Latest News
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
-
Aurora Development Day
Thu 28 Nov 2024We were delighted to welcome 200 Aurora Academies Trust colleagues to City Academy Whitehawk earlier this month. We pride ourselves on our shared commitment to deep and meaningful collaboration so opening our doors to school teams from across the trust was one of the biggest highlights of the term so far!
Based on the effective collaborative working opportunities we've designed in recent years with through our Professional Networks, we devised bespoke workshops for all staff groups. Our ambition was to ensure that every Aurora colleague experienced high quality professional development opportunities specific to their roles.
Based on the principle of collective teacher efficacy, we designed opportunities for our Quality of Education leaders and classroom teams to collaborate throughout the day, engaging in professional reading, training and discussion based on highly effective teaching and subject specific pedagogy. As a network of skilled teachers, we have a really firm understanding of 'the why' and 'the what' - it was exciting to come together for the day to contribute our views on the tools and strategies that define 'the how'. Capturing the expertise of our all of our school teams from EYFS to KS4 throughout the day was a privilege.
Under the leadership of our skilled Key Workers, Aurora's excellent pastoral teams came together to share their expertise in supporting the young people we're proud to work alongside. Our dedicated support staff teams engaged in a day of SEND training delivered by two highly skilled Aurora Heads with a wealth of SENDCo experience. The expert Aurora Attendance network came together, as did our Business and Administrative teams, undertaking shared work to move us closer to achieving our Trust goals.
Our parallel event, facilitated by Laylee Pocock, Director of School Improvement, at Glenleigh Park Primary Academy for a further 200 Aurora colleagues was equally engaging and productive. 94% of our colleagues across the two sites submitted glowing feedback for our Trust-wide day of bespoke professional development. In our feedback survey, we asked teams what they found most useful:
· 'Collaboration with other schools and subject specific teachers. Lots of meaningful and proactive conversations. It was great to have HLTAs involved in the teaching sessions. Very proud to be part of Aurora and I look forward to more development days in the future.'
· 'Collaboration and networking. Some time to share ideas to work towards a common goal. Inclusive of different roles.'
· 'Speaking to other pastoral teams! Also the supervision that we had was great.'
· 'Opportunities for colleagues to define the key components of high quality teaching and learning.'
We're thrilled with the feedback we've received from all staff groups across all seven of our schools and are excited to respond to our teams' requests for further training to build on this exciting work when we come back together in March!
-
Early Excellence Podcast
Thu 18 Jul 2024We're so proud to announce that our amazing Early Years Leader, Dora Rackham, featured as a guest on the Early Excellence podcast.
You'll know that we were recently awarded Outstanding by Ofsted in the Early Years for the second time. They noted: 'Children get off to an exceptional start in the Nursery and Reception. The school’s carefully sequenced and rigorous curriculum is highly effective. Staff prepare children for the next stages of education, instilling the necessary language and communication skills through enriching activities and opportunities. Children build meaningful relationships with each other and the well-trained staff who skilfully facilitate highly purposeful learning.'
We were thrilled that Dora was specially invited to participate in the podcast; in this episode she and Andy Burt explore the progression of writing skills in Reception. Dora has developed a tool to track the small steps involved in developing writing skills. She joins Andy to share how it used and the impact it has had on practice in our school and trust.
Well done, Miss Rackham!
-
Year 5 Sharing Art Across The Community
Tue 09 Jul 2024Year 5 Sharing Artwork Across the Community
Year 5 children recently visited Brighton Racecourse, Roedean Firestation, Whitehawk Bus Garage, St Cuthman's Church and Swanborough Flats to deliver some copies of collages of these locations that children made during Arts Week. The different teams were so excited to receive these stunning pictures and were incredibly welcoming to the children.
-
Arts Week Exhibition Video!
Mon 17 Jun 2024Miss Varco has made a brilliant video capturing the highlights of our amazing Arts Week! Take a look by clicking here
-
Teacher Reading Challenge!
Wed 12 Jun 2024Miss Scozzafava has set our teachers and SLT members a reading challenge themed around the UKLA Book Award Shortlists. She was at Sussex University at the weekend to be a part of panel who selected the winners! These will be announced on Friday 5th July!
-
Taylor Swift Club Highlights!
Mon 10 Jun 2024Our long awaited highlights reel is now ready for you to enjoy! Click here to watch! Please watch and share as we're keen to try to get in front of Taylor's Team so they can see how passionate we are about her! #Swifities!
-
Author replies!
Thu 25 Apr 2024Whilst everyone is looking forward to meeting Steve McCarthy and Sue Hendra on Monday for our new library launch, we wanted to share some of the brilliant interactions we've had with authors who couldn't make it but wrote back to us!
-
Taylor Swift Club!
Mon 22 Apr 2024We had a brilliant time at the Taylor Swift Club. Please see these slides for a taste of what we got up to!
-
World Book Day 2024!
Wed 13 Mar 2024We had a book-tastic day for World Book Day this year in our comfy PJs! Click this link to read our bulletin that shows all the fun we had.
-
Rugby Festival
Fri 14 Oct 2022A group of amazing Year 5 children went to celebrate the Rugby League World Cup at Hove Park this week and they had a great time, learning about the game, trying out new skills and getting very, very muddy!
It was great to see so many schools at the event and we were lucky to have some training from the Rugby Academy students at Cardinal Newman. All of the children received a certificate for their participation and Jacob was voted the winner of the determination award for his effort and teamwork throughout the event. Well done to all of those who took part and showing off our CAW Qualities!
