Study Support on the road!

This week saw Dorcas Adusei from NCC’s Extended Services study support team lead the Double Club sessions on Olympic/paralympic athletes. The group looked at video footage of paralympic 100m runner Oscar Pistorius, known as ‘Blade Runner’ due to his curved metal lower legs. They debated whether he should or shouldn’t be allowed to compete in the Olympics rather than the paralympics due to his super speedy times.  They read some evidence to support his case and saw him being interviewed explaining how he considers himself as not ‘disabled’. What do you think? Do the ‘bionic legs’ give him an unfair advantage? This case covers the values of inspiration, determination and courage. 

The ICT session saw students researching the Internet to create athlete profiles – finding and summarizing key information such as sport, weight, height, personal bests/records,  medals and hobbies. They used Powerpoint and Olympics websites such as the Olympic movement to find and manipulate text and photos. Next was a speaking and listening session around respect, first of all discussing what defines respect and its various forms. Students then talked about the pros and cons of various famous people (sporting and non sporting) such as Wayne Rooney, Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramage, Girls Aloud and Nelson Mandella and shared opinions as to if they respected them or not and why. Some well known personalities can be seen in a positive and negative light so the discussions were interesting.

The Judo session, led by Dave Baldwin was again enjoyed by all with plenty of enthusiasm shown.

Dorcas: “The children were really good with discussion, they weren’t shy in bringing forward their opinions around controversial issues. I was very impressed with their research skills during ICT.”

This week saw the start of an 11 week Double Club programme begin with year 8 pupils at Huxlow Science College. The project has a literacy theme and is based around the Olympics and paralympics. Anna Letts met the new group on Monday 9th January and is working alongside learning mentor Mrs Elavia from the school. The PE and English departments are involved in the running and organisation too. 15 pupils have been chosen who could do with a boost in their literacy skills, using sport to engage and motivate them in their learning.

The first session included ‘Getting to know you bingo’ and working in groups to match Olympic sports and discussing which ones were unknown or surprising. Next came the ICT session, where the group chose photos of Olympic and paralympic athletes in action and wrote creative captions about them using alliteration, word play and adjectives. They really enjoyed doing this and came up with some humorous, attention grabbing and clever captions that would be suitable for newspaper stories.

Next the group found out from solving anagrams what the Olympic and paralympic values are and used their speaking and listening skills to come up with definitions to explain what they meant to them, as well as in sport. For the practical element of the project, (making it a ‘Double’ experience: educational and physical exercise) the group had a go at Judo, with coach Dave Baldwin. They learnt some Japanese commands and holds, how to throw people in a safe and controlled way and how to unbalance each other to pin them to the mat.

Several students commented on how much they’d enjoyed the morning (particularly the Judo and ICT) and that they found doing literacy through sport an interesting way to learn.