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Outstanding OFSTED Performance
LETTER TO THE PUPILS EXPLAINING THE FINDINGS OF THE INSPECTION 01 September 2009
Dear Pupils
Thank you for helping us to learn about your school. We really enjoyed our visit. It was good to meet so many of you and to see how well you are doing. I am writing this letter to tell you what we found. Your school is outstanding. You all seem to enjoy it. You are safe and extremely well cared for. We were pleased to see how well you are doing with your targets and the excellent progress you make by the time you are ready to leave school. You have many fantastic lessons and there are plenty of really interesting things for you to do both in and out of school. We saw that you enjoyed travelling through time in your time machine and that those of you who have moved to the Aveling Park site are making the most of the opportunities it offers. Congratulations, too, to the successful footballers! Your headteacher leads the school very well and all the staff work hard to help you. Thank you to all your parents and carers who filled in one of our questionnaires. We agree with all of them who said that the school works hard to tell them about how well you are doing, but we have suggested that even more information would be helpful. It is important that everyone is clear about how much progress you are making. I hope that you will all try your best and I wish you good luck for the future. It will be exciting when all the building work is finished! Yours faithfully Anne Duffy Her Majesty's Inspector  
A special event
was held at the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood recently
to acknowledge our achievement in receiving another outstanding
grade from OFSTED. The environment was particularly
fitting and food and wine was accompanied by music and speeches
from our headteacher, Niels Chapman, and Deborah Malcolm our
chair of Governors. The event was enjoyed by all and will
be remembered fondly for years to come.
Expressive
Arts
Time Travel Project
Humanities week was particularly busy with the arrival of OFSTED but
this did not deter us from having a spectacular time. The expressive
arts team made a time travel machine and converted the sports hall
into three stages of London’s history. The Victorian era, the 1960s
and modern times. Pupils gathered in the small hall to meet the
dancers and performers taking part in time-travel. We danced the timewarp
back to recent modern London. Pupils took a trip on the tube and
enjoyed a combination of sensory, musical and dance activities
reflecting London
through the Ages. They looked for parts of the clock which help re-set time. Only the
sound of Big Ben chiming sends them back in time again, travelling
to the 1960s where they danced to the lunar landing and met the
astronauts who landed on the moon. While staging a 1960s sit-in, Big Ben chimed again and we went to London Docklands Victorian
era. We found Big Ben and its magical chime which sent us back to
the future in the Victorian sail boat, originally used to take
immigrants to America. The whole experience was a sensory,
musical, dance and drama piece that pupils found very motivating and
engaging.
Workshops in dance, art and drama took place throughout the week alongside this story making our end of term as busy as ever. 
Arts Express helped pupils design and
build the set of Victorian London - A ship at London Docklands and
Big Ben
 
Other Expressive Arts
Projects
The expressive Arts team continue to provide lots of workshops and events in art, music, dance and drama integrating pupils from across school. The History of jazz project looked at the relationship and influence of African music around the world. We learned traditional African songs, Blues improvisation; heard and joined in with New Orleans, Hip-Hop and BeBop music, outlining the musical and historical development between modern music, jazz and African music and dance. The International Café project was a series of experiences over a term where pupils attended a café with music from around the world. Each week a different country was chosen with music and food from a selection of countries including, France, Britain, South Africa, Ireland and Brazil. The music was performed and pupils tasted the traditional foods provided. One of the targets was to examine how our pupils respond to music as active listeners rather than participating through shared improvisation. Junk orchestra project – Over a term we collected up Junk from around our school and recorded sounds, making them into samples through Audacity and Abelton software purchased for the development of music technology at school. We made a sculpture which had corresponding music, based on the sounds recorded in the workshop.  
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We have applied for the ArtsMArk Gold application in recognition of everyone’s work in the arts and education. The process has just started with the application deadline 17th November 2009 and we hope to hear from the Arts Council by May 2010. Watch this space!!
On 2nd
November Whitefield Schools and Centre welcomed 20 European partners
to our school and Walthamstow. We are beginning a 2 year project
titled ‘Learning by doing Living by Working’. Six European
countries, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania, Portugal and Bulgaria are
involved. We spent the week visiting schools in the area (a
particular thanks is sent to Brookfield House School in Woodford
Green), and planning the project. Our friends joined in with
Friends Week held in the school as a part of our Anti-Bullying
activities and helped with a Barn Dance.
Our friends
attending the Comenius project
Post
- 16
CIS at college This term most of our sixth-form students have started integrating at Waltham Forest and Capel Manor colleges. They go once a week on a Thursday morning. The Waltham Forest College students have begun a painting and decorating course, learning about which colours work well together and which colours are most suitable to paint a bedroom or a living room wall with. The Capel Manor College students have been learning about gardening and horticulture. This is what the students say about their experiences at college so far: “Waltham Forest College is brilliant with a canteen and the common room” – Aaron “Waltham Forest College is great” – Jason “I really enjoy going to college” – Jordan and Daniel “College is a good experience for life” – Shainie “College helps me think about what I want to do as a job” – Conor “I like going to college because it’s something different” – Ismael “I like going to Capel Manor so I can do gardening and be outside” - Adam Emyle plays for England Emyle Rudder has shown enormous success in the world of football. Recently, completing his work experience placement at Leyton Orient, Emyle has played for both Tottenham and LOASS - Leyton Orient Advance Soccer School - with great achievement. Tottenham have a soccer course run in conjunction with Southgate College and he has attended trials over the past term. He was chosen to play for England CP in Lilleshall and he is spending weekends training and playing soccer on the border of England and Wales. We wish him all the best in his chosen field of expertise. Friendship Week—Old friends returningFor the duration of the week, classes hosted special events between one another. This allowed pupils who do not usually integrate with one another to come together. On the last day, we had a special barn dance in the sports hall organised by CIP, arts and crafts organized by SILD, sports activities organsied by CIS and African drumming and Dancing in RGC hall organized by the Expressive Arts coordinator. A performance of our Rap-Song which formal pupils wrote with Pint-Size– a local rapper from London, was well received. Some ex-pupils came to visit Whitefield’s during ‘Friendship Week’. They came from William Morris School and it was great to see how they all have grown and matured. They had tea and toast with Yellow 5 then had fun on the rooftop playground.
Amjid Hussain also returned for Friends week and was presented with his very own Site Services Officer high visibility jacket.  
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