Rushcliffe Home - Year 7 Experience

Rushcliffe School Website - www.rushcliffe-school.co.uk

Year 7

Year 7 is a very special year for our young pupils and we wish to make both the Transition experience and their First year at Rushcliffe an enjoyable and positive experience. This then prepares them for the years ahead as they go on to achieve success .

As indicated in the Letter from the Head, Rushcliffe is a school of opportunities – opportunity to succeed in academic subjects as well as develop social and personal skills.

This web page contains some information which will give you a flavour of what we do.

Click here to see a typical weeks timetable.

Feedback

Transition - The majority of pupils thought our support for transition was good with 25% indicating the arrangements excellent. Pupils shared ideas for improvements which will be built into next year's programme.

Commendations - The pupils felt the rewards system is functioning well and that their achievements are being recognised. Pupils identified some inconsistencies in the awarding of commendations and this is being addressed.

Social Issues - The vast majority of pupils felt they had settled in well. Of the issues identified most were of a minor concern which had been resolved by sharing the problem or being willing to discuss the issue leading to it being resolved.

Friends - The vast majority of the pupils reported their friendship group was wide with peers from the primary phase being included with new friends. Others were also positive about new contacts .

Personal Organisers - Pupils found these very useful indeed although they still found some difficulties in managing time outside school when faced with the organisation of personal study time and their own leisure time. This is always difficult even if you are in Year 11 but it can be done!

Pupils successes and best lessons - Biggest successes in rank order of the numbers of mentions were:

Sporting successes
Making new friends
Success in Art and Technology
Recognition of progress in Humanities and Maths

Best lessons

Art
PE
DT
English, Maths, Science and French

The Challenge of Lessons - Pupils expressed a range of response here with different subjects being named by the pupils. However 33% experienced no problems at all. Further exploration identified that many of the issues could be resolved by developing better listening skills, completing classwork and homework consistently to the very best of their ability and allowing time for revision.

This is a very positive evaluation and gives us and the pupils areas to focus on. The recent Year 7 Attitude Survey reflects this positively and suggest that this year group has much success on offer for themselves and the school.

BrainWaves - Our Learning to Learn Experience

Your child has a lesson called ‘BRAINWAVES’ once a week. (It appears on the timetable as ‘Integrated Studies’)

This is a new initiative at Rushcliffe School, but many forward thinking schools across the county are already confident that it can make a significant difference to pupils achievement

‘BRAINWAVES’ is the Rushcliffe version of a ‘Learning how to learn’ curriculum. It is based on tried and tested ideas from other schools as well as two major pieces of research.

‘The Learning Game’ by Jackie Beer and work from the University of the First Age (UFA) ‘Brain Based Learning’

‘BRAINWAVES’ is a learning initiative which can be applied in all subject areas. It supports the development of skills, knowledge and strategies which will help children:

Understand how they work
Improve their approaches to learning and revision
Develop the skills of independent learning

All members of staff are kept up to date with what children are exploring through BRAINWAVES. Over time they will incorporate aspects of the course in their own lessons to consolidate and develop pupils’ learning.

Many of the aspects of ‘BRAINWAVES’, are not new to Rushcliffe School. Several subject areas, most notably Humanities, have been using a variety of thinking skills techniques as part and parcel of their regular teaching methods.

AN OUTLINE OF THE ‘BRAINWAVES’ CURRICULUM

MY AMAZING BRAIN

How we learn – metacognition
Making connections
Looking after our brain

LEARNING STYLES

How we learn in different ways.
Making the most of our strengths
Improving our weaker areas
Using new ideas and strategies to learn and revise

MINDMAPPING, REVISION AND STUDY HABITS

MEMORY AND INFORMATION PROCESSING

Reviewing and recalling information.
Short and long term memory skills

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Different aspects of our intelligence eg. Pictures, numbers, words, people

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

How self awareness can help learning
Moods and feelings

Listening skills, creative thinking and teamwork will also be important. Some aspects will have more emphasis than others and topics may not appear in this order.

Curriculum outside of the classroom

Walesby

Walesby Scout Centre is set in countryside near Ollerton and is a very peaceful, well maintained and safe environment for young people. The day started at around 10 am with a briefing from the Walesby staff.

