Wyvern makes it through to finals of Shine Awards 2013

In the late hours of yesterday, the 30 schools who had made it through to the finals of the 2013 School Media Awards were announced and the Wyvern was one of them.

This is The Wyvern's second year they have made it through to the finals of the Shine Awards. Last year The Wyvern came runners up for best editorial content and the Editor-in-chief, Liam, won the award for most outstanding pupil.

This year, the Wyvern is up for two awards again. One for best Community Initiative because of our relations with the community and another nomination for best Online for the amazing Wyvern website where we upload the Wyvern TV.

The award ceremony is in Stationers Hall in London on June 24th 2013 and the Wyvern hopes to walk away with a prize.

Editor-in-chief and producer of the Wyvern TV, Liam, says “It is excellent that we’ve made it to the finals of the Shine Awards for the second year running. Thank you to everyone who has contributed over the last year and who made the Wyvern as good as it is today!”

Wyvern TV #11

The Wyvern this Summer

What to expect from The DSMS Wyvern this summer...

Shine Awards 2013 Finalists

In the early hours of Wednesday 24th April the finalists for the 2013 Shine Media awards were announced. The judges including Guy Black from the Telegraph Media Group and Nicholas Brett from the BBC narrowed it down from over 200 schools to just 40. And luckily 'The Wyvern' was one of the school shortlisted!

Breaking News: The Wyvern has reached then finals of the Shine awards 2013: shine-schoolawards.org/?p=1188@calvinkipling @dsmsuk @haylockpeter
— DSMS Wyvern (@DSMS_Wyvern) April 24, 2013

Updated
We found out earlier this week that the Wyvern has been nominated for best online and best community initiative. The best online is for this amazing website and the official page you can find here: DSMS. Also, we were nominated for the best community initiative for our connections and relations with the rest of the school, the rest of Branksome and the rest of Darlington.

The Wyvern has been nominated for the best community initiative and best online at the 2013 Shine Awards.
— DSMS Wyvern (@DSMS_Wyvern) May 3, 2013

DSMS as an Acadamey: One Year On

This time last year as nearly everyone will know is that they were some radical changes to the school.

The main one which took place was that the school became an academy. With this came new advantages and connections for the school. The type of advantages I am talking about is that the school is now free from the government to make more decisions concerning both us and the school. Also due to becoming an academy we became a part of Longfield Trust. Longfield trust has developed from the school which at the same time as us became an academy. This academy was name Longfield sports Academy. Since we were made into an academy our results have improved and where once we were in special measures we have now achieve beating even Carmel to the top spot on the Value added League for schools in Darlington and into the top one hundred in the country. This is an improvement for nearly everyone in their eyes which is well deserved thanks to both the hard work of the staff and pupils of DSMS.

By Katie Appleyard

Enrichment Week 2013

Update 1 - 12/3/2013
Yesterday it was the beginning of Enrichment week 2013 and a number of trips departed. The trip to the Hancock museum at Newcastle left at nine thirty and a class of pupils went for a tour around the museum where they learnt about animals that camouflage. There was even time for a walk around Newcastle before the day was over.
There was also a delicious trip to the Cadburys factory in Liverpool where pupils went to see how the famous Dairy Milk is made.
A 3 day trip to London also departed early this morning and so did adventure trip to Kingswood in Yorkshire.

Update 2- 13/3/2013
Yesturday the LSB (Learning Support Base) finally went to Namco Funscape in the Metro Centre. This trip was open to all years but mostly years 7-9 went on the trip. They left at 9.00am and came back at 3.10pm. During their visit they had 2 games of bowling and a buffet. Folowing that they had a game on the bumper cars and then on the amusements. Finally they went shopping with those with remaining cash and then they came back to Darlington. This evening the london trip people arrived back in Darlington
By Adam Plumb

Update 3
The Kingswood Trip are still in Yorkshire doing fun activities and are due to come back on Friday the 15th of March.
By Adam Plumb

Photos from Enrichment Week 2013 here: https://plus.google.com/photos/104890124515565752627/albums/5855524995857598897

BBC School Report Practice Day

On Friday 15^th February 2013 it was a practice day for BBC School report.

If you don’t already know, BBC School report is a day where schools around the UK produce a school news show for the BBC and publish it on their school website.

Instead of filming the standard Wyvern TV format we decided to do a new style where we all sat around a table and discussed topics in the news.

We started off the day with a meeting where we decided who was doing what jobs and who was reporting on what and then at 10:30am we started filming. This continued for the next 2 hours. Unfortunately we didn’t realise that the microphone James was wearing was turned all the way up. This meant that even when we reduced the volume of his voice in post-production it was still extremely muffled and almost impossible to understand.

