Mr Dunn’s Class Update T1 W10 | Mr Dunn

It’s been a great first week back after half term! Students have worked hard and had fun re-engaging with their learning across all subjects. Here are some highlights from the week.

Literacy

Over this last week, students have been fully immersed in our Gothic and Horror creative writing unit. They began by developing their own Gothic heroes and villains, exploring the traits, motivations, and fears that define characters in the genre. The class then wrote the first encounter between their hero and villain, focusing on atmosphere and tension. This was followed by a warning scene, where a mysterious figure or message hinted at danger to come. Most recently, students studied The Woman in Black to inspire their own discovery scenes, revealing hidden truths and deepening the mystery in their stories. Each lesson has built towards crafting original Gothic narratives rich in suspense, emotion, and imagination.

IMYC

To launch our new unit on Creativity, students took part in several engaging activities designed to get them thinking in imaginative and original ways. They began with creative games such as the 30 Circles Challenge, Alternative Uses, and the Remote Associates Test to explore different types of creative thinking. Afterwards, the class conducted a knowledge harvest, discussing what creativity means and how it connects to each core subject.

In History this week, students explored how ideas about creativity changed from Ancient Greece to Ancient Rome. They learned that the Greeks believed creativity was a divine gift from the gods, inspired by the Muses, while the Romans began to see creativity as something that came from within each person, their own “genius.”

Students worked in teams to design a creative survival guide based on the school grounds, imagining how they could find food, shelter, and entertainment if trapped on site for a year. They explored the environment to identify natural and man-made resources, then planned inventive and sustainable ways to use them while avoiding reliance on technology.

This week in Science, students explored how different materials, such as metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites are used based on their properties. They compared natural and man-made materials, discussed how alloys and composites improve strength and durability, and learned how scientists design new materials to better suit everyday needs.

Year 7 Maths

This week we started our new unit on fraction, decimal and percentage equivalence.

The topics covered included:

Represent tenths and hundredths as diagrams
Represent tenths and hundredths on number line
Interchange between fractional and decimal number lines
Convert between fractions and decimals – tenths and hundredths
Convert between fractions and decimals – fifths and quarters
Convert between fractions and decimals – eighths and thousandths (H)

Year 8 Maths

This week, students have been learning about representing data. The topics covered included:

Aut.5.1 – Draw and interpret scatter graphs
Aut.5.2 – Understand and describe linear correlation
Aut.5.3 – Draw and use a line of best fit
Aut.5.4 – Identify non-linear relationships
Aut.5.5 – Identify different types of data
Aut.5.6 – Read and interpret ungrouped frequency tables
Aut.5.7 – Read and interpret grouped frequency tables

Students have explored how data can be represented visually to identify patterns and relationships, such as correlation between two variables. They practised plotting and interpreting scatter graphs, using lines of best fit, and recognising the difference between linear and non-linear data.

Please note that there will be a test on Thursday covering all topics from the Representing Data unit.

Year 9 Maths

This week, students continued their work on three-dimensional shapes and focused on understanding and calculating surface area and volume for a variety of solids. The key learning objectives covered were: