Sandhill View Academy

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Students in all year groups will be choosing their tutor groups representative for the student council. In the spirit of democracy, candidates will put themselves forward and then the group will vote with the majority vote taking the place on the council. This year we will have a...

National Poetry Day

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For National Poetry Day our KS3 classes were encouraged to draft their own poems based on this year’s theme of “vision”. We are running this as a poetry writing competition with Waterstones vouchers as prizes. Students can take their work from class home...

World Mental Health Day

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On Friday 9 October, we will be joining thousands of schools, offices and community groups across the UK to take part in #HelloYellow, to support young people’s mental health on World Mental Health Day. Lockdown is having a devastating effect on children and young people’s...

National Skills Day Draws Near

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Back in May, lots of our students and staff featured in the first ever National Skills Day. On Wednesday 7 October is the next National Skills Day, this time sponsored by Skills Builder, who we are working with this year to roll out a programme of essential...

Welcome Back!

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It’s wonderful to finally get to see our students again. Though times may be difficult we are delighted to once again be providing the crucial classroom learning we have been missing over the course of this pandemic. We have fully risk assessed our school and provided the best...

Hello to Year 7

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Though this may be a very unusual year so far, we are very happy to welcome out latest cohort of Year 7 students into Sandhill View Academy. We have taken particular care to introduce our new students into life at secondary school since they did not get the chance to take part in...

A Little Face-Lift

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We’ve been busy around the building over our school closure period. Building staff have been hard at work not only installing Covid-19 measures but also giving our communal areas a little bit of TLC. We’ve made our year bases in particular brighter and lighter areas for our...

Virtual Nurse Drop-In

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Though our face-to-face school nurse drop-in sessions are currently suspended due to the ongoing pandemic, we are happy to offer students the ability to use a virtual drop-in system for all their health and wellbeing enquiries. Students are free to contact local health advisors...

Getting Creative in Keeping Children Safe

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A number our Year 9 Photography students put together entries for the city-wide ‘Sunderland Safeguarding Children Partnership’ competition. The entries were voted upon during a recent safeguarding conference and Sandhill View students took the top three prizes! Well done to...

Young Song Writer Wonders

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Well done to our aspiring musicians who took part in the ‘New Young Writers’ celebration at the National Glass Centre. There were some fantastic performances from schools across our city and Sandhill View students did not disappoint with their contribution. Well done!

An Angelic Art Visit

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On a recent research trip to The Baltic, our GCSE Art students had the amazing opportunity to be present for the unveiling of The Knife Angel sculpture, which is temporarily on display by the Sage in Gateshead. The Knife Angel is a 27ft sculpture crafted out of 100,000 knives...

Sorcerous Sandhill Scholars

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Scholars enjoyed a lecture from Durham University student Arabethan who discussed the roles of gender, inclusivity and relationships linked to the Harry Potter book series and how, though many of these ideas may not appear directly in the texts, the themes of tolerance within the...

Sandhill Tackle Rugby Tournament

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Over 100 Year 7 and 8 students from across the city descended on Southmoor Academy for the Sunderland Schools’ Rugby Union Competition. Southmoor, Castle View, Monkwearmoth, Sandhill View, St Aidan’s and Grindon Hall all took to the field. Our teams’ intensity and...

In Harmony

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Thank you to New Writing North who have been running song writing classes and enrichment sessions at Sandhill View throughout our last term, helping our students to create two unique songs that they wrote and produced themselves. As part of this, the group will be holding a...

Getting Crafty at the Northern School of Art

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Students enjoyed a hands-on taster day at the Northern School of Art on their Middlesbrough campus. Pupils learnt about the creative careers that studying a further educational course such as the ones offered by the school can lead to, had fun constructing a 3D sculpture from...

Translating MFL Lessons into a Rewarding Career

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We have continued our drive to improve our students’ knowledge about how their lessons can lead to different careers and job opportunities. This time it was the turn of languages to share with students how learning a language could benefit them with valuable skills in the job...

Fantastic Fundraising

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A huge thank you to everyone at Sandhill View who helped student Adam Young to donate £140 worth of games for Ward 2B of The Great North Children’s Hospital in Newcastle. The other £120 of the money raised will be spent on a virtual reality set that will help...

Cambridge Chat with Year 9

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Student Ambassadors from Cambridge University met Year 9 to talk about what sets Cambridge apart from other institutions. Students learned about the variety of courses available (including Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic), the collegiate system and societies on offer from sports...

Polling Our Pupils

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Along with the national General Election on Thursday 12th December, Sandhill View students were able to take part in their own mock election to see what the result would have been in the school if students were allowed to vote. Students looked at the manifestos for each party...

Musical Maestros in the Making

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We gave a special gift to the fifteen Year 7 & 8 students who have done the most independent work as part of our School Orchestra Project since September. As a thank you for their dedication to learning a new instrument, these pupils were gifted their very own violins as an...

Raffle Winners Scoop Some Early Presents

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Congratulations to the winners of our Christmas raffle, arranged by Sandhill student Adam Young. With their help, and the help of everyone who bought a ticket, Adam managed to raise an amazing £260 for Ward 2B of The Great North Children’s Hospital...