The eight teams then went off to their first activity. Some of the activities were team events and some were individual challenges both of which were thoroughly enjoyed by the year 7's. The team events were the ‘Mine Field', the ‘Brain Drain', ‘Water Rockets', the ‘Blindfold Trail' and ‘Indoor races'. The Mine Field was a great team activity where everyone had to negotiate across an area of grass without touching the ground. This involved cramming all of the team members onto about six milk crates and, working as a team, move the crates along to the front of the line. If they fell off they had to start again. Many of the participants enjoyed this event the most. The Water Rockets were also very popular as it involved getting wet! This involved pumping air into plastic bottles and launching them across the yard. Everyone got very wet but not as wet as when they took part in the Brain Drain. This was a drain pipe set into the ground with a foam ball at the bottom of it. They had to pour water into the pipe to get the ball to float to the top, which would have been relatively easy had it not been for the dozen or so holes in the pipe. The team had to work together to block the holes with their fingers. Unfortunately the team member pouring the water into the pipe was not very accurate. A great time was had by all. The individual activities were Climbing, Archery and Crazy Golf. Many found the climbing and the archery the most enjoyable as it was the first time they had done it and was a personal challenge.

Click on the Thumbnails to see a bigger picture

Kingswood

Forty four year 7 pupils ended their Easter holiday and began their Summer term with an adventure packed Geography trip to Kingswood Activity Centre in West Runton, Norfolk.

The focus of the trip was to study the erosion of the Norfolk coastline, with opportunities to participate in numerous exciting activities including orienteering, caving, quad biking and many more. During the trip pupils overcame their fears to complete some of the dare-devil challenges.

Pupils Comments

"We thought that Kingswood was very exciting and the people there were very friendly. They taught us lots of new skills and activities in a fun way. We were able to go kart, ride quad bikes, go caving, fan descender (where you jump off a high platform while holding onto a metal bar – it's along way to the bottom!), we went to the seaside for a coastal study, climbing, orient-eering and team challenge. In team challenge we worked in a group to climb over and under obstacles and crawl through muddy puddles."

"Our favourite activities were fan descender and quad biking. We enjoyed the fan descender because it was fun and exciting to take part and watch others doing it. Even the teachers took part. We all found it extremely funny when Mr Rick got stuck in the go kart. The teachers also joined in the evening entertainment. We're not sure about their disco dancing moves but they made us laugh when they dressed up for the murder mystery. Overall it was a fab trip and we would definitely go again."

Galleries of Justice

Fifty Year 7 pupils were invited to take part in a 2 day pilot project hosted by the Galleries of Justice Museum in the centre of Nottingham in liaison with the Police.

Our school liaison Police Officer, Martin Tristan, was involved in the activities, which focussed on anti-social behaviour in the community. They were also accompanied by teachers and support staff. Using various media and ICT techniques, pupils planned and produced an advert; we are hoping to see the adverts in school soon!

We were very pleased to be invited to take part in a project which supports so many aspects of school life – Personal and Social Education, Citizenship, teamwork, ICT, to name but a few.

Thank you also to Year 7 pupils for their enthusiasm and involvement. Here are some of their reflections:

“Really enjoyable. A great museum”.

“I liked it, especially the big courtroom”.

“It was more interactive, rather than just walking round”.

“It was embarrassing dressing up as a Police woman, but it was fun too and it was my favourite bit”.

“Our favourite part was when we were with the judge and finding out which criminal we were. And the filming too”.

“I liked the courtrooms because everyone got to take part.”

One World Day

On 22/6/05 all of year seven was taken off timetable for the day to be involved in the school's One World Day event. This is a developing tradition at Rushcliffe organised by EMAG teachers (ethnic minority achievement group) aimed at promoting positive attitudes to multiculturalism through engagement in a series of positive and enjoyable experiences.

The day started off with a PowerPoint assembly promoting the idea of a world with huge natural and human variety, the hope being to develop in children a sense of wonder and care for their home planet.

This was followed by a series of work shops employing outside providers delivering activities on: Greek dancing; Indian dancing; Jamaican story telling; story telling through puppets; World poetry; Healthy eating; Drumming and Sword dancing. Most of the workshops were activity centred and seemed to be enjoyed by pupils.

The day was evaluated and both pupils and the providers gave positive comments on their experiences. The school intends to build on the success of its One World Day initiative and plans are in place to hold another event next summer. We find it an effective way of promoting global citizenship through fun activities.

The Year 7 Experience