Double Club

Sarah Mason came back to Thomas Becket this week to continue working with the year 8 Double Club group. They worked on their 3D footballs, cubs and tessellated patterns, making full use of the origami skills they had learnt the previous week to fold the shapes to make them.

Sarah introduced the topic of fractions using cake. (A popular choice!) The children’s knowledge was good in this area and they were able to apply what they learn in normal maths lessons to Sarah’s activities.  She talked them through different fractions and how to work out the answers to equivalent fractions whilst cutting the cakes. Having a visual representation is always better as the students can see exactly what’s happening. They used their mathematical language to full effect while this was going on.

In pairs, the group put a puzzle together (made of many triangles shaped to be a hexagon when put together)  by solving fractions questions. Some they had to find the answers written in a different way, others they had to ‘cancel down’ to find simpler ones. The children used their mental maths skills and realised why knowing times tables by heart and thinking on the spot are so crucial in doing maths.

The whole group worked really hard and concentrated the whole lesson. These kind of practical challenges obviously appeal to them and when asked, they commented that they enjoyed this style of learning because it was hands on, they didn’t mind if it was sports themed or not.  A huge thank you to Sarah for her lessons and teaching style, they made a big impact and the children really enjoyed them, as well as learning a lot. That maths can be fun and not the ‘difficult’ subject they thought it was.

Dirk visited from Leicester City PfS centre to see what the studnets were studying. He is doing a masters where he is looking at practical maths. He interviewed and recorded the children about their thoughts and attitudes about their learning, maths and Double Club.  They all gave positive responses and said how being in sessions like these motivated them and were fun. One girl even commented that you are more likely to learn something from working with your friends and getting them to show you how to do things, than just by listening to the teacher. She likes discovering things for herself.

Advanced skills teacher Sarah Mason, from Sir Christopher Hatton School in Wellingborough, visited the Double Club at Thomas Becket to share her skills in teaching and learning practical maths. The session was based on shape, area, space, angles and shape properties. Students learnt how to fold origami shapes like a kite, various triangles, hexagons, polygons, pentagons and parallelograms. This was more difficult than it looked!

They used these shapes to make tessellated patterns, construct a foodball and other 3D shapes. Everyone enjoyed the activity and the hands-on approach. The students’ knowledge about shape, space and angles was excellent and they discussed with Sarah various shapes and their properties. They were all up for the challenge of making a football and experimented with all sorts of weird and wonderful patterns and formats when building their models.

As a starter, Sarah got the year 8 students thinking about maths in real life contexts with a quiz about the Olympics, covering facts and figures from previous games. Dean Dixon, from MK Dons was visiting as he will be teaching this project in Milton Keynes.

Thomas Becket Double Club visited the Cobblers study centre and NTFC to do some stadium orienteering. They solved numeracy and literacy clues to find the right seats, stands, stadium facilities where they collected letters to make anagrams of ‘goalkeeper’.

They also took digital photos of the various areas in the ground so they could compare them to Arsenal’s ground which they visited a few weekis ago. Centre manager Jean Limpitlaw gave the students some information about the stadium as they looked around. They found different and interesting ways to photograph the stands, pitch, goalmouth, changing rooms, walkways, physio room and stadium complex as a whole. Back in the study centre they used a publisher document to import their photos to match the corresponding Arsenal ones on the template. Back at school they will complete the work by writing and comparing the two lots of facilities.

On 14th May 2009, 37 students from Thomas Becket, who have attended Double Club over the last three terms, visited Arsenal football club at the Emirates Stadium.

They took part in a stadium tour where they visited the changing rooms, executive boxes, (where X Factor auditions were taking place!) manager’s area, VIP area, pitchside and the media room. They saw the legends tour with Charlie George leading in front of them and sat on Arsene Wenger’s seat.

The group also visited the club shop and Arsenal interactive museum. They had a fantastic day and were in awe of the stadium. It was great to see a premiership stadium and look around the huge complex. Thanks to Samir Singh for organising this day.

Today Anna met the 3rd cohort of year 8 pupils to be taking part in Double Club at Thomas Becket.

The group did Cobblers player card maths, some ice-breakers/’brain breaks’ and looked at cricket and the 5 senses. They watched some Ashes footage and did some creative writing putting themselves in the position of the batter, bowler, bat, ball, fielder or wicket.

Reading some sports poetry ended up turning into a bit of a sing-a-long as the students started to ‘perform’ the chorus in one of the poems. The group compiled their own version, writing two lines each, fitting them together and adding a chorus. This is a great collaborative effort, see below.

Double Club Poem

4^th June 09

Show off striker

With lots of skill

His team thinks that he is brill!

