Our three primaries have recently completed our ‘Club challenge”! This takes place over two weeks and 2 teams from each school go head to head to win the ‘Contract’ for the billionaire’s money. Team members can ‘apply’ to become Chairperson of their team and then go through a short interview before being nominated. Each team has to think of a team sport and design, stadium’s logos, mascots, website’s, kit etc. After the first week of decision making and preparation, the second week saw the culmination of all their hard work which they had to present in the form of a poster to the ‘billionaire’s secretary’. We had some great ideas and saw a lot of good ideas and team work.

NSB have had the privilege this term of having an hours coaching session with one of the clubs coaches before their PFS session in the Study Centre. They have been working on different aspects of the game in the hope that some of them may get more involved in cricket. They have also been learning about Cricket equipment and what makes a good Captain of a team.

For the second time our Arts Award students were taken to the theatre as part of their Arts Experience. This time we went to see a matinee performance of the smash hit musical Evita at the Derngate Theatre!

The group seemed to enjoy this more than the play they had previously seen and some wanted to know ‘what they were going to do see Saturday?’. They will evaluate both performances this evening here at the Study Centre.

Today we had a visit from 9 pupils in year 8 at Thomas Becket School as part of their Double Club experience.

After making name badges they braved the windy conditions to do a stadium tour around the ground, taking notes as they went. After a short break and a demonstration on Comic Life, a programme on the Apple Mac books, they made posters advertising the club and its facilities. We then went into the Indoor School for a game of  Drainpipes, Group Juggling and Zip, Zap Pow before returning to school.

http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/

That is the question we have been posing over the last week to our secondary and primary school groups! After looking at a selection of well known people from different fields, the groups have had to decide who they thought was ‘intelligent’ and then rank them in order of most to least intelligent. This provoked lots of discussion about what ‘intelligence’ is and that everyone has different opinions.

We then discussed Gardners’s theory that there are 8 different types of intelligence and that everyone is intelligent in different ways. Finally after looking at their own intelliegences each group had to create a poster showing what they all had to offer as a team.

During the half term we held an Induction Day for our PFS group from Weston Favell Primary school. We started the day making Name badges on the PC’s, followed by a tour of the stadium and quiz. They then had an hours cricket coaching in the Indoor school from one of the club’s coaches.

After lunch they played a maths based game on cricket co-ordinates and learnt all about the equipment used and worn by cricketers before making a poster on the Apple Mac’s. The children that were able to attend had a fun day full of activities.

The  young people doing an Arts Award with us recently visited the Royal Theatre here in Northampton as part of their Arts experience. They went to see a powerful play by Eugene O’Neill called ‘Beyond The Horizon’ as part of the ‘American season’ showing there. None of them had ever been to a theatre before and found it quite a strange experience watching a play unfold before them. As a contrast we are taking them to see ‘Evita’ the musical next Saturday at the Derngate. As part of their work they will have to evaluate  each experience.

This half term we played host to a small group of KS3 pupils who were here to begin their training as future S2R reporters!

It was a 2-day project which saw the group learn a number of new skills, including creating their own web page, learning to use Mp3 recorders, Vox-popping, Blogging, questioning and interviewing skills and editing and uploading. On the second day they were lucky enough to be able to interview individually Jack Brooks and Stephen Peters from Northants Cricket.

Over the two day the group worked hard and produced some excellent results.

Go to the Radiowaves/S2R website to see the results:

http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/s/S2RNorthampton

Here at the Steelbacks Study Centre we have purchased Study Centre T-shirts for our children to wear during sessions, they will then get to take them home at the end of their time with us. As we split out groups into 2 teams, yellow and blue, they are colour co-ordinated and Blackthorn Primary were lucky enough to be our first school to model them. We think they look great!

This week we looked at punctuation in a fun and exciting way! Blackthorn Primary children split into their two teams and played a matching game using pictures and explanations of punctuation marks. The idea was to learn about punctuation and communicate as a team. After this we taught them how to do ‘Punctuation Kung Fu’. You give  punctuation marks a series of moves and sounds to make it more fun. For more information on Punctuation King Foo click on the following link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3633548/Punching-home-the-art-of-punctuation.html