Lady Manners School

On Wednesday of this week our Year 7 Girls Sportshall Athletics team travelled to Derby University to compete against eight other schools in the School Sportshall Athletics County Finals. Over the past few months their Sixth Form manager, Izzy, has been working hard with the team, providing lunch time training sessions in order to prepare for the competition. During some amazing performances, our track athletes achieved 1st or 2nd place in every race. Equally impressively our field athletes took 1st place. The team swept the board and are now County Champions. More impressive still, the margin of victory was 31 points - which is almost unheard of in athletics. Izzy said: "I couldn't be prouder of what the girls have managed to achieve, they have all worked so hard and thoroughly deserved their win. It's been a pleasure to coach such a lovely group of girls!"

Our Equestrian Team is competing again this weekend: at the NSEA County Show Jumping Championships. Eleven riders from Lady Manners School have been awarded the honour of representing Derbyshire. They competed recently against several other local schools, and swept the board by winning all four of the team qualifications that were available at Beaver Hall recently - and all six of the individual qualifications! Good luck to all of our riders this weekend!

Seven Year 13 Chemists have entered the British Chemistry Olympiad. This leading chemistry competition, run by the Royal Society of Chemistry, is an opportunity to stretch and challenge post-16 chemistry students by testing their chemical knowledge problem solving skills. Between them, the group achieved one gold, five silver and one bronze award. This is a fine achievement in what is a tough competition amongst the top chemistry students in the country. Very well done to them all!

The first Parents' Association Car Boot Sale of the year happens this Sunday 22 April from 7.30am (7.00am for sellers) to 1.00pm. The Parents' Association of Lady Manners School would really appreciate any offers of assistance in the run up to the event and during the morning itself (email parentsassociationlms@gmail.com). Alternatively, if you are a dab hand in the kitchen, perhaps you could bake a cake for them to sell to hungry car booters? Please leave any cakes for sale with school reception on Friday. If you are not able to help on this occasion, do come along to buy or to sell...or just to browse and have a piece of cake or a bacon butty!

Last Friday was a landmark day in Lady Manners School's journey towards the Dyslexia Friendly Schools Quality Mark. In recognition that we are one of the first secondary schools to attempt this, we were invited to speak at the 2018 British Dyslexia Association (BDA) International Conference. Headteacher, Mr Meikle, and Assistant SENCO, Mr Askew, took to the stage to share our experiences of staff training, day to day changes and work to become dyslexia friendly. They joined experts from around the world in neuro-science, literacy, numeracy and other topics related to dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties. Lady Manners School was invited by Professor Angela Fawcett, Vice President of the BDA, and Professor Rod Nicolson as part of a symposium about 'Positive Dyslexia at School, University and Work'. Pictured are Mr Meikle and Professor Fawcett, who some parents met at our talk on 'Positive Dyslexia' last October. Back at school, our work continues and we hope to apply for accreditation towards the end of the summer term.