We are already into Week 3 of this term and boy have we been busy! The students have made name badges and totem pole pictures, played loads of games and learnt about cricket and the safety of equipment, had a tour of the stadium, been challenged to tower building, done loads of ICT and some have taken part in our ‘Club Challenge’!

Below are just a few of the images we have captured during this time:

Abington Vale -Stadium Tour

Lings Club Challenge

Lumbertubs - Cricket Equipment

Abington Vale - Tower Building

Lings and Totem Poles

Lumbertubs Stadium Tour

Rectory Farm ICT

On Friday 19th March we are participating in the Inaugural Playing for Success Charity Rowathon at the Cobblers Study Centre. The event is raising money for Sports Relief. The event is a team relay, whereby teams of four, consisting of three adults and one PfS student will row a marathon (on indoor machines obviously!). Members of the Northampton Rowing Club are helping to support our challenge and teams will be racing us from PfS centres all over the country from 10:00am. We are hoping to have a video link up with the host centre at Bath Rugby Club to give the PfS students the sense that they are participating in a national event. We are also planning to have Supporter 2 Reporter coverage of the day whereby young reporters who have been learning media skills at our centre will be keeping you updated on the days events via the Cobblers Study Centre website.

To sponsor us please visit the team page here: http://www.mysportrelief.com/TeamPage.aspx?teamID=53602 and keep updates on the Cobblers Study Centre home page: http://cobblersstudycentre.org/

We welcome the following primary schools this term:

Lumbertubs

Abington Vale

Lings

Rectory Farm

Week one has already seen them make name badges and Team totem poles.

This term we are trialing a new format where schools come in for three hour sessions each week for six weeks. This means we have only four schools per ‘term’. Generally this has worked well with a very positive response from the pupils, has facilitated greater completion rates on all tasks and has enabled us to include much more numeracy tasks as well as more thorough evaluation techniques. It has also led to significantly improved attendance.

The themes for the sessions are:

Getting to know you, Getting to know cricket, Getting to know the stadium, Communication, Club challenge and Cricket coaching and evaluation.

Some of the many things the children have been doing are making Totem pole bricks, learning more about each other, finding out about safety aspects of cricket, shapes around the stadium, working in their teams to create a new club and producing a short piece of animation.

Some examples of animation are shown below:

A ride in a helicopter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0shn4R_4Bz8

Secret Beach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKJYDHt9DwQ

The beach of Doom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAtXQEtXFk

On Wednesday last week we had a visit from pupils from Thomas Beckett School.

Please follow link for further details:

http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/

This term (w/c 11/1/10 – w/c 22/2 /10) we welcome:

Hardingstone Primary

Kingsley Primary

Sunnyside Primary

Parklands Primary

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!!

Please come along to our Presentation Evening next Wednesday evening which is being held in the Ken Turner Suite, here at the County Ground. It starts at 7pm for an hour and celebrates the end of our PFS term and gives everyone a chance to congratulate the young people on all of their hard work over the last 10 weeks.
Please access from the Abington avenue entrance and park in the rear car park.
We look forward to seeing you there!

The year 10 girls doing  the Arts Award programme had a creative evening last week when textile artist Glenn Close came in to work with them on creating a piece of art using Batik. They made their own designs inspired by the beautiful textiles Glenn brought in to show them. Then they learned how to use the hot wax to protect areas of the fabric from the dyes which were then applied with a fine brush to create some wonderful pieces.

This term we have trialed our new software ‘I Can Animate’. In small groups the students had to create a storyboard with either a sea rescue or space theme. Then with the use of Lego characters and pieces and a bit of background scenery, they took individual shots with the animation cameras, moving each piece a small bit at a time. The results were really good and imaginative: click on the links to view some of the animations.