On Wednesday 1 March, 60 students from Carisbrooke College, Medina College and The Island VI Form went to see a production of ‘Freshwater Five’ at the Quay Arts in Newport.

The play told the story of five fishermen from The Isle of Wight who were convicted of drug smuggling in 2011. The five men in question have always pleaded their innocence in the face of contradictory evidence. 

It was an excellent piece of storytelling, highly creative and very well acted. It should provide our students with lots of ideas about how to create and develop their own productions in the future.

In the badminton finals, our players, who had qualified, by finishing in the top two pairs in their age group heats, met the other top pairs from the other pool of Island secondary schools.  Our Year 11 girls pair, Ellie and Sherine, lost their first game, before gaining some revenge in their next game, by beating Carisbrooke, who had beaten them last week.

They went into their final game against the Free School looking to build on that success but narrowly missed out on the win. However, their progress in a week has been excellent and they made Medina proud!

The Year 8/9 girls pair of Kaitlyn and Mylea were also unlucky, winning two games and only losing one, meaning they were tied for first place with Ryde Academy as the Ryde team went into their last game against The Free School. Unfortunately the Ryde team won that game and took first place but our girls, who had played really well, finished a highly credible second.

Our final pair in the tournament was our Year 9 boys pair of Aaron and Fergus. They went unbeaten all evening, playing superbly, winning the event as clear winners! Congratulations to them. They now move onto the Hampshire round, representing the island in February.

The whole team were outstanding throughout and a real reminder of the amazing students we have at Medina!

We are pleased to share the continuing success that our Year 10 mentors have achieved this term promoting and spreading the word for the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) project.

Following their first successful MVP session with Year 7 tutor groups last term, the Year 10 mentors had their second planning session last week. They then joined the Year 7 tutor groups during their PSHE lesson on Monday morning and delivered informative and thought-provoking sessions around the theme of recognising different types of abuse, with a key focus on highlighting the best ways to demonstrate respect to others.

For both the planning session and Year 7 lesson, we welcomed visitors from Paragon who are supporting the development of the MVP programme across IWEF. They are a specialist team, part of The YOU Trust, their mission is to empower change for individuals, families, and our communities. The Year 10 mentors have embraced the opportunity to meet the representatives from Paragon and talk to them about MVP and its values.

As we approach the end of this half term we are excited to be approaching the part of the year when Year 9 students will have the opportunity to take part in training as MVP mentors. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the community across IWEF ensuring an environment that is safe, promotes healthy social norms and a culture which is known to prevent violence. Details of how to get involved will be released in due course.

Well done to all of the Year 10 MVP mentors!

Last Sunday our school was featured on BBC’s Countryfile. During the show, Adam Henson and the Countryfile team spent time with our agriculture students to find out about the GCSE course in Agriculture that we run.

Our students had a fantastic time filming with the team when they visited us back in November. The first day of filming was spent at the school, where the production team took some wonderful drone footage of the school grounds, including our farm garden. Mrs Lloyd, Science Teacher and Course Lead for Agriculture, Dr Clarkson, Head of Science & PE and Matthew Parr-Burman, Executive Headteacher were interviewed by Adam Henson and the students were asked questions about the course and the experiment they were carrying out on the PH balance of soil in the farm garden. The filming continued later on in the day, in the science classroom where students carried out tests on the soil samples they collected.

On the second day of filming our agriculture students visited Briddlesford Farm, who we have been working with for some time as part of our Agriculture GCSE. During this visit to the farm, students had an informative session with the farm vet Hannah Kenway who taught them how to care for cows and calves. The students were then given the opportunity to feed and halter train the calves. It was an amazing experience!

We are very proud of our agriculture students; they did a fantastic job of representing the school. We must also say a big thank you to the staff involved in our Farm Club and GCSE in Agriculture, particularly Mrs Lloyd, who has been the driving force for getting this off the ground!

You can watch the show on iPlayer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/m001hrww

On Tuesday students from Medina College played against our sister school Carisbrooke College, in the Year 10 IOW Secondary Schools Boys Football Final, or as we call it the Federation Derby! Both sets of players were looking forward to playing their match on the lovely 4G pitch at Cowes Enterprise College.

The game itself was very even with Medina scoring first, thanks to the goal machine that is Will B. Carisbrooke fought back and equalised shortly before half time.

The second half saw the teams well matched, with both teams playing well; however Medina scored again, with a decisive goal from Will B, as he found some space in the box to strike into the corner. Carisbrooke began applying pressure but a great save from Logan kept Medina ahead. A breakaway ended in another goal by Will B to complete his hat-trick and seal the win and the cup for Medina!

