There were two performances of 'Jack and The Beanstalk' on Wednesday 10th & Thursday 11th February. Congratulations to all pupils and staff who took part, both on stage and behind the scenes.

Picture Gallery

The Under 15s Volleyball teams have both been placed runners up in their inter-school competitions.

The boys Hyndburn & Ribble Valley Cup competition at Norden High School, went to sudden death in the final against St. Augustine's. Both teams had 18 points at the end of normal time, but their opponents had the next basket to take the competition.

The girls team played in the inter-school league and were unbeaten in all the games up to the final. They were runners-up to Mount Carmel.

Congratulations to both teams.

9 X1 pupils have been busy choosing their favourite books from the 85 nominated books for 'Lancashire Children's Book of the Year'. After reading the books, writing reviews and discussing the books in English lessons there was a final vote to arrive at their 'Top Ten'. Each of the twelve participating schools compile their 'Top Ten' books and from this an overall shortlist is chosen.
On Wednesday 3rd February four nominated pupils:

Nicole Brand
June Jolly
Sarish Khan
Rukeeya Mahmood

travelled to meet our partner school - Bishop Rawstorne Language College at Croston. Amazingly, there were three books that both schools placed in both 'Top Ten' lists - might one of these be the overall winner?
Two pupils will go through to the next two meetings at County Hall Preston, the first of which is on Friday 5th March when we hear which books are on the 'Top Ten' shortlist. The nominated pupils then have to read all ten books and take part in the final debate to decide which author will win 'Lancashire Children's Book of the Year'

The second screening for The Hollins Film Club will be on Tuesday 9th February 2010 at 3.10pm in the LRC.
The chosen film is 'Son of Rambow' - the name of the home movie made by two little boys with a big video camera and even bigger ambitions. Set in a long English summer in the early 80's, SON OF RAMBOW is a comedy about friendship, faith and the tough business of growing up.

Tickets are available from Farzana, Ryan or Beth in the LRC breaks & lunchtimes.

The Hollins Film Club are showing their first film on Monday 8th February 2010 at 3.10pm in the LRC.
The Film Club Committee have chosen the 2007 version of the science fiction/horror movie
'I Am Legend', which is set in New York in 2012 with Will Smith playing virologist Robert Neville who is apparently the sole survivor of a devastating virus, that has killed 90% of humanity and reduced the remaining population to vampires.

Tickets are available from Farzana, Ryan or Beth in the LRC breaks & lunchtimes.

21 pupils and staff travelled to Montgenevre France again for the annual ski trip. The party left Accrington on Saturday 23rd January and returned on Saturday 30th January.
There was plenty of skiing during the day with time left over for ice skating, sledging, skidoo-ing and a disco/karaoke.

Picture Gallery

The latest exciting event from Extended Services begins on Thursday 21st January 2010
A group of pupils will be attending a series of nine workshops when they will learn about:

Broadcasting & Communication
Interviewing & writing
Team working skills
Producing Jingles
Vox Popping
Radio editing
Two of the workshops will be held at the Preston studios of Radio Preston fm.

The Christmas Disco on Thursday 17th December was a popular end to the term with DJ Dioxide - ex pupil (Stephen Hibbert) . This event together with a non uniform day on the last day of term raised a commendable £600 for the NSPCC, our chosen charity.

The History & Citizenship departments took 40 pupils to London again this year to experience some of the historical sites of our capital city. Accomodation was at one of London's Youth Hostels and visits included:

The London Eye
London Dungeons
Houses of Parliament
Imperial War Museum

Year 7 pupils were off timetable on Wednesday 9th December taking part in various workshops which asked pupils to think about ‘The Future’ from the different curriculum perspectives.

The thought for the week and the word of the week both related to 'The Future' theme and in assemblies pupils were asked to think about what they need to do now in order to reach their future goals. This may be to be resilient and gain outstanding GCSE results/marks or it could well relate to a need for global/environmental change for a brighter future.

In the workshops pupils looked at:

• Saving energy in Technology and made their own environmentally friendly LED light christmas trees.
• The need for renewable energy in Science and Citizenship.
• Creating montages about their future aspirations in Art and generated message T-Shirts in Geography.
• The impact of The 2012 Olympic Games in PE.
• 'Media in the Future' in English.
• Creating their own future Language in Languages.

The day was an excellent learning journey for both staff and pupils.

The Cohesion through Creativity community arts project came to a spectacular end with a night of celebration and achievement. The project’s unveiling ceremony took place at Quattro’s Italian restaurant, Blackburn Rd, Accrington on Thursday evening 3rd December 2009.
Staff, participating pupils and community members attended the ceremony, which was officially unveiled by ‘The Apprentice’ finalist - Alex Wotherspoon.

Pupils have worked hard over the last few weeks and their enthusiasm clearly paid off with the completion of 6 exceptional storyboards based on the themes of Aspirations, Friendship, Transition, Family, Community and Our World.
The boards are accompanied by sound files which contain the thoughts of pupils and staff.

The completed storyboards will now go on an exhibition tour of Hyndburn, in local libraries, the Global Conference Centre and the Town Hall.

The Hollins pupils will soon have the opportunity to grow their own vegetables down on our own school allotment thanks to the efforts of the Eco-School Council and the Citizenship department.
As you may be aware, we have had to put the plans for the school garden on hold until we know more about plans to redevelop our school buildings through the Building Schools for the Future programme.
We have managed to secure an allotment on Ley Street and hope to be able to transfer all the offers of help we received for our garden to this site.

