Anti-Bullying Alliance celebrate Odd Socks day in November each year. At Bloxwich Academy, we feel the message is an important one, to ensure we revisit kindness, acceptance and the support of others with pupils throughout the year.

Odd Socks Day is an opportunity to encourage people to express themselves and celebrate their individuality and what makes us all unique. To promote this, Bloxwich Academy will be having an additional Odd Socks Day on Friday 1^st of March. Staff and pupils will be encouraged to wear their odd socks proudly to celebrate what makes them an individual.

The BBC Young Reporters Competition is now open for entries. This year’s theme is “Me and My World”. Students are encouraged to submit reports that focus on personal stories related to their experiences with family, friends, or the community. They can also explore issues or experiences that are particularly relevant to young people.

The competition seeks original and unique story ideas that bring a fresh perspective to a subject. The most original and interesting stories will be reviewed by a panel consisting of presenters, reporters, senior editors, and producers from various BBC programmes and platforms, including Newsbeat, Newsround, BBC Sport, Radio 5 Live, and The One Show.

Entries are divided into two age categories: 11-15 and 16-18 years old. Participants can choose to submit their entries in written or video format. Written entries should not exceed 350 words, while videos or audio recordings should be no longer than three minutes.

Winners of the competition will have the opportunity to work with a BBC journalist or production team to bring their story to life on either radio, TV, online, or social media. The selected stories will be broadcasted on one of these platforms by the BBC in 2024, based on their editorial merit. Individual production and broadcast dates will be arranged with each winner and the relevant BBC production team to accommodate editorial needs and broadcasting schedules. The BBC will cover reasonable travel expenses for each winner. Additionally, all winners will receive a BBC Young Reporter “goodie bag” pack as a token of appreciation.

To further support students in the development, creation, and submission of their reports, Miss Barton holds a BBC Young Reporters Club every Monday after school.

The deadline for entries is 23rd March 2024 at 23:00. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to showcase your talent as a young reporter.

On Friday 23^rd February, Bloxwich Academy welcomed Daniel Caines a former Olympian, World Champion in the 400m and European Champion in the 4x 400m relay. He delivered a range of inspirational assemblies to pupils in years 10 and 11, and a smaller workshop with Key Stage 3 pupils.

Daniel shared his journey in the athletics world, starting at a young age, to the triumphant achievements he was able to secure. Daniels key message to our pupils focused on the journey to success, which inevitable can include setbacks. He spoke about the resilience needed to go beyond these setbacks to be able to achieve the ultimate goal.

We hope our pupils can look back on the outstanding and motivational assembly, reflecting on how they can overcome their own setbacks to work towards their own achievements linking to the school moto of “Be The Best You Can Be.”

Thank you Daniel for taking the time to be an inspiration to both our pupils and the staff.

Random Acts of Kindness Day was celebrated on 17^th February 2024. To support Children’s Mental Health Week and the promotion of “My Voice Matters”, Bloxwich Academy are launching a Random Acts of Kindness Week. This will run from Monday 26^th February to Friday 1^st March.

During this week, pupils and staff will be promoting kindness and the impact that small gestures can have on brightening someone’s day and supporting their mental health.  To promote this, pupils will be having an assembly to identify the impact of kindness and how to support our Anti- Bullying campaign.

We do not want the acts of kindness to stop beyond this date, so please keep checking our website for ways we are promoting kindness in school.

Another great partnership formed this week as we proudly announce our collaboration with ‘Community Footprints’ at Ryecroft Community hub!  

The lovely Stacey led an excellent first session yesterday, working with some of our pupils in Beauty Therapy. This bespoke course promotes wellbeing, responsibility, skills and techniques, as well as future aspirations in the beauty industry. The girls cannot wait for next week’s session.

This week Bloxwich Academy is celebrating Children’s Mental Health Week. We are working on this alongside the promotion of keeping safe online. This year’s theme is “My Voice Matters” and we are using this to promote pupils to share their thoughts and feelings and to speak up to be positive and support others. Pupils will be having an assembly and taking part in form time activities to promote this.