Man of the match man of the match

What a catch!

Football’s amazing

Like double glass glazing

It’s absolutely brilliant

The skills are blazing!

Man of the match man of the match

What a catch!

He has a nose for the net

He always wins the bookies bet

He scored on the pitch

And his celebration was to itch!

Man of the match man of the match

What a catch!

Football star

He’s got a car

He also lives in a jar!

Man of the match man of the match

What a catch!

He is the player in the game

But no-one ever knows his name

He enjoys playing, he has scored 10

He also has a cousin called Ben!

Man of the match man of the match

What a catch!

He shoots he scores, the crowd shout more, more, more!

He shoots he misses the crowd are full of disses

Man of the match man of the match

What a catch!

Football, football, I love you,

What could I be without you?

Northampton has had a Double Club since 2006, now we have a report carried out by NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) which our schools contributed data to. It’s great to see how successful this project has become locally and across the country (there are now 30+ clubs participating) and be recognised as a project of its own standing alongside PfS. Click below to download

nfer-dc-national-report

It’s also on the DCSF website: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/programmeofresearch/index.cfm?type=5

It being week 12 of this term’s Double Club, the group were presented with their certificates of achievement (and medals to follow) in the year 8 assembly. Mr Doveston talked about the project and its success in the school so far. (This is the 2nd cphort of year 8s to go through) Beccy Roseman praised the students’ hard work, enthusiasm and energy each week. Graeme Wilson, the project’s multiskills coach from NSport reinforced this by describing the kind of activities the group had undertaken and their engagement in the practical sessions.

For more on the Double Club at Thomas Becket: http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/thomas-becket/

This week the Double Club discussed racism in sport and in the wider community. They watched ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ DVD and listened to famous players talking about their attitudes towards racism, their experiences of it and examples. The group then had a ‘free talk’ about how they felt about the DVD’s content and Britain being a mulitcultural society. They then completed some literacy work, mind mapping suggestions for how to kick racism out of professional football, school, young people’s minds and amateur football.

In the ICT session, the students compiled presentations, factsheets, newsletters and posters about anti-racism. They had to include a famous player’s quote, think up their own sports-themed slogan and some information about anti-racism campaigns such as ‘Kick it Out’, ‘Stand up Speak up‘ and ‘Show Racism the Red Card’.

A few people reported back to the group about their book review homework. The previous week Beccy asked students to choose a sports book from the library and do a review on it.

Player/team anagrams and playing card maths served as ‘brain-breaks’. For more on the Double Club at Thomas Becket: http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/thomas-becket/

On Monday 23rd march, year 7 and 8 students from Abbeyfield’s Double Club visited NTFC and undertook some very wet stadium orienteering! They had to solve maths clues to find the right seats and stands and retrieve letters. The wind and rain were certainly heavy but the group didn’t seem to mind, it made them even more energetic! This activity was led by Cobblers Study Centre staff Jaimie Hodgkinson and Margaret Hillyer.

Back in the study centre the students worked in small groups to make anagrams from the letters they had found. The highest number of  ‘proper’ words was 27, a good effort.

Next Jean Limpitlaw (Cobblers Study Centre Manager) led an observation skills activity. The group watched some skysports footage and looked out for colours, numbers and patterns. They answered questions afterwards before watching the clip again to see how accurate their observations were. Pretty good all round.

The pupils had been to watch the NTFC match on Saturday21st March vs Stockport County, a victorious 4-0 result with plenty of action. The match report can be found on: http://www.ntfc.co.uk/page/MatchReport/0,,10425,00.html

For more information on the centre, visit www.cobblersstudycentre.org and for the club: http://www.ntfc.co.uk/page/Home/

Double Clubbers from Thomas Becket School visited the Steelbacks Study Centre and Northants County Cricket Club on Thursday 12th March. Yvonne Tervit and Lynn Harrison from the centre led the day’s activities which started with a word association game in the new study centre. (ooooh posh!) The group had to stand up and shout out associated words, alternating nouns and adjectives.

Next was the stadium tour and students made notes about all the areas in the ground. We saw the first team (Nial O’Brien, David Wigley, Graeme White…) in training in the indoor arena with their coaches David Capel, David Ripley and Kevin Innes. The idea was to look for ways to advertise the ground to get more spectators to visit. They had to write a script to plan their persuasive speech to be recorded onto the applemac laptops later using the garageband voice programme.

The pairs came up with some great ideas and used the knowledge they had just learnt from the tour to encourage visitors to the ground. To see more about the centre: www.steelbacksstudycentre.org and the club on www.nccc.co.uk.