Plans are being finalised and it is hoped that pupils will soon be able to start work with the help of local environmental group PROSPECTS (which is a community owned charity, working for lasting environmental change in Hyndburn) and other members of the community.

One of the first jobs will be to build some raised beds for growing produce. In time it is hoped that the produce grown may supply the school kitchens or surplus may be sold. There are also plans to involve the families in getting green fingered, by means of our extended schools programme

If parents, carers or friends have any relevant tools, equipment or waterproof clothing that they would be willing to donate to school for this project, they would be gratefully received. Also the experience and volunteer time of any parents or carers would be great.
Please contact Mrs Murry ( Head of RE and Citizenship) in school.

The excitement has been building, but the books have finally arrived!
All Year 7 pupils have received a free book through the 'Booked Up' programme. Booked Up is a national programme run by Booktrust and supported by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Pupils have chosen their book from a list of 13 fabulous books, a variety of fiction, poetry, cartoons, humour etc.
The full list is also available to borrow from the LRC.

All year 10 were involved in an Enterprise Day Challenge on Thursday 22nd October, provided by Lancashire Education Business Partnership.
Four employer ambassadors worked with the pupils throughout the day and were judges of the pupil presentations.
Pupils were put into teams and had to develop a an Eco-Friendly Enterprise Challenge t based around the theme of the current environmental situation. Within the teams the pupils had to assign roles in order to complete the various tasks: Managing Director, marketing, IT, etc Pupils were involved in:

Problem Solving Skills
Creativity
Team working skills
Business skills,

and had to include their thoughts about the Environment and how school could help the environment.
They had to produce a business plan and group presentation which explained their product / event and 'sold' their ideas to the judges. The presentations were excellent!

The winning team was given prizes and certificates and there were prizes for:

Best Managing Director - Laura Walker
Most Creative Pupil - Alex Pearson
Most Enterprising Pupil - Alan Holliday
Most Hard-Working Pupil - Liam Richmond.

An excellent day all round!

On Thursday 22nd October approx. 18 Year 9 pupils met author Joseph Delaney at Accrington library.
The pupils have been reading Joseph's Wardstone Chronicles series in their English lessons and were finally able to quiz him about his writing and inspiration for the series.
Joseph's tip for budding authors is "Never give up..." as most authors are rejected many times before their works are accepted by a publisher.
At the end of the session, pupils were able to buy signed books including Joseph's latest book 'The Spook's Tales - Witches'.

This year's School Council has been elected with one representative from each form in every year group. The full Council has 32 members which meets 2-3 times a term. There is also a committee which meets every Friday morning in the LRC.
Minutes and dates of meetings are posted on the 'School Council Noticeboard' outside the LRC and also on this website (see 'Pupils' and 'School Council' )

Committee members are:

Abby Cunningham (7KMU)
Luis Stevenson (8LKE)
Paige Yates (9HST)
Vicky Austin (10NTA)
Paige McIlroy (11NJO)

More info on School Council

At the Hollins we are in the process of developing our extended services provision, which will include a wide range of activities and services aimed at supporting and motivating young people, their families and the wider community.
Waqar Ahmed, Extended Schools Coordinator, has been in post since September working with Hollins pupils and our primary feeder schools to improve the variety of activities and services.

Activities this term have included:

Wheels within Wheels
Cohesion through Creativity
Nail Art

Coming Soon:

Kickboxing
Radio Production Training

For more details see Waqar Ahmed in school.

E-on are a large energy supplier across the UK and therefore employ lots of people. They struggle to recruit good quality Electrical and Mechanical engineers, so to raise the profile of Engineering and give the opportunity for young people to experience some of the kinds of jobs that are available, they put together this road show which they want to present to as many secondary schools as the can in the UK.

They were also trying to show how all STEM subjects are closely linked particularly science and engineering.

KS4 REWARDS draw from Summer term (2008-9)

Winner (£100 of vouchers) = GABI O'NEILL (Draw winner)
Winner (£25 of vouchers) = LEE CALDCOTT (gained the most signatures)

The ks3 rewards for last year are as follows

Year 7

1st Samantha Pollard 182 merits
2nd Elijah MaCbean 170 merits
3rd Mia Coyne 149 Merits
4th Molly Ormerod 148 Merits

Year 8

1st Paige Yates 118 Merits
2nd Jason Spencer 112 Merits
3rd Sonia Iqbal 105 Merits
4th Saarish Khan 103 Merits

Year 9

1st Farzana Ashraf 105 Merits
2nd Sabah Nawaz 84 Merits
3rd Connor Mitchell 77 Merits
4th Ceejay Kok 75 Merits

These are awarded once every year to the top 4 in each year group. Everyone else is awarded tickets for merits, attendance and punctuality. The better they perform over the year decides how many tickets they are in receipt of towards the final draw. All winners in the draw receive a prize in addition to the rewards handed out over the course of the year for merits gained via staff for a variety of reasons.

On Wednesday 23 September, Mr. Parker took 12 budding linguists from Year 11 to University of Central Lancashire to see the university and its facilities, and to take part in some taster sessions in new languages. Everyone learnt some German and Japanese and the day was a great success. There was also the opportunity to do some international food tasting and sample a variety of different foods, and we can look forward to Mr. Parker trying out his cooking skills to recreate some of the recipes!

On Friday 4th September Year 10 GCSE PE pupils and staff travelled to Tower Wood in the Lake District for a weekend of water sports to gain experience of new skills for their studies.
The group enjoyed kayaking on Lake Windermere and orienteering through the surrounding countryside.