“What if just knowing what a word meant could help feed hungry people around the world?"

At FreeRice.com for every word you get correct they will donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. Now is your chance to make a difference and improve your vocabulary at the same time.

Learning new vocabulary has tremendous benefits. It can help you:

• Formulate your ideas better
• Write better papers, emails and letters
• Speak more precisely and persuasively
• Comprehend more of what you read
• Read faster because you comprehend better
• Get better grades in high school, college and university
• Score higher on tests like the SATS and GCSE’s
• Perform better at job interviews and conferences
• Be more effective and successful

After you have contributed on FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words.

Well done Timothy Secretan – winner of the Gt. Yarmouth Borough Council Photographic competition.

The competition held by Great Yarmouth Borough Council and TMS Media challenged local residents to submit photographs that portrayed ‘What the Borough means to me’.  The competition, which closed in mid November, was such a success that the entries were displayed in the Town Hall foyer from Tuesday 11 December until Friday 21 December 2007.

The winning photographs will be used in Council publications and on the cover of a future Borough News.

Timothy submitted an image taken by him on an Oriel visit to the marshes and beach, to provide images for his GCSE project, ‘Norfolk Landscapes‘.

Jonathon Worden, a past Oriel student and one of the Positive Challenges group, was awarded a Highly Commended for his entry in the Over 16’s section.

To read more about the competition and see the submission go to the: Great Yarmouth Borough Council Website

Oriel Specialist Mathematics and Computing College has been awarded the Secondary Quality Mark by the Basic Skills Agency.

Oriel is the first secondary school in Norfolk to achieve this award in recognition for our hard work on developing the key skills of our students.

The Secondary Quality Mark is awarded to schools that demonstrate a commitment to the teaching of literacy and numeracy. It also recognises the hard work of the whole Oriel community in making progress and improving the teaching of literacy and numeracy, in these subjects and in other subjects across the college.

The Secondary Quality Mark identifies that Oriel has a strong focus on ensuring students leave equipped with the key skills needed to function and progress in their future working lives.

To achieve the Secondary Quality Mark Oriel had to demonstrate that it met the criteria in all 10 elements set out by the Basic Skills Agency. The Secondary Quality Mark 10 elements are:

1. A whole school strategy and planning to improve performance in basic skills
2. An analysis of the assessment of pupil performance in basic skills
3. Target setting for the improvement of the school’s performance in basic skills
4. Basic skills improvement planning for pupils underattaining and/or underachieving
5. Regular review of the progress made by pupils underattaining and/or underachieving in basic skills
6. Provision to enable all pupils to gain appropriate national accreditation in basic skills
7. A commitment to improving the skills of staff to teach and extend basic skills
8. The use of a range of teaching and learning approaches, styles and materials to improve basic skills
9. The involvement of parents and carers in developing their child’s basic skills
10. An effective procedure for monitoring planning and assessing improvement in performance in basic skills

This is a celebration of the hard work put into developing key skills by everyone at Oriel – students, staff and governors.

Well done to everyone!