Stargazing Students

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Peter Swift from Durham University’s Physics Department visited the scholars recently, bringing with him the University’s pop-up planetarium! Students learned about our galaxy, observed stars, constellations and explored the planets in our solar system. They were taught how...

Autumn Activities Day

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The end of our Autumn term also brought our much-anticipated activity day. Students cashed in their hard-earned praise points to take part in a huge range of activities both inside and out of school. Activities included everything from computer games to nail art and trips out to...

Lego Legends

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We welcomed in representatives from the North East Raising Aspirations Partnership for a special STEM workshop where our Year 7 students explored engineering through Lego and tried their hand at designing, building and racing their own vehicles in a fun competition against their peers.

Putting the Paddle In

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Pupils from Years 7- 9 represented Sandhill View at Durham Rowing Club for the Sunderland Schools Games Indoor Rowing Competition. The pupils competed against eight schools with over 100 competitors entering the competition! The students showed great effort and determination...

Top of the Praise Tree

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Congratulations to all of the students who managed to be in the top tier for praise points and attendance. Each student was presented with a certificate from Mrs. Maw for their personal record and to mark an excellent start to their school year. Well done!

Outward Bounds to the Lochs

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Seventeen Year 9 pupils spent a week in Loch Eil in Scotland on an Outward-Bound course ran by the EEF. The students were split into two competing teams where they worked on a range of transferable skills that they can use in and out of the classroom. This included team building...

Art Masterclass with Hastings Hill

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Thank you to the staff and Year 5 pupils from Hastings Hill who joined us for an Art Master Class as part of our wider transition programme. Pupils had the chance to learn about colour theory and do a large-scale artwork that mirrored the work of Yayoi Kusama. Well done!

On Your Bike!

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Pupils took part in the 5 Miles Go-Eco Cycle Ride Challenge. After starting their journey by the Sunderland Glass Centre, pupils biked along the river walk, through Roker Park and up the coastal path to the cliff tops. Students also got the chance to try some peer fishing for...

Surveying in the Rain

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Year 11 Geography students visited three sites in Newcastle to investigate ‘does sustainability vary across different areas of the CBD’ as part of their human geography fieldwork. Sustainability may have varied but the weather didn’t! Despite the persistent rain, all sites were...

Pane to Pane with Sandhill Scholars

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Julian Lawrence, an award-winning Canadian cartoonist, ran a comic book drawing workshop for the Scholars hosted at The Sixth Form at Southmoor. He introduced them to the history of comics and challenged them to comic book ‘speed-drawing’ where they had to draw 4 images of...

Sandhill Students Join the Debate

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A group of six Year 8 & 9 pupils represented Sandhill View at the annual ‘State of the City Debate’ at the City Council Chambers. The debate, which each year invites some of the best students from the Sunderland area, is designed to give young people the opportunity to...

University in Perspective

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All year 10 students visited Northumbria University to gain a deeper understanding of post 16 options. They each took part in a carousel of activities which included a tour of the campus where they got to see the state of the art engineering and sports science equipment, along...

Building STEM Skills

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A group of our Year 8 students have been taking part in the first Lego League tournament this year. This is the first time we have taken part in this as part of our STEM programme. The students have been met by three challenges. Firstly, they must build, code and manage a robot...

Careers Fair 2019

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Thank you to all the higher and further education institutions, training and apprenticeship providers, employers and representatives from our UK forces who joined us for our Careers Fair. Our students were extremely well informed by the variety of options available to them, with...

A Poignant Pause

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Every year group took part in our Remembrance Day commemorations. Our wonderful student volunteers led the ceremony with reflections on why we mark Remembrance Day alongside poignant poetry and music as well as an impeccably observed two-minute silence alongside the rest of the...

The Spice of Life!

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Our students got creative in the kitchen courtesy of our catering provider Chartwells. Year 7 pupils had the chance to take part in special ‘Spice of Life’ workshop where they discovered the health benefits of preparing fresh food and how simple it can be to cook a...

Sandhill Scholars Get to Work

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The Sandhill View students selected for our special ‘Scholars’ programme have been enjoying special lectures from some amazing guest speakers down at The Sixth Form at Southmoor. Our pupils have had the opportunity to identify unknown substances using a spectrometer and last week...

The National Theatre and a Curious Incident

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Sandhill students were delighted to attend a special performance of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by the National Theatre at our sister school, Southmoor Academy. This was a fantastic opportunity for students to watch the show in an up-close and personal...

A Way with Words

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We were delighted to welcome Lisette Auton who is a local disabled poet working for New Writing North. Our Year 7 students had the chance to listen to Lisette speak about her work as a disabled activist, writer, spoken word artist, theatre-maker and creative practitioner as well...

School Orchestra Project Makes its Debut

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We launched our new School Orchestra Project by handing out the first instruments to eager Year 7 students. The project sees every student in Year 7 receive an orchestral instrument and whole-class tuition in their curriculum Music lessons. Last year’s project at Southmoor...

Success Stories

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As part of the recent Big Draw Festival 2019 students had the opportunity to write a description that brought an inanimate object to life with a supporting illustration. Dylan Douglas, Karrie Weetman and Lara Dickson submitted fantastic entries and were...

Awesome Athletes