Contents Headteacher Page 2

Dance Production Page 3

Fingerspellathon Page 4

Kindness Day Page 6

Sport News Page 9

December 2016

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This last half term has been incredibly enjoyable and successful. Students have continued to impress us with their mature and caring attitudes. This was evident on Remembrance Day when the two minute silence was immaculately observed by all the students in the school. The poignancy of the event was enhanced by a powerful rendition of the Last Post by trumpet player and year 11 student, Dan Ridges.

November also saw the first ever official Kindness Week at Southam College. Students and staff sent postcards to someone who they believed was adding to the positive culture at the school. I know that staff were really touched by the many messages they received. Being congratulated as being one of the best lunchtime litter pickers in the school was an unexpected accolade for me, but nevertheless well received.

December saw truly memorable performances by students in every year group during two wonderful evenings of entertainment as part of the Annual Dance Production. Students being able to present their talents in the

areas of gymnastics, dance and music in such a mutually supportive environment reflects everything which makes our school such a brilliant place in which to grow and learn.

Our aim is to make the words ‘best days of my life’ synonymous with Southam College for all our students, and hopefully the events of the last 7 weeks have gone some way to making this aim a reality.

I wish you all an enjoyable Christmas break and thank you for your ongoing support.

Mr Samra, Headteacher

Year 10 Battlefiels Trip

REMEMBRANCE DAY - We held a 2 minute silence in school and Dan Ridges, Year 11 played the last post on the trumpet.

Incredibly enjoyable and successful half term!

Dance Production The appeal, not to mention the importance, of a whole school dance production is that it presents students with the opportunity to showcase their artistic , courageous and creative abilities to a large audience of peers, friends, family members and college staff.

For two nights this week, 98 student Gymnasts, Dancers, Musicians and Trampolinists came together to CELEBRATE the 21st anniversary of the Southam College Dance Production. Rehearsals were running right up to the last minute, as the dances needed perfecting, the trampoline routines needed tightening up and the characterisation perfected.

Tap, Street, Contemporary, Ballet, Sports Acro, Jazz and Cheerleading were just some of the genres on show to a receptive audience who thoroughly enjoyed all of the lively and entertaining acts. Tilly Wilson's foot speed and control during her Irish dance was truly exceptional. Ballet pieces by Ellie Clark, Rachel Greenshield and Holly Chevassut showed beautiful formal patterns and fluent movements. 'Focus on Me' was a real showstopping Street performance from Amy Rigg & Darcey Christie that combined dancing skills with gymnastic ability to create a truly remarkable piece. ‘Thriller' drew on the timeless movements of Michael Jackson and some expertly applied make up to close the show with a real bang. However, the star of the show was Hayden Clamp, who set the standard for future acts to follow in his 'Annabelle' gymnastic dance routine, where he pushed the creative boundaries to a new level. Hayden was awarded the Ian Clark Memorial Trophy for Trampolining Excellence.

The whole evening was a celebration of artistic excellence. Well done to all.

Mr Lowdon

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We were very proud at Southam College to host our third Fingerspellathon competition this afternoon with twelve excellent finalists who had progressed from the tough heats last week. Students were well supported by their families as well as our honoured guest Shona Hudson from the NDCS charity.We are very pleased that our pupils have yet again raised money for this fantastic charity and we will continue to collect all the sponsorship money over the next few days.The competition was fast and furious and all students have made significant progress from the heats. We had some fantastic high scores from all students, all of whom improved upon their scores in the heats. All the students did really well under the high pressure of the final and did their house, family and themselves proud!The competition this year was incredibly tight, the top three were only separated by 5 points and the difference between first and second place was a mere 2 points!The deserved overall winner of the trophy this year was Izzy Alexander for Webb Ellis, who scored a superb 72 points! Second place went to Thomas Hawkins for Godiva with 70 points and third place to Godiva's Holly Smith with 67 points.A huge thank you to parents and students who have supported this event, as well as Shona from NDCS for her continued support in attending every final. A final thank you to the wonderful Mrs Cooper for her dedicated judging of the heats and the final.Congratulations to all who competed in such a brilliant event from the Heads of House and Mr

Warwickshire SACRE debate Four Year 7’s were very lucky to take part in the Warwickshire SACRE debate at North Leamington School yesterday. Ten Schools from the Warwickshire area were a part of this experience. The students had to prepare a speech agreeing with the statement "No one has seen God so there are no good reasons for believing God". Even though the arguments were split, the students represented the College in an outstanding manner. They were so eager to listen to other's views and ask lots of questions that the speaker had to limit their questioning time.

