricular PE

It has been an outstanding start to the new school year. We are approaching 50 fixtures already completed and we are getting extremely high numbers of pupils attending all extra curricular clubs. A big well done to everyone and let's keep this up!

YCB Community

The Pantry- Food bank

Opening times – Every Thursday 3-4.30pm

The Pantry is open to everyone that needs a little extra help, whether that is a one off or a more regular support. Please just turn up on Thursdays, access is via the Pupil entrance in the Secondary phase.

Thank you all for your support with Donations for Harvest which went towards The Pantry, we were overwhelmed with the response.

There is a permanent donation trolley in reception area of school.

Friday Coffee Mornings

Please come along to our coffee mornings Every Friday 9-10.30pm in the school, all are welcome and it is a great opportunity to have a chat over a cuppa, to gain some insights into our local community, and to find out about any support that is available to all.

Gardening Club

We have been fortunate enough to have gained funding from Keep Wales Tidy to develop a community garden, we are currently in the process of building the gardening and are looking for volunteers to support with this. If you would like to support please contact Nicola to register your interest and to find out further information.

Christmas Child Appeal 2022

Our Christmas Child Appeal 2022 is in its 5th year. We will be supporting children and families over the Festive period. Last year we were able to provide clothes, underwear, pyjamas, gift sets, and gifts to almost 300 children and also 115 families received a supermarket voucher.

If you need any support this year please contact the school and speak with Nicola Thomas or your Head of Year.

If you would like to support our appeal please contact Nicola Thomas.

Please also look out for a Form on Classcharts to complete, to provide information for this year’s appeal. Everything will be treated highly confidentially and only shared with those in school who are involved with the Appeal.

We will be looking for further donations towards the Christmas Child Appeal.

Developments

YCB Community have been planning some further developments to support the community and are awaiting the decisions on funding applications, hopefully we can update everyone with our news in the next edition.

If you have any ideas of ways in which we can support please contact Nicola Thomas in the school or email

Community@ysgolcwmbrombil.co.uk

MFL Club

The MFL department has been running a lunch time club every Tuesday for Y7 & Y8s in C5

Playing games, watching videos and films, singing songs, and making arts and crafts are fun ways to learn more about French and Spanish language and culture. We also have the pleasure to have our Language Ambassadors taking part and sometimes even running the club too. Please join us! Those who attend can have a lunch pass, many positive points as well as several types of rewards for participating!

We look forward to seeing you there 🙂 Merci / gracias !

The Senedd

On September the 27th, the Senedd were invited to the Senedd in Cardiff Bay to present the work they’ve been doing with the Child Poverty Action Group to reduce the cost of the school day. They were invited to speak in front of Mr Jeremy Miles, the Minister for Education, and another 12 Senedd Members along with other charities. We were given a tour of the Senedd and the debating chamber by David Rees, Senedd Member for Aberafan. We had a very interesting day and we were made to feel very welcome.

Literacy at Ysgol Cwm Brombil

Creative Writing Club

Year 7 have the opportunity this year to attend a creative writing club after school which allows them to have fun and enjoy writing in different styles, express themselves through different forms of writing, and build confidence as individuals.

So far, we have explored writing creatively through the use of different images and writing prompt questions, started to think about a creative name for our club (which will be decided on after half term), experimented with different forms of poetry, and most recently written stories around the theme of Halloween.

It has been a pleasure to see pupils happy and proud to share their work with others in the group and be confident enough to enter our in school competition and the Young Writers competition. I’m sure pupils are going to do extremely well here.

After half term, this will also be open to Year 8. Miss Evans will arrange a sign-up sheet in the first week back. If any Year 7s still want to join, we are always welcoming new members. Creative Writing Club takes place every Thursday after school, 3-4pm in the library with Miss Evans.

Below is the beginning of a Halloween story that everyone in the group contributed to! Da iawn!

One spooky Halloween night at 1am, down a pitch-black dark alleyway, a monster was on the hunt. It was on the hunt for two little children. It had big, red, shining, eyes used for kidnapping but nobody was aware of the monster’s presence. He lives in an abandoned mansion in the outskirts of the mysterious village. Upon returning from the unsuccessful hunt, he stumbled upon two crying little girls trespassing, and with blood curdling screams, he quickly devoured them and returned to his slumber until next Halloween.

Religious Studies

Pupils in year 7 have been studying the topic of ‘What makes us human?’ Through this topic they have explored their own thoughts and feelings about themselves, as well as, those around them and how they are influenced by various factors in their life. As a cross curriculum link to the idea of ‘Self Care’ or ‘Hunan Ofal’ pupils have designed their own ‘Positive Pumpkins.’ They were task with thinking of their own inspirational messages about how we should take care of each other, the world around us or their own well-being. Some pupils chose to select a quote from the internet that had meaning for them in their own life. The pupils thoroughly enjoyed connecting to Halloween in a different way and produced some excellent reflective work. We love the display their work has allowed us to create. Da iawn Year 7.

Penalty Notice for Unauthorised Absence

Below is a leaflet from Mrs Clift, our Education Welfare Office, which talks though the Penalty notices for absences.