Welcome to the Highnam Academy Council page

It has been a busy start to the year. The 12 Academy Council members were elected by their class in a secret vote after preparing a speech as to why they should be chosen to represent their class. We have a girl and boy representative from each class, ranging from Year 1 to Year 6. The council has a Chair person and Vice Chair person, elected by the council members; this year James and Abbie lead the proceedings.

What we have been up to

New class names: It was decided that the 7 Academy class names needed an update and the council decided on these: Reception, 1H, 2T, 3/4D, 3/4TH, 5/6R and 5/6T. We are all adjusting to the new name changes!

Designing: As a council, we design all posters to advertise our events, so keep an eye out for what is happening next!

Harvest 2012: Council decided to donate the £250 raised to the Gloucester City Mission which is a charity supporting homeless people in our community. Many thanks for all the kind donations of food produce and money.

New Highnam Village signs: To represent Highnam Academy, our four Year 3/4 council members went to the unveiling of the brand new signposts which now mark the entrances to our village.

Guide Dogs for the Blind: Academy council are collecting milk bottle lids this term to help raise funds for the charity - please see our other web page for more details!

Children in Need: To raise money this year we are holding a cake sale and a non-uniform day. Please bring in your cakes and 20p to buy one when they are on sale at play time. It is 50p for non-uniform day and it would be great if you could wear something yellow!

Suggestion box: Each week we read any suggestions put in to the box by the ICT suite. We are in discussions about which are viable to follow up and hopefully we can implement some of your ideas soon. Please keep thinking about ways in which we can further improve Highnam Academy. If you have a good idea and you want your voice to be heard then talk to your class representatives or put them in the box. We'd love to hear from you!

TOY SALE: We ran a toy sale after school which made us £240! Thank you to everyone for your support and for providing the toys for the sale....we used the money to buy some NEW BOOKS FOR EVERY CLASS, it was exciting to see the boxes full of new reading materials! The Academy council members stuck in new Highnam stickers so that the books could be distributed to their new classes.

K'Nex Club: The suggestion box had several requests for a K'nex club...so after deliberating in council we decided this was an excellent idea and formed a plan to make it work. We needed a room, a willing member of staff to supervise (Thank you Mrs Grey!), some leaders and children to form the club. We had over 40 KS2 children interested and so formed two clubs, one to run in Spring Term 1, the other in Spring Term 2. They were very successful and the children had a new challenge to build each week. Thank you to all of the enthusiastic Year 5/6 children who helped to run the clubs and for helping to put an idea from the suggestion box in to action!

Red Nose Day TALENT SHOW: We organised the eagerly awaited talent show by making sure there was an opportunity for every child in the school to take part if they wanted to. We put special Talent Show sign-up sheets on class doors for the children to put their talents on, then got busy making eye-catching posters to advertise the event. We also spoke in assembly about the reasons why we were raising money and shared posters about the stories from different children that the funds traised would directly help. Seeing the stories really made us want to contribute and our assembly inspired other children to raise money in alternative ways: we donated £1 to wear red, sponsored some children for a sponsored silence, naming a teddy and guessing the number of sweets in the jar. Overall it was a success and we raised lots of awareness and money for the charity!

Opinions: We have had the opportunity to give our opinions about what has been taught at school and about our school collective worship. The Governors take our views seriously and it is great to be able to share our opinions so that we can help make positive changes to our school.