This will lead into more work next week on Random Acts of Kindness and the promotion of Anti Bullying and supporting and promoting the wellbeing of ourselves and others. Please keep posted for more information.

As part of this curriculum, we are looking at pupils’ safety online and how they can protect themselves when using social media. On Monday 19^th and Tuesday 20^th February 2024, pupils experienced a fantastic performance and interactive assembly promoting pupils’ safety online, security settings and the dangers of artificial intelligence and the creation of false online profiles and enhanced characters. They were also educated on the laws surrounding taking inappropriate photographs, sending to others and the distribution without consent.

Consent was a topic covered in the performance and the right of pupils to say no, but also the option to withdraw consent at any time. The final section of the performance focused on algorithms and how social media and the internet focuses on their searches and how this can be a concern where similar images and posts creating an echo chamber where they are at times surrounded by harmful views.

Pupils were given strategies to stay safe and protect themselves online. Pupils were reminded that “We are a Telling School” and to report any concerns or to ask any questions to staff members in school including form tutors, teaching staff, Head of House and Leadership.

CALLING ALL BLOXWICH ACADEMY ALUMNI

If you’re a former student of Bloxwich Academy, we want to hear from you!

Your experiences since leaving could help to motivate and inspire our current students to feel more confident in making decisions about their future. We’d love you to join our Alumni Network and stay connected with the school.

We’ve partnered with the national education charity Future First, who specialise in helping schools like ours to stay connected with their former students. 

You can choose how and when you help – perhaps you can act as a career and education role model, provide work experience or become a mentor in person or online.

To sign up, just follow this link and fill in the online form – we promise it will only take a couple of minutes

https://www.futurefirsthub.org.uk/register/bloxwich-academy

We look forward to hearing from you.

We knew this would be a tough game as we faced an unbeaten team in the league and a team we lost 6-0 to away from home.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get off to the best of starts as they scored within 5 seconds of the kick off! They set the ball back and drilled a shot into the top corner of our net, 1-0. This, however, didn’t sway our concentration and determination to give a good account of ourselves. Within 5 minutes we found ourselves level.

An excellent ball out from the back allowed J. Bloomer to attack their left back at pace. He managed to get to the byline and produced a cross that just evaded M. Kaba at the front post. But A. Jones, just like a young Paul Scholes, timed his run to the back post with perfection. He controlled the ball, sat his defender down and rifled the ball past the keeper! 1-1!

The team focused on what had been asked of them tactically and produced some excellent defensive work which frustrated the visitors. C. Hitchcock was outstanding in his individual duels alongside M. Oginni who looked dominant in the air, as well as being composed when driving out from the back with the ball.

We grew into the game and started to create opportunities through some excellent link up play in midfield. With 43 minutes on the clock we won the ball again in midfield. K. Perry slid a ball through to J.Bloomer who was 1v1 with the goalkeeper but the keeper made a fine save to deny us the opportunity to go into the lead.

Half Time – 1-1

The second half saw the visitors come out more aggressively but we continued to match them in all areas of the pitch. They were clearly rattled by our improvement in performance. Again, we created opportunities from long throw ins and corners but just didn’t get the roll of the ball in order to get a clear strike on goal. It was the visitors who scored two goals in quick succession which gave them a little more confidence and control of the game. And, when they scored from a free-kick to make it 4-1, we still didn’t let our heads drop, which was brilliant to see.

Full Time – 4-1

The performance from the team showed how much improvement they have made both individually and collectively. They represented the Academy fantastically well. There were 2 debuts from J. Gyan-Baffour and M.Lloyd who I thought did brilliantly when they came on.

We now have a most valuable player (MVP) not Man of the Match, due to our new recruit in M.Lloyd.

MVP – A.Jones

Goals – A.Jones – 1

Assists – J.Bloomer – 1

Many thanks to the staff and sixth form that came out to support the team this afternoon.