Year 1 and 2
Year 1 and 2 have been working hard to develop ideas for their yard. Our theme day was a success where we practised measuring skills to create different zones on the yard. We really want a physical zone, a gardening zone, a creative zone, a quiet zone and a stage. We brainstormed ideas to raise money and we decided to write to local businesses for support. We used the Internet to Google local businesses and we wrote letters and sent them in envelopes that we had written ourselves. We have been using the new outdoor classroom for ‘expressing’ ourselves and we love to make music, act out with our friends and we also use it as our time for reflection. We made our own sponsor forms for our sponsored silence and we completed a sponsored silence that raised over £600 !!!! We have made a list of things we would like for our yard and we are very excited to buy them and put them out on our yard to make our playtimes fun.
Year 3 and 4
Years 3 and 4 have been really busy this term learning about and preparing their own talent show- YCB’s Got Talent. This week, it was show time! The children set up a talent shop in the hall, selling merchandise that they had made on their theme days earlier this term. Years 5 and 6 were invited in with homemade tickets and were able to purchase a range of merchandise from sensory bottles to keyrings and healthy snacks and drinks to enjoy during the performance. Years 3 and 4 then ran their own talent show and really wowed the audience with their skills. With exclusive performances of ‘Gloria’ and ‘One Night, One Moment’ the children went above and beyond!
Pen-Y-Fan
The Year 10 Prince’s Trust Achieve Cohort successfully climbed Pen Y Fan mountain range to raise money for the YCB Community Christmas Appeal. The pupils were sponsored and £562.50 was raised, this is a fantastic achievement. Well done, all!
Anti-Bullying Week
The theme for this year’s anti-bullying week was “One Kind Word”. Staff and pupils marked the start of the week with “Odd Socks Day,” to celebrate what makes each of us unique. Members of our school’s anti-bullying and junior safeguarding group delivered an assembly to encourage all pupils to create a chain reaction of kindness around the school. They also displayed posters around the school, to illustrate the impact of using just “one kind word”.
Pupils from all year groups created kindness posters in a variety of languages and helped write hundreds of post-it notes containing positive and kind messages, which were displayed in the canteen during break times, for pupils to take and pass on to someone else. It was lovely to see so much positivity and kindness being spread amongst pupils and teachers.
Kindness surveys were sent out to parents and pupils via ClassCharts, to help us find out how kind you feel our school is. Thank you to those of you who took time to complete these. The results have been collated and we are now in the process of analysing them, together with the anti-bullying and safeguarding group, to find out the areas in which we are thriving, and how we can move forward to improve our school even further.
Thank you to all pupils who were involved in making anti-bullying week successful. If you would like to become a member of the anti-bullying and safeguarding group, please see Mrs Pereira-Thomas.
Children in Need
We raised £2000 for Children in Need in November by hosting a non-school uniform day, raffle and guess the staff member dressed as Pudsey.
PSE
We have had some really exciting PSE lessons this month. We were really proud to welcome Scott Davies from EPIC who talked to Year 10 about gambling awareness, mental health and online addiction. We were also extremely proud to host Neath Port Talbot Road Safety Team who worked closely with our Year 11s. Finally, Year 7 were enthused to be taught by our resident Police Officer Dan Garlick about the 'law relating to photographs.' PC Garlick also spoke with year 10s about the law relating to drugs which they found informative and helpful.
Chicago Bulls
Participation levels have been excellent yet again this half term for extra curricular PE activities. There have been over 80 fixtures for all sports, which is hugely impressive. Keep up the good work all.
In additon, pupils from Year 8 attended the Junior NBA draft in Aberystwth last month. The team was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and are excitied to play next year in the south conference. Well done, all!
The Art, design and Technology department have now launched their Instagram page. It is a great platform to celebrate the fantastic work of all of our pupils in Art, Graphics, Product Design, textiles and Food. Please follow us! ycb_artdesigntechnology.
Health Education in Primary Phase
The children had a visit from Jason who works for St John's Ambulance. They learnt how to respond in the event of someone having a cardiac arrest or choking. They have been able to practise these skills with help from our health team using the resuscitation manikins over this past term. Part of the learning was for the children to locate community defibrillators. Congratulations to Elliot in Year 3 for locating his local defib, Well done!
Diabetes
A pupil in Year 11 wishes to talk about someting close to them: Type 1 Diabetes.
What is Type 1 Diabetes? Some people believe the fabricated story that Type 1 Diabetics just can't eat sugar. Whereas it is a much bigger issue than that. Diabetes is an autoimmune reaction that destroys the cells in the pancreas causing your body to stop producing insulin. Type 1 Diabetes can easily be triggered by a virus such as a cold or even coronavirus. Coronavirus has been shown to cause diabetes. 5% of the 47,000 people who had been admitted to hospital before August 2020 because of coronavirus had been diagnosed with diabetes within 7 months. What do you know about diabetes?
You may know about diabetes from a few biology lessons such as the types of diabetes, the role of the pancreas, ways of treating diabetes and about the hormone insulin. In higher tier they also teach about glucagon. These biology lessons were taught in year 11 but before this the only way I knew about diabetes was because of one of my friends who have diabetes. He got diagnosed with diabetes over 4 years ago and it has affected him in multiple different ways. He’s wanted to go into the army since he was a child and has millions of hospital appointments with diabetic nurses, sociologists and dieticians. On top of hospital appointments and not being able to go into the army, he suffers with both hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia episodes, but do you know what these are? More importantly do you know how to spot them?
Hypoglycemia episodes more commonly known as hypos are when your blood sugar levels are too low. Most diabetics normally sweat, look drowsy and normally shake during a hypo. This can be treated by having some type of sugar such as Haribo or glucose tablets. Hyperglycemia episodes, known as hypers, are the opposite. They are when your blood sugar levels go to high. Symptoms of hypers are blurred vision, feeling sick and being thirsty. This can be treated by injecting insulin. Symptoms of both can differ for different people.
There is also a risk in not treating hypos and hypers. Not treating them properly can cause blindness and even loss of use in both arms and legs, it could also cause heart disease and kidney failure. With knowing someone who has lost their eyesight due to bad control with their diabetes, it is a horrendous thing that can never be reversed.
Overall, I believe that diabetes should be taught in schools more as it could potentially save someone's life and is important for both people suffering with diabetes and people without.
Senedd
Primary Phase
Since October we have focused on what our top priorities are for the Primary Phase. As Senedd members we have led meetings with our classes and talked about what changes they would like to see in our school. We discussed what would make them feel happy in school and have fed back to other Senedd member and had a meeting to prioritise these requests from our classes. We are now forming an action plan and once it is finalised we will share it with you. We cannot wait to start working on our priorities in the Spring Term.
Secondary Phase
We have been busy this half term organising a visit to the Senedd in Cardiff Bay. Our Senedd will be visiting The Senedd!! We will be observing a plenary on December the 15th. We are all looking forward to this and we shall let you know how it went next term! Also, Senedd Time has restarted and the topic for debate this month was Is Christmas too Commercialised? What do you think?
Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda from the Ysgol Cwm Brombil Senedd!
Library News
Huge Congratulations to 21 of our pupils who wrote poems for the young writers competition entitled ‘empowered-hear my voice.’ We are so proud of them, and their work will be displayed in school. We are so excited to see these poems featured in the published version of the book in January 2022.