Shine news

Back to school and I trust you all had a good half term and return to the fray refreshed and raring to go.

If you are looking for something extra this term to include in your English or Media Studies classes, we now have lesson plans free to download.

We’re so pleased to have an update from former Shine ‘Most Outstanding Pupil’ Bill Bowkett. He’s just been offered a place on the Journalism MA at City University. We all offer our congratulations to him.

Bill as been kind enough to write a few thoughts on why being a part of Shine has been so important to him – and could be to this year’s entrants too…

The start of a new year is the classic time to look forward and make resolutions on how to improve our lives for the future. With the benefit of hindsight we can learn from mistakes and put initiatives into place that will make our future performance that notch better than before.

This is not the time of year to be badgering you about getting your entries ready for the Shine competition – we’re all on our knees crawling towards the sherry bottle / mince pies / chocs in this last week before Christmas!

We want to make setting up a school newspaper or magazine as easy as possible and believe that once a framework and tools are given to students, they will be inspired to run with it. The school as well as the students stand to benefit from this initiative, as a strong magazine indicates a strong sense of community, and a strong school ethos.

We held our first Shine Roadshow event on 4th November, which was kindly hosted by George Barrett at Ermysted’s Grammar School in Skipton who won Best Newspaper in 2019 for their first publication, created from scratch by pupils using Microsoft Publisher and a lot of creative talent.