On Friday, 08 July, our Year 11 students celebrated their successes and five-year journey here at Heston at their long-awaited Prom event.

Students certainly dressed to impress, with many of our gentlemen donning bow-ties, blazers and tailored shirts, and our young ladies being adorned in frills, sparkles and satin.

Many danced endlessly to the array of music, snapped silly and suave pictures at the photo booth, enjoyed the variety of food on offer and even took home a bespoke leavers' memento. Also featured were our in-house Sixth Form Team, who were a brilliant asset to the day, helped photograph and organise the event.

Some of our Year 11 students took ownership of creating a Prom that would leave them with a lifetime of memories. From coming in to organise the decorations and balloons to organising a DJ who played a range of up-beat songs, the Year 11s impressed us with their creativity and excitement. We were also able to enjoy the brilliant sounds of our very own Year 11 Dhol players who were able to ensure each student was full of energy and ready for the dance floor!

The day was a brilliant celebration of dance, food, happiness and laughter galore, waving a [temporary!] goodbye to our students as they enjoy their much-deserved, long summer break.

Ms S Jassal [Y11 Learning Coordinator]

      

  

 

 

On Tuesday, 05 July, we welcomed our new cohort of students to Heston Community School. This day provided students with the opportunity to experience life at Heston Community School, meet key members of staff and, most importantly, meet fellow students and make friends. Fun and engaging ice-breaker and team building activities provided students with the chance to get to know other students in their tutor group. In line with the whole school focus, students engaged in literacy and enrichment activities to prepare them for Year 7 in September. It was wonderful to see such positive engagement, excellent manners and a sense of enthusiasm throughout the day. We hope the students have a restful summer holiday, and we look forward to seeing them in September. 

Mr Evans - Learning Coordinator

Year 10 BTEC Enterprise students had the pleasure of visiting a local business the week beginning 27 June.  The owner of Mimi’s has long established links with the School and has welcomed our students there many a time.  This visit was extra special as it was the first after the pandemic. 

Students benefited from learning about her journey.  She spoke in depth about the process of setting up a business and the trials and tribulations she faced.   Her experiences were invaluable for our budding entrepreneurs.  Of course, the icing on the cake was that our students got to try Mimi’s mouth-watering food.

         

At Heston Community School, students are encouraged to read as widely as possible and to utilise their on-site library for their English lessons. In order to further enrich their reading experiences, we decided to schedule a trip to Heston Library, for all of Year 7, where students could explore a range of fiction in a larger setting and deepen their appreciation of different genres.  

'During one of our English lessons, we had the exciting opportunity to visit Heston Library! There is a range of genres and a wide variety of books at Heston Library. It was very easy to locate what types of books we were looking for because the library was very well-organised with the different categories in alphabetical order. The library has books for every age and there is something for everyone! There are a lot of challenging books for anyone who wants to improve their literacy skills or just simply change their reading habits. We also saw that the library provides study guides, computers and free Wi-Fi for people who want to use that space to revise.  

Overall, we enjoyed our time at Heston Library. The environment was very peaceful, and the staff were very helpful. Many of us left with membership forms in our hands, hoping to sign up and get a library card very soon!' 

Eisha Gounder [7O] and Diya Khosla [7Y]

 

 

Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure helping some Year 9 students improve their reading skills. The aim is to enhance their reading experience through a series of one-to-one sessions whereby we listen to them read. During the session, whilst listening to them read, I help with word pronunciations, definitions and enhance their comprehension of the text by asking them a range of thought-provoking questions. The continuity of supporting the same student every week helps build a great rapport, and we are able to communicate more effectively with one another. 

After a few weeks, I noticed a significant improvement in the Year 9 students’ ability to read and engage with the text. Reading is slowly becoming a passion rather than a chore which gives me great satisfaction in seeing them become more fluent and confident readers.  

Ria Adatia 

Year 12 

Since January some of our Year 10s have been involved in the Carnegie Book Shadowing Award and this is what they had to say…

First we all read last year’s winners book, ‘Run Rebel’ by Manjeet Man and each of us completed a review on that. We then followed that book by more books that were on the Carnegie shortlist and each began reading a different book. The week after we would review the book and share our thoughts with each other. We also watched the authors of the books share their intentions and story behind the making of the book. In this final week of the club we watch the live ceremony which revealed the winner for 2022. The book that won was ‘October, October’ which I was disappointed with. I think that ‘Tsuanmi girl’ should have won as it was a really well written book which took a lot of time to make and a lot of research about the events that happened in the story.

Karishma S 10 White

At first thought, I imagined a book club as a typical club where you just read books in silence. Obviously, I was wrong. In the Shadowing Book Club we received lots of different books to read which we then later made a vote for which one we thought was the best. I found books that I had never read before. For example, ‘Run Rebel’ and ‘The Crossing’ which were written in verse. I found that my favourite book was ‘Tsunami Girl’ [I have never read a book that good!]. ‘Tsunami Girl’ by Julian Sedgwick exceeded my expectations, it was a mix of all my favourite things that I would want to find in a book. Sadly, I did not win the award, ‘October, October’.

 Izabela J 10 White