Spring Term Newsletter 2024/2025
Dear Members of the Landmark Community
The Spring holiday season is here. We hope you are looking forward to some joyful and relaxing times with family and friends. Here at Landmark we have enjoyed another busy and successful term. Reflecting on the term it has really showcased our vision of ‘A Caring Community, Nurturing Creativity, Inspiring Global Citizens’. Here is a summary of the learning and opportunities that have taken place.
A Caring Community
We started the term with our January INSET session where amongst other activities we committed to the Autism Education Trust Workplace CPD and worked towards two certifications: the National Mental Health & Wellbeing Accreditation and National Online Safety Certified School. These courses support us in providing a safe and caring environment for our students.
We followed up this valuable staff training by participating in Children's Mental Health Week. Students and staff were involved in a range of activities designed to raise awareness about mental health and well-being while fundraising £500 for two fantastic charities Mind Over Cancer and Fulbourn Action 4 Youth.
We continue to build an understanding of inclusivity in sport by sending groups of students from both primary and secondary to the incredible Power House Games initiative. This is a great opportunity for our students to stay active, and to learn about the benefits of inclusivity.
There has been a real focus on caring for the environment this term and our secondary school form groups have delivered a range of assemblies proposing potential conservation projects that the school can take forward. These assemblies were then voted on to decide on a project to take forward. There were really viable and effective ideas including bird boxes for swifts, litter picking in Fulbourn Fen and creating a school vegetable garden. However, the winning project came from our year 7 group, who want to create a wildflower area to attract bees. The group planned out their project, which includes a website to buy wildflowers to enable the project to become self-sufficient. Watch this space to see how this project grows. We were also very excited to announce the opportunity to achieve a new environmental qualification in year 7 to 9 as we became an Environmental Leaders Programme Trailblazer Centre.
Nurturing Creativity
At Landmark we use trips to nurture creativity thinkers and support students to contextualise their learning. This term we have had a range of trips to support our students’ learning and inquiries. The trips have included several to museums where Robin students have learnt about rocks and fossils at the Sedgwick museum; Kingfishers have inquired into how people lived at Burwell museum; and Toucans have developed an understanding of how communication has changed over time at the Centre for Computing History and Museum of Technology. In addition to exploring museums, Robin students have got their creative juices flowing by visiting a charity shop to upcycle second hand clothes; Eagle class have brought their exploration of carbon to life at the Free Range Chemistry - No added Chemicals lecture; secondary students have budgeted at a supermarket for a fundraiser and explored religion and culture at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre.
This term we have had mathematical successes to celebrate as 20% of our secondary students achieved a Gold, Silver or Bronze Award in UKMT Intermediate Mathematics Challenge, a challenge targeted at year 10 and 11 students. The competition tests mathematical critical and creative thinking skills.
Highlights of Landmark International School World Book Day
To celebrate our creativity we had our fantastic World Book Day in which the community came together and dressed in fairy tale themes. This was followed later in the term by the quite remarkable Informal Music Concert. This concert has become a yearly staple. It has been fantastic to witness the growth in students who want to perform and demonstrate their creative talents in front of an audience.
Inspiring Global Citizens
As an international school, supporting and developing intercultural awareness is important to us. We develop an understanding of the world around us from the remotest places, such as listening to a fantastic talk by Jerome Viard, a wildlife monitor for the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, to developing an understanding of the culture of the most spoken first language in the world during Mandarin lessons. Our students have also been able to use their language skills to support learning by teaching a Spanish lesson at a local primary school.
Finally, we celebrated our International Day, a truly wonderful event that brings together our community like no other. With cultural workshops and performances, the Landmark International Marketplace and the raffle, there is such a range of activities for the students and our families. The event is so well supported and loved by our community, it is the epitome of our vision of a Caring Community, Nurturing Creativity, Inspiring Global Citizens.
Highlight of Landmark International School International Day
Goodbyes
As we come to the end of the term we sadly have to say some goodbyes. The following members of our community have sadly left Landmark this term, Anna (Robin) and Jan (year 10) who have returned to Germany and to Keke (Year 9) who is moving schools. We say farewell to Gemma, our catering manager who has left Landmark after eight years. We would like to thank her for all she has done for the school, she will be missed. We also said goodbye to Jack, our catering assistant who has gone on to do an apprenticeship and to Anjali, one of our Learning Support Assistants who has moved to India. We wish them all the best in their future endeavours.
As always, we are grateful to you for entrusting your children to us and for being such valued contributors to our school community. We wish you a fantastic holiday and very much look forward to welcoming your children back to school on Tuesday, April 22nd.
With very warm regards
Gareth and the Landmark team