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The Skills Show

As part of Technology, Lifeskills and Careers 90 students from Southam College visited the nations largest skills and careers event "The Skills Show" at the NEC in Birmingham. Students visited five different Career zones - Hospitality & Lifestyle, Construction, Engineering & Technology, IT and Enterprise and Media & Culture. Each career zone offered the students the opportunity to find out about different career pathways and to have a go at hands on experiences such as being a BBC sound engineer, HS2 Landscape architect and blind food tasting Christmas puddings. Students were able to pick up lots of goodies including Iphone speakers and stands, tea-towels, pens and Pudsey Bandanas from the BBC stand. Mr Hughes said "Today has been a great success as the Skill Show has inspired and motivated our students to explore different career paths and has raised their career aspirations and awareness of the labour market".

Poppy Appeal We received this lovely card from The Royal British Legion. We collected £198.36 for the Poppy Appeal, well done all!

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Kindness DayStudents have been raising awareness and talking about the importance of looking after ourselves through Mental Health Awareness week.   To end the week, we had 'Acts of Kindness day'. This was organised as a specific day to celebrate how kind and considerate our students are, not just today, but continually in terms of their compassion, respect and consideration for others. We could not be any prouder of Southam students, especially seeing all of the Acts of kindness today and noting  their hard work and  effort to take part in the events. A summary of the Acts of Kindness events follows:

WHOLE SCHOOL COMMUNITY CLEAN UP - Head Boy Dan and Head Girl Georgia, alongside several kindness day student volunteers went around the school site to pick up litter- their act of kindness act to the Site team. All Students were also asked to empty the recycling bins from classrooms during registration to ensure we were all taking responsibility.

POSITIVE POST - Over 750 Positive Posts were completed by both  staff a n d s t u d e n t s . T h e s e i n c l u d e d messages of praise and thanks to others who had made a positive impact in their lives. Thanks to the volunteers who hand delivered these across the school.  It was  heart warming to see others taking the time to appreciate each other.

CHARITY CAMPAIGN STALLS - This was a new idea  which was a huge success. A massive thank you to Miss Lippert who  provided the opportunity for students to have a voice and a decision on which charity will be chosen for the school charity of the year through Life Skills lessons and todays final campaign. The atmosphere

was incredible, seeing  students who were passionate to win! Kacie Morby led the winning campaignwith ‘Crohn’s and Colitis UK’ selected as our school charity.

REMEMBRANCE DAY- Mrs Erroi  arranged to take a selection of students to Galanos House to be involved with the service of remembrance with local residents and veterans. A big thank you to Mrs Erroi for organising a truly memorable experience. We also held a 2 minute silence in school and Dan Ridges, Year 11 played the last post on the trumpet.

STAFF CAKES AND FRUIT PLATTERS - A  delicious range of treats were  given to  the staff by Mr Samra  in the Core at breaktime- a lovely act of kindness and enjoyed by all!

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GREAT NEWS! We are delighted to confirm that Southam College is in the top 10% of schools Nationally for Progress 8. Students achieved over half a grade higher in their subjects at Southam College when compared to students of a similar ability Nationally for 2016. A great outcome and recognition of all of the hard work and support students, parents and staff put in.

FOOD BANK HARVEST COLLECTION - Thank you to all students have brought in food which will be donated to local charities. The final table is jam packed!

CLOTHING BANK/TEXTILE DEPARTMENT- The bags will be delivered to the local charities this weekend. In the  'Crafternoon' sessions this week students made bunnyies for  a local baby charity and fabric poppyies for remembrance day for others.

SIXTH FORM VISITS 'ENGAGE WITH THE AGED- Well done  to all students who went along to meet and chat with residents, see the newsletter for a full outline of the afternoon!

