Nov 21 in Bovington Primary School, Corfe Castle Primary School, Lulworth & Winfrith Primary School, News, St George’s Primary School Langton, St Mary and Joseph's Catholic Primary School Wool, St Mary’s Primary School Swanage, Stoborough Primary School, Swanage Primary School, Swanage St Mark’s Primary School, The Purbeck School, Wareham St Mary Primary School, Wool Primary School Written by: Nicky Marsh
Purbeck Leadership Academy
On the 4th November we ran the 6th Purbeck Leadership Academy. The event just keeps growing and growing; this year not only did all twelve of our own primary schools attend but we also had three other schools join us from within Dorset. Furthermore we had the pleasure of having a representative from the Youth Sports Trust to come and see how our leadership academy works. Dan Moody who organises these events for the county does such a fantastic job, it was brilliant to have someone from this organisation attend to witness this.
This year our own Year 12 students lead a number of the workshops for the Academy, and we were also joined by a number of students from Weymouth College. Both sets of students were able to use this experience to assist with their Year 12 and 13 courses.
With over 140 Year 5 and 6 pupils participating things were quite hectic, but all workshops were expertly run. The four main workshops were based around communication skills, team work, games and ‘where to go next?’.
One workshop involved taking part in mini games and discussing how these games could be organised and taught to pupils of different ages and abilities. Pupils were asked to consider factors such as Space, Time, Equipment and People.
Next pupils worked on improving their communication skills by undertaking tasks such as delivering small games. This is important as it enables students to learn to develop language skills and patience.
The next workshop was based more around planning what we might do back at school. It gave pupils the opportunity to discuss healthy lives and the types of activities which the leaders can organise at school during lunch and break times.
The final workshop was based around team building activities which involved high levels of cooperation and showed pupils excelling. Activities involved organising themselves in a variety of different ways using plates and tying themselves up in knots.
Overall the day was a huge success with another 140 leaders going into schools to help get our pupils active and engaged in a number of ways back in school.
A big thank you as ever to Dan Moody, Sam and Katrina who are all School games organisers, and also a massive thank you to our Year 12 students and Weymouth college’s Year 13 students as without them the delivery of this academy would be almost impossible.
Key Stage 1 Multi Skills Festival
This year the Primary Link Teachers decided that they wanted to focus a few more of the sporting events on Key Stage 1. So this year we decided to run two multi skills festivals and a mini Olympics.
Each school was invited to bring 10 pupils from Key Stage 1 to come and take part in a number of multi skills activities in a festival format. Again it was well represented with 8 schools attending; this year it was lovely to welcome Mrs Rawlings and her new school Lilliput Infants to the event as sporting opportunities are very limited in their own area. So 80 pupils arrived to take part in a variety of activities that this time were being led by sixteen of our own Year 8 students. This was the first time the Year 8 leaders had been given the spotlight to deliver a festival and they performed their duties exceptionally well – I received a number of positive comments throughout the afternoon as to how well they were doing and how brilliantly they were engaging with the KS 1 pupils.
Each group of leaders were given 3-4 activities to deliver within 20 minutes to approximately 20 KS1 pupils. These activities included games such as Elephant Football, Rob the Nest, Rats and Rabbits, Stuck in the Mud and Ball Tag. Once they had delivered a variety of these games the primary school students were rotated round again until they had taken part in each of the activities.
It was lovely to see so many young children’s faces enjoying themselves throughout the afternoon, and they certainly made enough noise to suggest they were having a good time. A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon not only for the primary pupils but also for our Year 8 leaders who also managed to develop a number of their own skills, confidence, teamwork, empathy and many more. A big thank you to everyone involved as again I couldn’t do it without you.
Miss Hamblin
School Sports Coordinator