Year 8 Staff:

Welcome to Year 8

The final year of your child's journey through Aston Fields Middle School. It is a pleasure to be a part of this and to see them gain independence and take on more of the responsibilities of young adulthood. We hope this webpage helps you to see that we appreciate what fine ambassadors they are, as well as provide you with information about the wealth of opportunities they have at our school.

Year 8 by Ms Philip and the Year 8 pupils

In Year 8, we have many opportunities, which include: trips, roles of responsibility, watching Eisteddfod at South Bromsgrove High School, as well as receiving regular updates on Pudding the dog - a guide dog we sponsor, who is currently being trained to support someone identified by ‘Guide Dogs for the Blind’.

In all opportunities and events, we focus on the concept of Character. We are proud to have recently been awarded the Quality Mark for Character Education and all aspects of our learning help us to reflect upon the virtues required to be the ‘very best version of ourselves‘. Whether that be looking at inventions that changed the world, and the character attributes of the people who designed these, or how culture and history have shaped and changed roles within society and the impact this has upon contemporary morality. We love to learn from one another and are continually developing our own character as well as opportunities to celebrate ‘good character’ in others.

We have Character Celebration assemblies where we can win awards for demonstrating positive virtues and we like to praise our peers when their name appears upon the ‘reward wheel’- as they have received a Character Commendation from their peers or staff.

We celebrate and support personal development and have lots of opportunities to be ambassadors for our school through a variety of roles of responsibility.

The roles in Year 8 are varied. You could be a peer leader, a wellbeing mentor, literacy mentor, maths buddy, buddy reader, art monitor, science monitor, music monitor, plus many more.

A Year 8 pupil wrote:

‘ I have been selected as a Sports Captain, along with seven other peer leaders - two people from each house. Each house is in charge of a day in the gym. This is a big responsibility as we have to make sure jobs are done and make sure everything is running smoothly. We have lots of opportunities to help out with things to further our skills set. We work hard to keep the gym maintained and tidy.’

Some of our Year 8 pupils have written about some of the roles and responsibilities that they do.

Peer Leaders

The peer leaders have been doing lots since being chosen for their roles. They have been given lots of responsibilities to complete each week, such as prefect, cleaning duties and play leader. Along with these responsibilities, we get many opportunities to go out of school to help and participate in lots of sporting events.

We have a different variety of sports events outside of school like: sportshall athletics, cross country (in the winter) and tournaments.

Sportshall athletics is an event where you get the opportunity to compete against other schools in running, obstacle, and relay races also including field events like shot put, long jump, triple jump, vertical jump and speed bounce.

You get to prepare for this event by practising in the gym. The event takes place at South Bromsgrove High School in February. If you win, you will get the opportunity to travel to the Worcestershire sportshall athletics district. At our school we have qualified for gold every year.

Wellbeing Mentors

The Wellbeing Mentors assist the pupils in KS2 to settle in and we help them with any worries in school. Last term, we were all given tasks to complete such as setting up the notice boards, helping at lunchtime clubs, carrying out wellbeing surveys and delivering assemblies.

Magistrates Competition

The Magistrates competition is an event that Year 8s get the opportunity to take part in. In October, everyone got the chance to apply to be part of the magistrate team. This is a team of around fifteen pupils and we take on a ‘mock trial’. Everyone will have different roles such as lawyers, legal advisor, magistrates (the judge) and even court artist. Throughout the course of these meetings, we came up with questions, write speeches and by the end, we were fully prepared to go through a full on court case. We then go and compete against other schools.

Maths Buddies

Being a Maths Buddy is another good opportunity to help people who may need support with their learning. This can help with their confidence and expand knowledge and skills. There are a lot of younger people who improve from just a little extra time studying this subject with their ‘buddy’.

This is just a small insight into life in Year 8. We haven’t even touched on our amazing individual lessons, teachers and events. Although, 8JP would not be impressed if we didn’t report their incredible team effort on World Book Day- to design a fantastic door design based on Cinderella or our incredible day to celebrate International Women’s Day and the World of Work- visiting the Worcestershire Skills Show and hearing from some incredibly successful women from around the country.

We are very proud of our school and each other: We are Year 8.