After the success of last year’s “Take a Risk” week, we once again asked all teachers across the school to think about engaging, innovative ways that they could teach the curriculum throughout the week.
Deputy Headteacher, Mr Trewhitt, commented: “It has been a pleasure to be invited into lessons to see teachers thinking differently about the delivery and planning of activities and to see this all in action. The wide range of exciting activities has been amazing – from creative writing under candlelight in English to musical statue translations in French, the energy and engagement across the school has been outstanding.”
Here are just a few examples…
Mrs Giecco and Miss Scullion ‘took a risk’ with the Archaeology (Character Curriculum) classes by adding squeaky rubber chickens to their practical lesson starter!
The lesson focussed on ‘the preservation of archaeological remains’ and looked at how/what artefacts were preserved in wet (anaerobic), dry or frozen conditions. As a lesson starter the pupils were asked to play ‘Rot or Not’. Teams were tasked to match eight items, including newspaper, leather, glass and a rubber chicken, with the length of time it would take for them to rot away and disappear from the archaeological record when buried under normal conditions. The risk paid off, pupils enjoyed the activity and squeaking was kept to a minimum!
In Miss Leighton’s Year 9 French class, the task was ‘Une dictée avec un twist’. Students worked in pairs and took it in turns to go to the front to the classroom, remember the sentence and then dictate this to their partner in French. The twist being a musical statues element – French music was played, and when it stopped the last student to stand still were given a key question on the perfect tense (the learning objective of the lesson).
Mrs McCombe’s Maths class practiced their times tables by playing games with playing cards, white boards and dice. They were even allowed to write on the desks on the process!
