Enrichment week: Taking the class out of the classroom

Last week we held the first of our annual Enrichment weeks with students taking part in a range of activities and trips including our first Islands project.

In the coming weeks we will highlight some of the great activities students have taken part in but in this post I wanted to outline and explain what Enrichment weeks are and what students did in the most recent week and what we have planned in future weeks.

We began Enrichment weeks last year to give students some time off their normal academic timetable after their assessment weeks so they have a bit of time to relax and unwind whilst also giving them the opportunity to enhance and enrich their academic understanding through co-curricular activities and trips.

This year we devised a program with two days that would link closely to the students’ academic subjects and in some cases help teachers cover important aspects of the student’s courses.

With this in mind the lower school students went out to Dartmoor National Park to carry out important Biology field work. This involved lots of jumping in rivers to collect samples so that they could be recorded before students headed onto the moors to explore the fauna.

Our business students took part in Dragons Den business challenge and our math’s students got stuck into math’s puzzles and project work. We also had a group of students going out to the Broomhill sculpture park in North Devon. This is a huge arts center with a sculpture garden full of weird and wonderful sculptures, some taller than the building itself, to capture the students imagination and inspire them in their lessons.

One of the highlights, and a first for us, was the islands project which involved the entire school. The premise is based around our four school houses who are tasked with creating an island with a government, economy and society that then coexists with the other islands attempting to trade and negotiate with each other over three days culminating in one of the islands taking the top spot as the most successful society.

We also had a group of students who went to Belgium for a poetry and history trip to the battle fields of the First World War visiting the towns of and Ypres and Menepoort.

The students had a great enrichment week with so much going on. Taking the classroom out of the classroom is an increasingly popular teaching methodology and having a week where students can stretch their understanding of their subjects through hands on learning was great to see.