World Book Day was truly a magical day at Bloxwich Academy! Members of staff enjoyed dressing up as their favourite fictional characters, including Mr Seager as Harry Potter! The student well and truly enjoyed seeing all these fictional characters brought to life by their teachers and the winner of the best dressed was Miss Woolery as Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast!

During World Book Day, the students contributed to a variety of form time activities such as KS3 creating their own colourful and inspirational quoted bookmarks (a shout out to Lacey- 7X1) for winning this competition, with KS4 also creating their own Book Review on a literature text they have studied or a book they reading for pleasure. Bloxwich Academy also ran a ‘Whole School Scavenger Book Hunt Challenge’ in our fantastic, well-resourced, new Library, this allowed KS3/KS4 students during break and lunch to work through prompts that matched the book in the library. The winner for the ‘Scavenger Book Hunt’ challenge was Umna Kazem (8T1) who won a Huge Easter Egg! Additionally, within English, students had a drop-down lesson, where they focused on World Book Day activities, their class teachers selected a vast range and amusing fictional extracts that would suit the class, students enjoyed a glimpse of unseen fictional texts that they were able to base strong predictions on. The students also participated in the game ‘Never have I ever’ which was related to texts they have read for pleasure, this allowed students to venture their next read. All form tutors across school also participated in ‘drop everything and read’, this allowed tutors to bring in and read a section of their favourite novel and discuss with students why they would recommend the text; this was a wonderful experience for students to listen to and aspire to read the same text. Beauty and the Beast Theme!

Do you have a special talent you wish to showcase at our next big live event.

You will have the chance to perform on stage in front of a live audience in Birmingham at Millennium Point in their state-of-the-art theatre on Thursday 20^th April 2022.  Whether it be singing, dancing, juggling, stand-up comedy or anything and everything in between, we want to see all your wonderful talents.

How to enter:

• Have one of your performing arts teachers record your performance (or film it yourself and email to your teacher). 
• A snippet of your performance can be submitted, please do not worry about submitting a performance in its entirety. 
• Your teacher will be able to submit your performance video to the Matrix judging panel.
• Finalists will have the opportunity to perform at our next big trust event and some school events this year. 
• Solo entries and group entries are welcome. 
• Submit your entry by 4pm on Wednesday 15^th March.  

Students from four Matrix schools visited Tokyo to learn about Japanese culture – and themselves

As a travel destination, Japan remains impossibly out of reach in many people’s minds, despite us here – in the UK – being surrounded by Japanese culture. You can find sushi in your local supermarket; you can watch anime on Netflix; you can find t-shirts featuring famous prints by the artist Hokusai in high street clothing stores like New Look and Primark. Many of the most well known international brands are Japanese in origin: Sony, Toyota, Panasonic, Casio, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nintendo.

And yet, only around 300,000 people from the UK visit Japan each year. This may sound like a lot, but compare this with the 4,300,000 annual UK visitors to Spain.

Whenever we asked teenagers across our schools which country they have most wanted to visit, most had picked Japan. When we asked them why, they listed some of their favourite cultural artefacts: books, films, games. Some cited Japanese history; a fascination with samurai or geisha. But when pushed to think about their answers (as teachers, we never just settle for the first thing that comes to mind!) some of our young people have also talked about imagining it to feel different to what they are used to.

Read more: https://matrixacademytrust.co.uk/japan/

Our Awards Evening is always one of the most special occasions of the academic year, and this year was certainly no different. It is a wonderful evening where we get to celebrate and acknowledge pupils who have really embodied our school motto of ‘being the best they can be’. Teachers often find it extremely different deciding on the winners of the various awards, however sometimes there is a pupil who has been s impressive that they will be selected without hesitation!

As always, Mr. Kirkham and Mr. Evers proved that they can give Ant and Dec a run for their money as award show hosts. However, be sure to read the welcoming speech by two of our Year 11 pupils in the English section of this newsletter – a truly inspirational piece of writing. Many thanks to all the performers for making the evening so enjoyable, and a huge well done to all the award winners for making their families and teachers extremely proud!

