For one week during the summer holidays, while the majority of students and staff were enjoying their summer break, some of our new Year 7s came into school for our Flying Start Summer School. This ran from the 13th-17th August and was an opportunity for pupils to get more familiar with the school, make new friends and learn some key skills for the years ahead.
Each day students took part in special workshops in several subjects including Drama, English, Maths, PE and Science. Activities included testing the amount of force required to make a party popper ‘pop’, planning and producing a piece of descriptive writing, learning key Maths skills such as significant figures and rounding and putting these into practice with games such as a relay and bingo, playing a number of ball games including football and bench ball and working on a Beauty and the Beast performance.
These morning workshops were followed by large games and competitions in the afternoon. In Science, we had a rocket build off where students were challenged to create a rocket using only one piece of A4, cellotape and scissors; in Maths students learnt about a number of different codes including Morse code, Pig Pen Cipher and Caesar Ciphers and also completed a QR-code treasure hunt around school. In Drama they were tasked with solving a Murder Mystery and each had to play a different character and finally in Sports pupils took part in a Catch-Ball and Bench-Ball tournament.
Students and staff had a fantastic week and were able to celebrate this with their parents and families at a special presentation on Friday afternoon in the Dance Studio. Students showed off what they had learnt in drama and treated us to a brilliant performance of Beauty and the Beast (in which everyone had a part to play) and were then presented with certificates to congratulate them for their hard work all week.
Students wrote postcards at the end of the week about their experience. Here is what some of them had to say:
‘My favourite part about it was the treasure hunt. It was so fun!’
‘Overall summer school was a blast and Science was fun too.’
‘My favourite activity was Drama because we got to act Beauty and the Beast.’
‘I loved summer school and was very upset having to leave it. The Beauty and the Beast play was very exciting.’
‘My favourite part of summer school was the rocket making.’
‘I loved meeting the teachers.’
‘I have learnt that it is fine to make a mistake in Maths.’
‘My favourite thing about summer school is PE, it was super fun.’
A big thank you to Miss Ling for organising such a great week and to the teachers involved in delivering the sessions (Mr Russell in Science, Miss Lyons in English, Miss Breeze in Drama, Mr Llewellyn in PE and Miss Theobald in Maths).