Nevertheless we kept James and his lines in the show but they sound disappointing due to the technical difficulties.

Since we had a strict timescale to finish the episode everything wasn’t perfect meaning that we hadn’t checked through it all which unfortunately meant that the transitions are not smooth and there are random bits where nobody is sure what is going on.

Despite all of these problems the format and set of the show were outstanding, everyone knew in detail what they were reporting on and almost everybody was extremely comfortable on screen.

In conclusion, all the Wyvern team learnt a lot from this practice news day and our filming skills will be perfected by the actual school report day in March.

Wyvern TV #9

Wyvern TV #8 Outtakes

Chris Cook Interview

Chris Cook, an athlete who competed for us in the 2008 Olympics, came into school in 2012 to hold a private fitness lesson with selected pupils and open the brand new swimming pool. He is now an ambassador for a Sky Sports campaign set up to change sports throughout areas for students. I interviewed him when he came into school.

Q. So Chris, what inspired you to become a swimmer?
A: When I was younger, I watched the 1988 Olympics and after that, parents, friends and teachers were a big part of it.

Q. Have you always wanted to be a swimmer, or did you have another career in mind?
A. When I was younger I had family members who were bus drivers, and I thought that was really cool at the time, so I wanted to do that first, but then watching the Olympics, I was inspired by the athletes and I wanted to be like them.

Q. Do you have a favorite stroke, and if so, what is it and why?
A. My favorite stroke is the breast stroke, because I had a fun time swimming it, and it was also the only one I could do.

By Rebecca Parkinson

The Wyvern in 2013

Wyvern TV #8

Christmas

Now as you will all know we have just exactly seven days until we break up for the holidays. But until then we have a few things left here at DSMS to look foreward to. One of them is Christmas dinner next Tuesday lunchtime. We have a menu for it which will make everyones mouth water however we will be releasing it onto the blg later on with reviews form both students and teachers on there. Also we will be releasing the next episiode of the Wyvern which will be full of 2012 cheer and liam's bad christmas jokes.  Now we hope that you have enjoyed the last year with the Wyvern and we hope that you will continue following us over the christmas as we have some great things to come. If not we hope to blog to you when we come back in January.

We Wish you a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year! 

DSMS Prize Giving Evening

I recently attended the DSMS awards giving evening, a night when a number of awards were given out to past and present students. Martin Grey was the award-giver and also the guest speaker. Students of all year groups won awards and GCSE students who were also present, received their certificates. The event was well attended with many parents and governors as well as the staff and pupils and the Mayor and his wife. Refreshments were also served by the kitchen staff. Overall, it was an entertaining and enjoyable evening.

By Poppy Hutchinson

Matthew Currey's Review and View on 'Full of Life'

The Darlington “Full of Life Day” in my opinion was a great idea. For people who don’t know what this is it an annual event aimed at elderly people on the fourth of October. Although not all of the things there were a great success it still helped a lot of people fill in their day. There were things like and NHS stalls to check people’s blood pressure and things like that.

 When we first got to the hall our first task was to set up tables and chairs. When I asked Sam Wears what he thought of this he replied “No well, well, well it’s not bad”. After that we were set about the task of setting up a projector, which is considerably hard to do when you don’t have all of the cables. In the end we decided to ask a man with a computer to set up the projector as at the time me, Sam and Bradley didn’t know we were short of some leads. The problem was nobody dared ask him. After around ten minutes of rock, paper, scissors and bagsy not me it was decided that Sam should ask. After half an hour of setting up a projector we were informed that it was technically impossible to do.

After that me and Sam sat down together so I could repeatedly beat him at dominoes. Sometime into the fourth game the mayor arrived (or just somebody with a massive gold necklace). When I went to speak to him I was side-tracked by a member of the council. In the end I ended up talking to an elderly lady called Jean. She was very appreciative of the service provided; the people from the NHS informed her that she had high blood pressure and helped her with the treatment.

I then spoke to a man called Harry Longmoor, an old Branksome caretaker. He was a member of GOLD, (Growing Old Living in Darlington) although he was mainly there to meet a friend. After talking to him for some time I realised none of what I was writing down was of any great importance, so I decided to go back and talk to Sam and Bradley. After a quick chat we realised that all we had done was set up tables and play dominoes, so out of boredom we decided to try something new.

So Sam and I tried just Dance 2. We got really good at it, but sometime around the third game we realised that half the room was looking at me and Sam dancing to M.C Hammer’s’ Can’t Touch This’. In humiliation we sat down and made a really big domino run.

After that it was time to go back to school. The Darlington “Full of Life Day” was ok, but I don’t think it lived up to the expectation of the council or any of the people setting up. Many of the stalls were unused and not many people that I spoke to visited the market. I also don’t see the point of the school going, but I still had a good time.