Sports Leader Award

KS3  – C Plooij, J Lockett

KS4 – M Oginni, I Duckhouse

KS5 – B Johnson

House Champion Award

Brindley:  P Howley

Telford:  S Kelly

Stephenson:  H Garbett

Watt: G Boahene

Special Contribution to the Academy

P Hampton

Special Award for Head Boy and Girl Prefects

C Aigbiremolen

A Christian

 Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award

R Ampofo

Combined Cadet Force Recognition Award

Lance Corporal C Herpers

Overall Excellence Award

K Sia

(One of the few pupils in the country to achieve straight grade 9s in his GCSEs last year)

Last Wednesday saw the promotion of two new Corporals and three new Lance Corporals. Applications were taken from multiple cadets and everyone, who applied, made great candidates. This made it hard for the staff to choose. Unfortunately we only had limited spaces and had to make that hard choice. A massive

Congratulations to the following:

CPL C. Herpers

CPL R. Buttery

LCPL J. Kilgallon

LCPL Z. Essex

LCPL E. W

We must also congratulate:

– FS H. Gittins on achieving his Instructor Cadet Status after many months of training. This allows him to instruct cadets in certain subject areas.

– CDT R. Damoc for his commitment and dedication towards completing his first class cadet studies.

Safer Internet Day is held every February in over 170 different countries. The goal of Safer Internet Day is to call on people across the world to work together to make the internet a safer and better place for all, but especially for young people. In the UK, the UK Safer Internet Centre run a campaign especially for the day which aims to start a national conversation about using technology safely and positively. 

Last year over half of children and young people in the UK heard about the campaign, but it also involves and influences government, charities, police forces and tech companies including social media and gaming platforms. 

This Safer Internet Day asks everyone to make space for conversations about life online, especially with young people.  

That’s why this year, the theme for Safer Internet Day is: 

Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online 

To help raise further awareness of the importance of keeping safe online, pupils in all year groups have written their own pledges about how they will keep safe online.    

So, this Safer Internet Day we are challenging everyone to talk about it. 

Talk to your friends. Talk to the adults you know and trust. 

Most importantly, tell them if something is worrying you. It’s never too late to share an online problem and get help and support that can make things better. 

Happy Safer Internet Day everyone!

It’s full steam ahead for us with some fieldcraft lessons building up to this years fieldcraft summer exercise!

We have also seen some of our cadets undertake Leadership training and assessment. We teach them the theory of leadership and watch them implement it into realistic initiative exercises. We produce future leaders in all industries!

A great start to the year and much more to come.

Bloxwich Academy celebrated the achievements of a number of our staff. Whatever role they have to play in the smooth operation of the school, all of our staff do a fantastic job to make the Bloxwich Academy vision of ‘Be the Best you can Be’ a reality. From the amazing work of the site team, catering staff and admin department to the teachers in the classroom delivering on that promise for high quality education. We really couldn’t do it without the diligence, support and determination from all of our team who work tirelessly, continuingly looking for ways to adapt and develop to ensure they deliver the very best in whatever job they do.

To mark this, the Matrix Academy Trust recognised the achievements of a number of our staff across the year. Whilst it would be true to say all of our team deserve awards of some description and we are immensely proud of all, these individuals have stood out, particularly as helping to make Bloxwich Academy what it is today. Bloxwich wouldn’t be Bloxwich without each and every one of these members and the rest of the staff body. We thank you for all of your support as stakeholders throughout this year and invite you to wish our staff a huge ‘Well Done’ for an extremely successful 2022!

Dance students from across the Matrix Academy Trust came together on Monday 21^st November at Turves Green Boys School to perform in a collaborative project. Each school was assigned a section of ‘Celebrate’ by Pitbull to choreograph and perform, before all coming together as one to learn and perform the final section. The event saw over 100 students come together and share their passion for dance. Students thoroughly enjoyed the experience of performing in front of others and making new friends. The overall performance shows the motivation and commitment that these students have for the subject.