Thomas Becket Double Club year 8 group visited the Steelbacks study centre and Northants County Cricket Club on a snowy Wednesday 24th February 2010. They played ‘word association’ as a speaking and listening warm up game, then Lynn took them on a stadium tour with a shapes and maths emphasis. As the students learnt about the ground, its facilities and players, they were asked to identify and describe various shapes, carry out mental calculations to work out area and perimeter and sketch various aspects.

Back in the study centre, the group used the applemac laptops to compose a comic strip using the ‘comic life’ programme describing their tour. They used speech bubbles to record some of the information they had learnt and used pictures. They then had a go at create radio adverts using the ‘garageband’ voice programme. Some pairs focussed on selling the stadium to new fans, whilst others commentated on a game before advertising the cricket club’s facilities. Some used a questions and answer interview style to feature the club’s good points. They added sound effects and music, to give a background to their adverts.

On Wednesday 18th November, Thomas Becket’s Double Club group visited the Steelbacks Study Centre at Northamptonshire County Cricket Club.

Lynn led the group on a stadium tour in high winds, where students completed a literacy quiz about the stadium. Back in the study centre, they used this infomation to produce comic life adverts.

They had a go at ‘cricket co-ordinates’ using the centre’s windows for a cricket pitch with player positions indicating the co-ordinate points.

There were team games to end the morning: group juggling and gutterball in the indoor cricket arena.

Helena Weedon and Yvonne Turvit also helped in the session.

These visits reinforce how engaging the sporting context is for motivating learning that the students are also experiencing in their school based lessons. The study centre and cricket club can provide the ‘wow factor’ that helps them apply their ICT, literacy and numeracy skills in a different and effective way.

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.

Next was club shop maths whereby students worked to a budget, looked at merchandising and various aspects of the cricket shop. Thanks to centre manager Yvonne Starsmeare and co-ordinator Lyn Harrison who led the visit. www.steelbacksstudycentre.org

In November, year 8s from Abbeyfield visited the Steelbacks Study Centre for a stadium tour. They got behind the scenes access to Northants County Cricket Club and visited the gym, indoor arena, executive boxes, players’ balcony, Long room, supporter’s club, bar and saw the scoreboards. They had to do a literacy note-taking activity as when they got back to school in their ICT lesson, they produced a stadium tour postcard using this information.

Centre manager Yvonne Starsmeare led the tour and afterwards everyone made an origami T shirt while discussing sponsorship and logos. Yvonne showed the South Africa cricket world cup shirts for inspiration.

To see the Steelbacks Study Centre’s website: www.steelbacksstudycentre.org

Northants County Cricket Club’s ste: www.nccc.co.uk

To see Abbeyfield’s site