Entries Tagged 'Thomas Becket' ↓
November 18th, 2009 — Northants County Cricket Club, Steelbacks Study Centre, Thomas Becket
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.
November 5th, 2009 — Thomas Becket, literacy
Anna visited Thomas Becket’s current Double Club this week to see how the year 8 students are getting on. She led Kung-fu punctuation where each punctuation mark requires an action and sound effect. After discussing various punctuation marks and putting them into example sentences, everyone had a go at this, stringing together a few different ones in different orders, always starting sequences with ‘captial letter’ bowing. Then they read a paragraph about the Steelbacks cricket team and had to insert the moves and sounds in the right places. The final task involved suggesting possible punctuation that could be used in a paragraph about Thierry Henry that had none.
The ‘Hot Air Balloon’ dilemma is a persuasive writing activity where each student must write and read aloud a piece about a famous sports person to be voted into staying aboard a sinking hot air balloon that needs to throw some people out. With 8 sports persons and only 4 places available, competition was tough. There were some great speeches detailing why a swimmer, dancer, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney etc, should stay afloat. Everyone voted for the most persuasive speech (not just their mates!) and explained why they had chosen them.
A quick brain break speaking game of ‘Who’s in the bag?’ finished the session. Individuals described various celebrities without saying their names or being too obvious, while the others guessed.
Patrick Franks led the practical sports session in the indoor gym – badminton. The aim of the session was to improve co-ordination and the ‘overhead shot’.
http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/thomas-becket/
October 7th, 2009 — Saints Study Centre, Thomas Becket, drama
Thomas Becket Double Club students visited the Saints Study Centre on Wednesday 7th October to take part in a drama workshop based around the famous playwright William Shakespeare. Kieron Jones from ‘Shakespeare Works’ (http://www.kieronjones.com/) gave the groups an insight into the life and times of Shakespeare and has involved the pupils in acting out their own version of a famous play.
The year 8 group had a go at some scenes from ‘Romeo and Juliet’. They also watched a short DVD, made by Kieron, all about Shakespeare’s life, his plays and his famous theatre, The Globe.
The year five pupils can now go back into school with an abundance of knowledge prior to further Shakespeare studies later on in school.
To find out more about Becket’s Double Club, visit: http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/thomas-becket/
September 17th, 2009 — Northants County Cricket Club, Thomas Becket
Year 8 students at Thomas Becket have started a new term and year of Double Club. Beccy Roseman and Patrick Franks continue to run the project, which has been successfully embedded within the school’s study support provision. This term, community coach James Mellor, from Northants County Cricket Club, is coaching cricket and multi skills and the group will be visiting Saints and Steelbacks study centres later in the term. They will also be attending a Northampton Town football match.
Check out their page: http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/thomas-becket/
July 2nd, 2009 — Advanced skills teacher, Thomas Becket
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.
June 26th, 2009 — Thomas Becket
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.
June 22nd, 2009 — Arsenal FC, Cobblers Study Centre, NTFC, Thomas Becket
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.
June 11th, 2009 — Arsenal FC, Thomas Becket
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.
June 4th, 2009 — Thomas Becket
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
4th 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?
May 6th, 2009 — Abbeyfield School, Arsenal FC, DCSF, Mereway Community College, Thomas Becket, Weston Favell School
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
Report highlights:
1. “It is having a positive impact on pupils’ motivation and self esteem, with young people reporting that they work hard in DC sessions and that they feel more confident and able to contribute in their other lessons.
2. “The report presents some data on attainment, which indicates that young people attending DC make good progress in basic skills. Pupils and teachers perceive the programme very positively, seeing it as an opportunity for lower-attaining young people to get additional support with their learning.”
(from section “Impact of DC on attainment”):
3. “In each of the five schools, DC teachers said young people’s performance levels in English had improved after participating in the programme……………Findings from the self evaluation data suggest that the majority of young pupils in the three schools made progress during their invovlement with DC (see Table 1). Most pupils had improved by at least one level in English and some had gone up two levels.”
