At Ponteland High School we opened our doors to welcome prospective Year 7 parents during the first week of October. We hosted a number of open mornings where parents were able to see the school during a normal working day. Over 70 parents came and listened to the Headteacher, Mr McElwee, talk and then were able to take a guided tour of the great facilities and see lessons in action. Finally the parents were able to talk to current Year 7 students in a Q&A session. All of the parents remarked on how amazing and articulate the students were and the purposeful and quiet atmosphere of the school during lesson time.
Then, on Thursday 6th October between 6 and 8pm, over 400 families visited our spectacular open evening. Families were able to listen to Mr McElwee’s talk and then visit all of our curriculum areas to participate in a range of fun and exciting curriculum activities. In Art, visitors could create Matisse-inspired paper collages inspired by the natural world; in Music they could perform their own rendition of the ‘Ghostbusters’ theme tune on boomwhackers; in Maths they could sample a flavour of KS3 Maths including pick ‘n’ mix and mocktails and in Computing and ICT, they could visit the activity stalls: photo booth, hardware desk, scratch programming, avatar generator, microbots and robots, code.org and top trumps, along with many other exciting activities. Many of our current students from all year groups generously gave up their time to support the evening and were so impressive in their articulation of the knowledge and learning in each subject area. Prospective parents and students alike had a wonderful time and left with a smile!