FT Medina 3 – Carisbrooke 1

It was a great game, well done to all the players involved!

For the first time, our Creative Arts department ran the Shakespeare Schools Film Festival as a federative venture with representation from all three of our sites – Carisbrooke College, Medina College and The Island VI Form. 

With only 8 hours to create, plan and film everything needed, the group based themselves at the Island VI Form drama studio and created an updated social media centred version of the classic “A midsummer night’s dream”. With hidden cameras and Vlogs the students recorded a mix of modern and Shakespeare scenes to blend the story and weave a tale of comedy, drugs and love. The performance was then edited by Mr Martin and sent to Shakespeare Schools Foundation. The production can be viewed on the Shakespeare Schools Foundation website. To watch our production please click here. 

The students recently received outstanding feedback on their submission, you can read the appraisal below. 

A huge congratulations to this very talented team!

Students at Medina enjoyed a fantastic morning at our Strings ‘taster session’ workshop on Monday, with Isabel Norwood (Strings teacher from Wight Music Tuition). During the session students were taught about the Strings family and had the opportunity to play some of the Violins, Violas and Cellos that Ms Norwood had brought along, even putting together several short performances at the end.

If your child would like to sign up for Strings lessons, Ms Norwood is offering group lessons (in pairs) for £80 a term; as we have already begun this term this means there would only be £56 to pay for February-March. There is also the option of paying in monthly instalments to help spread the cost of the lessons. Lessons will take place during school hours.

If you would like to sign up for these lessons please email beth.peckham@iwef.org.uk to register your interest, you will also need to complete an application form on the Wight Music Tuition website https://iwmt.org.uk/apply-online/, indicating which instrument and selecting ’20 minute in-person group lessons’. You do not need to select ‘yes’ for hiring an instrument as Ms Norwood can arrange this for you once lessons have started.

On Thursday 15 December nearly 60 students from across the Federation joined together to stage our first live IWEF Christmas Concert since 2019 at St. John’s Church in Newport.

The concert began with a tinkling rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ performed on the hand bells by members of the Carisbrooke College breaktime Music Hub. This was followed by the humorous ‘I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas’, performed by students from all 3 sites with a special guest appearance from our Brass teacher Mr. Stroud on the tuba – dressed as a hippopotamus!

Evie and Sherine, from Medina College, then took the stage with a mature performance of Fiona Apple’s ‘Paper Bag’, performing again later with the Medina College Band in a ska performance of Duke Ellington’s ‘Caravan’ with other students from the school.

Ensembles from the Carisbrooke College School of Rock group performed an eclectic mix of songs including Green Day’s ‘Brain Stew’, Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ and year 9 student Lucy’s own song ‘My Christmas Wish’. Some of our Carisbrooke College Year 7 students then joined the final School of Rock ensemble to perform the Makaton sign language alongside their rendition of ‘Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree’.

Our federated IWEF choir performed the well loved Christmas carol ‘O Holy Night’ and then ‘You will be found’ from the musical Dear Evan Hansen. While the Carisbrooke College Ukulele Club performed the folk number ‘Santa never brings me a banjo’, joined by local musician JC Grimshaw playing on the banjo.

Our Island VI Form ensemble got the crowd singing along with their lively cover of Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ and our stage band from the recent IWEF production of ‘Wendy and Peter Pan’ performed a popular item from the show, Emeli Sande’s ‘Sparrow’.

The concert ended with all of the evening’s musicians joining together for a massed grand finale performance of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Underneath the Tree’. The concert was very well attended and raised over £220 was raised for our Creative Arts Faculty to put towards new sound equipment for future events.

On Saturday 10 December a group of Carisbrooke College and Medina College students from years 9 to 11 had the opportunity to take part in a mock court trial at Newport Crown Court.

The students were split into different roles, defence, prosecution, witnesses and jury. There were 9 island schools including sixth forms and colleges participating on the day.

Our students gave us the following feedback:

“I think it was a great opportunity that allowed people, who would normally be worried about their future and unsure of post-16 life, to spend a day exploring law as an option. Even though I don’t see myself doing law, It was still very worth it.”

“The day was spent having discussions with lifelong professionals, debating, and having fun with friends. Overall, it looks great on a CV and was lots of fun”.

Our students showed great resilience and teamwork and received some fantastic feedback from the judge. It was an amazing experience and we are really proud of all that took part.