OTHER ACTS OF KINDNESS - Walking around the school it was lovely to see other acts of kindness students and staff were doing. A group of year 11 students  gave out  flowers to friends, Miss Chen made a 'Kindness Cake' which was given out to Sixth Formers during lesson time, teachers gave out treats to staff and students. A  fantastic amount of support was also shown by students during lunchtime with  both the clean up but also charity stalls.

It was evident all week that we have a strong, compassionate and caring students at Southam College. We wanted to celebrate  this and what a celebration it has been!  

Year 12 German Christmas Market Trip On a frosty evening in November, myself and Carry, our lovely German language assistant have spent a fantastisch evening in the company of our equally lovely and fantastisch Year 12 students! We have visited the huge German Christmas market (Weihnachtsmarkt) in Birmingham, which comes from Frankfurt! The students enjoyed looking round the typical German stalls and sampling the likes of Bratwurst (sausages), Berliner (doughnut), Lebkuchen (gingerbread) and Brezeln (pretzels): typical German Christmas food - sehr lecker (delicious)! Many also bought some souvenirs of beautiful Weihnachtsdeko (Christmas decorations) and Kerzen (candles). We have all had a lovely evening and sang Christmas songs all of the journey home! Thank you for getting us into the Christmas spirit, year 12! Fröhliche Weihnachten!! Mrs Martin

Peace Poster Competition

Southam College students have taken part in a local competition. The competition which is run by the Lions charity focuses on peace and how through students own eyes, world peace can be achieved. The entries were completed to a really high standard, but we have three great winners. They are, Sarah C, Alexandra Z and Ana L Thank you to all those students who entered. The entries will now be entered into the local competition where they then could be entered into the national competition.

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Southam College Christmas Trees Kindly donated by Mr Gary Collins of Deppers Bridge Christmas

Trees 07768 594 363

Sports NewsGOLD FOR LYDIA Congratulations to Year 8 Lydia who competed in Daventry Phoenix Gymnastics club championships on Sunday across two events, vault and floor, against eight other gymnasts. She claimed gold on vault, gold on floor, resulting in her placing in Gold position overall. We are very proud of her hard work and commitment leading to this achievement. Keep up the hard work Lydia!

County Honours for Talented Duo! Finley Wilde and Joe Tresadern are two of the most delightful students you could wish to meet; that is until you meet them on a rugby pitch!

Both boys have given tremendous service to school rugby teams over their seven years at the school and both now play for Southam Rugby Club Colts. Their talent has been noticed by county selectors both of them are now representing Warwickshire U18s. They have recently been competing in a Midlands Competition involving six county/area teams. Warwickshire secured convincing wins over North Midlands and a combined Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire/Derbyshire team. They qualified for the final on Super Sunday, 6th November, in which they were narrowly beaten by a strong Leicestershire Team. Throughout the matches, the players have been assessed by Midlands selectors and they are now waiting to hear whether they will be invited to the first stage of trials for the Midlands Squad. At the Warwickshire Squad presentations after the match Fin was presented with the 'Best Back Award.' Congratulations to both boys and we wish them every success in their future rugby career.

British School Orienteering Championships Congratulations to Joe Quinney on his performance in the British School Orienteering Championships at Sutton Park, Birmingham.

Joe was competing against students from schools across the country and did fantastically well to finish in 17th position overall in the individual category.

Hopefully next year we'll have a few more students to join him so that we can entry a school team.

Mr MacGibbon

November 29th - Southam College Girls Rugby club attended their first rugby festival at Old Leamingtonians Rugby Club. The festival was run and put on by the coaches from England Rugby and gave the girls an opportunity to really embrace the sport. When we arrived the coaches took the girls through some funny friendly warm up activities with the other girls from Bilton, Aylesford and Stratford. At which point the U15 girls moved onto a contact game against a team which combined the girls from Bilton and Aylesford. This was the girls first contact match and they fully embraced this seeing some huge tackles being made. Izzie Hannay took on a lot of the running and was more than happy to run at the opposition. As the game progressed you saw Katie Cummings joining Izzie at running through the defence and being successful in scoring tries. The girls did not shy away from tackling and big tackles came from Aoife Williams and Kacie Cherrington. Myself and Mr Ginger could not believe our eyes at how much all of the girls have progressed but also how confident they grew throughout the evening. Unfortunately a few schools dropped out of the festival today which had a negative impact on the U13 age group. However this was a great opportunity for the girls to get some extra coaching with a few students from other schools. Hopefully next time there will be a few more schools who attend so the girls can get a larger game. However similar progress was made by the year 8 girls seeing Poppy Lumis and Olivia Constable putting in some excellent, well timed tackles. It was lovely to see so many girls taking part and enjoying their rugby this evening. Well done again ladies for your commitment and progress so far.

