This year there will not be any book tokens for World Book Day, instead you need to
click the button below:
Click here to access your voucher
You can download your token which supermarkets and bookshops will swap for one of the World Book Day books, or allow you £1 off the cost of a book.
The school library will have a number of books to give away on World Book Day, or you can join in with themed quizzes and competitions.
Two of our year 7 students, Ali and Mahmoud took part in the first ever Co-op Spelling Bee competition at Angel Square in Manchester on the 10th February 2023.
The competition was a lot of fun, especially the ‘Wacky Words’ round where the contestants could choose between spelling a dinosaur name or a place name – there were some very tricky spellings in there!
We also have to thank Mrs Crowther for her input in the anagram round – she was a star.
There was a great atmosphere to the event, all the schools were supporting one another, clapping and cheering and sharing snacks.
Competition was fierce and the standards were high and although we weren’t placed our boys did fantastically well, and both boys received a certificate and a badge. We are really proud of their achievements.
On 17th January the Inclusion department took a group of 30 students to The Bradford Alhambra Theatre to see the pantomime ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. All of the students thoroughly enjoyed themselves and were a credit to the school.
On a cold, snowy day in January 11 students accompanied by Mrs Blashill and Mrs Gera visited City Library in Bradford.
We met up with Mrs McKenzie, the librarian from Co-op Academy Priesthorpe and 12 of her book club students.
After playing a fast, fun and furious ‘Getting to Know You’ game outside in the square we then took over an area of City library and had our official launch of the Opus Book Awards. The students from both schools worked well together, swapping ideas, discussing the books and making friends.
As well as reading as many of the 12 selected books as possible before June, our students award marks for the storyline, the characters, and the style of writing and then make comments on the books. The group will also complete a number of challenges linked to the books and the authors.
Challenge 1: Design a trophy: the students have been asked to design the trophy that will be awarded to the author of the winning book after our vote in June. We are hoping to get the trophy made in the schools using the facilities in the Technical Design departments.
Challenge 2: Make a promotional presentation: everyone is going to make a 3 slide presentation to promote one of the books and encourage other students to read the books on our shortlist. We have a wide range of titles, covering many different genres.
We have many plans for the future including author visits and a trip to Co-op Academy Priesthorpe.
All our students were a credit to the school, modelling good behaviour whilst in public spaces, respectful to other library users and everyone made an effort to make friends with a Priesthorpe student.
A number of students have volunteered to be part of the Royal Society Book Awards which involves reading the shortlisted 6 books, all based around science. Our students completed a review sheet and a voting form after completing each book.
As part of the introduction day our Senior Science Technician, John Dilger showed us some ‘whoosh, bang’ experiments. He did a couple of Whoosh Bottle experiments, the first using propan-1-ol & propan-2-ol, so we could observe and blue and yellow flames ‘dancing’ in the bottle.
The second experiment showed how only a small amount of fuel is required to propel various types of plastic bottle across the science lab.
Our favourite experiment was mixing methane with soap bubbles and igniting floating bubbles.
It certainly gave the students a thirst for learning more about science.
Our students then spent a few weeks reading and judging the 6 shortlisted books and on 15th of December we had a morning at City Library in Bradford where each student made a short presentation on their favourite book.
We then voted for the book title that we wanted to put forward as the school vote.Competition was fierce and our students gave impassioned speeches supporting their book.
Eventually a decision was made via a secret ballot and we have put forward ‘If the World Were 100 People’, an extremely interesting book showing world statistics for hair, eye and skin colour, languages spoken, levels of literacy and access to basic power, some information which we found quite startling.
We are now waiting for the winner to be announced in the Spring and are hoping to attend the awards ceremony in the Summer.
A number of Co-op Academy Grange students took part in the Summer Reading Challenge in conjunction with Bradford Libraries.
The challenge was to read at least 6 library books over the Summer holiday.
Here’s some of our students who met the challenge, and who each received a certificate, a medal and a book just in time for the Christmas holiday.
Well done to all the students who entered the challenge.
In November a number of the First Story students took part in the Chapel FM Literature on Air programme.
Chapel FM is a radio station and Community Centre based in Seacroft, Leeds, they produce a literature festival every year where a wide range of writers, spoken artists, poets and authors are invited to take part and read their work on air.
