Have a wonderful winter break!

To all students and parents,

I want to wish you all a wonderful winter break. If you are leaving Bahrain, I wish you a safe journey and a great holiday wherever you are in the world.

Thank you for all your support this year. I look forward to a year of progress and achievement in 2017.

Happy New Year to you all!

Take care.

Jamie O'Dowd

This week's Enrichment. W/C 14/12/16 'End of Term Celebration'

As is tradition at the Senior School, the final Enrichment of the Autumn Term was given over for form celebrations this weeks to mark the end of term.

Each form were allowed to choose their own way to celebrate the oncoming winter break: many opted to have a form breakfast and a 'Secret Santa' gift exchange.

Other forms chose to play games and sports, whilst others played music, danced and sang.

It has been a very long term, one that at times the Year 7's have found demanding and hard work, so seeing the Year Group enjoying some fun time together yesterday was a real treat.

Next term we will return to our Digital Citizenship topic.

This week's assembly: 12th December 2016

Our final assembly of the year was a celebration of student achievement.

Nearly 150 certificates were given out in the following categories:

• Effort Commendation = for students achieving 10 '1' effort grades on their interim report
• Outstanding Effort = for students achieving all '1' effort grades in their interim report
• Attainment Commendation = for students achieving 10 'A' grades on their interim report
• Outstanding Effort = for students achieving all 'A' grades on their interim report

In addition, we said goodbye to Tessa Humphries of 7E who is relocating to Australia with her family this winter. Tessa has been at St Chris since 2008 and we are very sad to see her leave. Good luck, Tessa, do keep in touch.

Finally, some thanks from me. To the Year 7 team for the superb job they do on a daily basis. To Mr Doherty and Mr Williams for their support in managing the Year Group and finally, to all students and parents for a wonderful term. I have really appreciated your support this year.

Wherever you are this winter, have a wonderful time with friends and family.

Kind regards,

Mr O'Dowd

This week's Enrichment. W/C 4/12/16 'Scams!'

This week in Enrichment we have been continuing our exploration of Digital Citizenship by looking at the dangerous world of internet/email scams and schemes. Unfortunately, it is not just adults who are targetted by digital criminals. Teenagers often have accounts and applications that are linked to a parent's credit card and are just as likely to be victims of a scam or phishing as an adult.

Students looked at some examples of well-known scams, schemes, and hoaxes before working together to create some tips and advice on how to spot fraudulent and phishing emails.

There is an excellent website called Hoax-Slayer that tracks and records internet/email scams and schemes which you can access here. Also, this very thorough family tip sheet from Common Sense Media gives you some practical ideas on how you can keep your personal information safe which you can access here.

I hope this is useful. Please feel free to comment with any feedback, ideas or suggestions relating to this topic.

Kind regards

Mr O'Dowd

This week's assembly: 5th December 2016

In this week's assembly we were treated to a superb performance of the Greek tragedy 'Medea' by 7D, directed by Mrs Grantham.

This is the first time we have had a performance as part of our assembly and it was wonderful to see our Year 7s in action.

Later that day 7D visited the Junior School to repeat their performance for the Year 3s and 4s.

Well done 7D and Mrs Grantham, thank you for performing for us.

Mr O'Dowd

This week in Enrichment. W/C 27/11/16

This week in Enrichment we commenced our topic on Digital Citizenship.

The focus on this topic is to provide students with the knowledge, tools and strategies to ensure they present a positive image of themselves online and know what to do when things go wrong.

This week we focused on Cyberbullying.

Students discussed the meaning of the term 'Cyberbullying', they interviewed a partner on any experiences they may have had of online bullying and then discussed strategies to handle incidents in which they think they, or someone they know, might be being cyberbullied.

Hopefully, the message was clear: Tell an adult!

As parents, you may also like to know more about cyberbullying, how to spot it and what to do in the event of your child being on the receiving end of inappropriate online messages or comments. There are some fantastic resources and advice pages on the website of the NSPCC which you can access here.

Some of the resources we are using for this topic come from a superb website https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ and there is a section specifically for parents which you can access here.

I hope this may be of some use to you.

Mr O'Dowd