Miss Warman and Mr Ginger

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Girls Rugby

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Level 2 School Games Badminton NOVEMBER 23rd - the year 10 girls badminton team went across to Campion to take part in the Level 2 School Games tournament with the hope of going through to the Level 3 competition.

The team consisted of Jodie Coombs Prole, Lydia Crompton, Aoife Williams and Megan Coats. The girls played against 4 other teams in 4 doubles matches. Considering the girls had only come together for this event I was extremely happy with the results, as the team finished in 3rd place behind Kingsley and Kenilworth. The pairing of Lydia and Jodie convincingly beat both Campion teams and narrowly lost out to Kenilworth. Megan and Aoife had similar success seeing them also win half of their m a t c h e s t h r o u g h o u t t h e evening.

Unfortunately the team didn't progress to the next round but they did perform well and have done themselves proud.

Miss Warman

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YEAR 7 FOOTBALL REPORT NOVEMBER 29th - Our first game was against Campion School, we all played very well as a team. By half time the score was 0-0, our team came close to scoring and so do there’s and we made a change by bringing Ruby on instead of Martha. The ball was very slippy to kick. At the end the game finished 0-0. Our second game was against Myton School. We all played well but unfortunately we conceded a goal. At half time the score was 1-0 to them. We made another change by bringing Macy on instead of Charis. The captain Abbie and the Vice-Captain Jess kept the team going. The end score was 2-0. We played a friendly against Myton School. Abbie scored 2 and Jess scored 1, we all played very well and they managed to score to make it 3-1 ending. Match report by Abbie Bourton.

YEAR 8 EMERGING SCHOOLS NETBALL TOURNAMENT December 1st - We played the first tournament of the season. Our team was Jess Woods and Siobhan Browne in defence, Charlie Shepherd, Erin Powell, Ana Lovett, Holly Driscoll and Amy Dekany in the centre court and Morgan Usher and Shona Thorburn in attack. The first match of the night was against North Leamington school, it was a great match with the overall score 1-1. Our second match was against Kenilworth although they won 4-0 the play by our team was good. The third match was against Trinity and we won 4-0, everyone played really well! After that we played Kingsley and won 1-0, finally we played Myton, unfortunately we lost 1-0 but we played really well as a team!

Written by Erin Powell

December 1st - Our first match was against Kenilworth B the shooters were Alex Lyle and Charlotte Wain – both scoring 2 goals each although Kenilworth came back into the game to score 1, final score 4-1. The next match was against North Leamington A it started great by getting the ball down court with Erin Jones at centre, Sarah Costa at wing defence and Bo Crump at wing attack. Ellie Cumberbatch came on to play goal attack and the final score was 4-0. Strong defence by Olivia Constable, Rose Hill and Katy Black kept our goals against to a minimal. Our next match against Campion showed great defence again by Olivia and Katy in the circle and Sarah on the wing with a final score of 7-1 to Southam. For our next match we played Myton, Issie Fairhurst and Charley Furey played well in the centre court, with us ending up winning 4-0. Aylesford were our penultimate group match and with another strong team performance we won 4-0. Our last group match was against Kingsley where tough competition made the team work really hard together and we played amazing, a final score of 2-2. This meant we had made it to the semi-final! The semi-final against Kenilworth A showed how amazing we can all play as a team, we ended up winning 4-2 and that meant a match in the final against Kingsley (again)! We were ready to win! Kingsley came out strong and managed to win 5-2 although we played really well. Well done girls, hopefully we can win next year!

Written by Olivia Constable.