Our First Story Ambassadors read from their published work in our recent anthology, ‘Down To Earth, Lost in the Stars’ which was produced last year with the YA author Dan Ingram Brown.
The First Story students who have joined the workshops this year read out recent work which has been written with our new writer in residence, Dr Sairish Hussain, a published author and lecturer at Huddersfield University. Their work will appear in our forthcoming anthology – we have no decision on the title at present.
We were accompanied by Claire Sharples from First Story who spoke about the aims and ambitions of First Story.
Peter Spafford from Chapel FM interviewed the students and they spoke about their love of creative writing and the thought processes behind their work. It was really interesting to see how a radio show is made.
Every year on September 12th, we celebrate Roald Dahl’s birthday with our new year 7s.
Not only is it a fun day with lots of activities in the library, but it’s also a great way to welcome our year 7 students to Grange.
The day started in tutor time when our year 7 Grangers looked beneath their chair to see who was the lucky recipient of the Golden Ticket.
This year’s winner was Samuel! They won a large bar of chocolate and a selection of Roald Dahl novels.
In July we launched our newest anthology, Down to Earth, Lost in the Stars.
This has been written with the support from our Writer in Residence – Daniel Ingram Brown. We were inspired by the Greek poem The Odyssey and updated it to set it in the future, we were traveling through space and visiting planets as opposed to a boat discovering islands.
The story unfolds in an almost linear style, reflecting themes of the Odyssey.
At our launch party students read out their work to an audience of proud parents and families, school staff and representatives from First Story. Students were presented with a certificate and 2 copies each of the anthology. We also took the time to celebrate the fantastic year we have had, and the many competition wins we have had.
Two of our students dressed as alien characters from the book, and Ms. Owen dressed as The Controller, a mysterious ‘baddie’ who appears in the story.
Sadly, this is our last year working with Dan, who has been an amazing member of the team, we presented him with gifts and card to express our thanks for all his support.
On the 13th of September, our Year 7 students celebrated Roald Dahl Day.
One lucky winner found a Golden Ticket hidden in their Tutor room and was the lucky recipient of a Roald Dahl book of their choice and a rather large bar of chocolate.
During break and lunch times students had the chance to enter many other competitions such as word search, design a chocolate bar wrapper and name a Willy Wonka product.
It was difficult to choose the winners as everyone worked hard and submitted some amazing work.
Aarzoo Khan achieved outstanding results: five grade 9s, three 8s and a 7 and is now going to Heckmondwike Grammar 6th Form to study Biology, Chemistry and Maths A-Levels, and to do an EPQ.
In the future, she would like to study Medicine, ideally at Oxford and in support of that, she is currently doing work experience at Bradford Royal Infirmary which was organised through school.
Aarzoo said what really helped her, was amazing and passionate teachers who she could go to any time for help as well as lots of encouragement from her parents. She said that Hegarty Maths helped improve Maths a lot from when she was in year 9. She found revising with friends and helping each other out helped too. Her advice to other students is:
“Start revision early so you know what works for you. Once I discovered flashcards worked for me, that helped a lot. Before that I used to spend a lot of time trying to revise, but not feeling like it was working.”
Miss Ali (assistant year leader) described Arzoo as:
“an amazing student who constantly pushes herself to be the best that she can be and never settles for less than that!”
Rain Huang achieved a very strong set of GCSEs: 5 grade 8s three 7s and a 6 – smashing her target grades by over 2 and a half grades on average! Rain is now going to Dixon’s Sixth Form to study Biology, Chemistry and Maths A-Level.
After A-Levels, Rain plans to study Medicine, hopefully at the University of Edinburgh.
Rain said that what helped her towards her success, was making good use of all the resources that school provided. She said she worked really hard on the past papers she was given by teachers, and used Hegarty Maths and online flashcards using Quizlet to keep revising ‘little and often’ for all her subjects. She added that all her teachers were always willing to offer extra help whenever she asked for it which helped, and that she had a good group of friends who helped each other out, depending on who was best at certain subjects or topics.
Miss Ali (Assistant Year Leader) said about Rain:
“She is such a lovely student. She has worked really hard working throughout all her time at Grange and has always gone out of her way to help her friends be successful too.”
