Glebelands School students took part in a plethora of colourful activities for their late Spring Focus Day held on Wednesday 30th April.  Some students in Year 7 undertook a Carnival Day, learning the art of Samba drumming, choreographing their own dance and designing their own Brazilian masks. The other half of Year 7 donned fancy dress (along with the members of staff involved) to create a short storyboard film. Students planned the storyboards, filmed and then edited their own movies.

Year 8 students took part in one of two visits. Some wore their wellies on a Geography field trip to the River Tillingbourne collecting data and measurements to investigate how rivers change from source to mouth; whilst others went to the Science Museum in London to learn more about the origins of The World's ground-breaking inventions.

Making its debut this year, was a Year 9 activity hosted by Eagle Radio where the students were given an education in how marketing and advertising works followed by a challenge; to make their own advert. They approached this activity with aplomb and in the afternoon were given the opportunity to record the advert so that it was 'ready for air'.

Year 10 students were on their work experience placements this week, out and about in the community, serving customers in shops and learning about different trades and businesses. Year 11 were focused on their revision for the day within the English, Mathematics, RS and Science departments. With exams approaching very soon, students were grateful for the focused support from their teachers.

Mr Smitheram, Assistant Headteacher

Source - Glebelands School

On Thursday 8th May 2014, Glebelands School were delighted to host the Mathemagician Andrew Jeffrey as he gave entertaining, but thought-provoking Mathematics talks to both students and the local community.

Andrew was actually a Maths teacher for 20 years, and he is also a professional magician, winning competitions at local and national level. It's these two passions that he combines in his various presentations, which have entertained and amazed students and local communities up and down the country.

During Thursday afternoon, students from Year groups 7, 8 and 10 joined Andrew as he baffled the students with card tricks, magically turned £20 into $1,000,000, used a magic square to guess a student's prediction, and demonstrated the magical properties of the pentagon! Through all these mind-bending tricks, he also emphasised the importance of Maths in all aspects of life and how key it is to get stuck every once in a while – your brain can't grow unless you challenge it!

Andrew's key message during his evening talk was that Maths isn't at all scary, but actually quite dependable, and he certainly did that as he entertained around 250 members of the local Cranleigh community. He intrigued us with tricks for learning your times tables, amazed us by multiplying huge numbers in his head, did an incredible random matching trick with Harry Potter characters and also performed the famous trick that fooled Einstein!

The evening was a fantastic success, feedback from all those who attended was brilliantly positive and Andrew was certainly kept busy with children clamouring to get his autograph at the end.

If you're interested in attending similar talks at Glebelands School in the future, please contact us at: communitysecretary@glebelands.surrey.sch.uk

Mrs S Patterson, Head of Mathematics