á
With exams over, we decided it would be a good idea to give our Year 10s an experience of life in the Sixth Form. We know that they will be deciding which subjects they want to take for AS and A2 after the summer holidays, so now seemed like a good time to get them thinking.
Mrs Jones and Mrs Keenan put together a programme of events which would allow them a ‘taste’ of Sixth Form lessons and also give them the opportunity to work together with girls in their year with whom they had not yet spent much time. They have been such a hard-working and co-operative year group that we also thought that a ‘treat’ was in order.
Monday morning saw half of the year group doing some strenuous ‘team-building’ exercises in the Sports Hall with ‘Commando Joe’! Everyone agreed that it was great fun! Meanwhile, the rest of the year group were in Sixth Form style lessons. First of all, everyone was amazed by how small the groups are in Sixth Form. ‘Where are the others?’ said one girl, until we explained that Sixth Form classes average nine pupils and can be as small as one or two people, as we try to ensure that everyone gets the choice they want. I attended a History lesson by Mr King, which was extraordinarily gruesome! It concerned the torture of Guido Fawkes and his co-conspirators. Then I went to a Maths lesson with Mrs Hayes. For the first time ever, I learned what Pascal’s triangle is used for!
In the afternoon, there were two options again, each for half of the year group.Sixty girlsáchose betweenásessions on Psychology, Business Studies and Government and Politics. These were designed to be of interest to anyone, but also to show girls what they might do in these subejcts, which are not offered at GCSE at Bolton. The other half did a competition based on ‘The Apprentice’. They had to design a weekend of events for a mixed group whoáwanted a ‘high end’ experience. The girls came up with some fabulous ideas, although the judges thought that some of theiráweekends were not sufficientlyádeluxe- and in one case, very little provision was madeáfor men!
On Tuesday, the two halves ofáthe year swapped over so everyone got a chance to do all the events. By the end of the secondáday, everyone agreed that it had been great fun. Some girls said that they wanted to move straight into Year 12 and miss out Year 11! Sorry, girls- you have to doáGCSEs, first.
We held an awards ceremony on Thursday morning, the pictures of which are here. We definitely want to run the same events again. It was definitely worth theáwork which the teachersáput into it!á
Leave a Reply