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SUPER LEARNING DAY - delivered by the Learning Ambassadors and recorded by the Digital Leaders!
On Monday 15th September, our student team of Learning Ambassadors planned and delivered a whole day of lessons for Year 7, all designed to prepare the Year 7s to be efficient and active learners here at Parklands. The team did an incredible job; they showed impressive confidence and are genuine role models for our Year 7s. I am sure that many of our year &s will be inspired to follow their lead and aspire to one of the great leadership roles within school.
The Digital Leaders student team also did a fantastic job of recording the day, interviewing the pupils and posting live on the blog throughout the day.
All of the students had a fantastic day, and Parklands are incredibly proud of them all!
Types of Learning
4D Fun
Here the year 7s are learning about one of our facilities in school. Maria and Katie are showing them the fun ways of learning and the benefits of the 4D space. Many students were excited to hear about the ways in which the 4D learning space could improve their imagination and make lessons more fun, the majority of them didn't know what it was to begin with but thanks to the informative lesson given by Marie and Katie they all now know how the 4D learning space works and what it does.
Teamwork skills
Steven and Emily built on the pupils' teamwork skills by setting a task which makes them organise an event to make money. They came up with brilliant ideas like rock concert, school fair and roller coaster marathon! 
Technology (TV studio)
Lucas and Shannon decided to make their lesson more engaging by incorporating some more interesting ideas like "snowballing" which is the technique of writing down an idea of what their favourite subject is and throwing it across the room to another group. The groups then have to make their own presentation on that subject as to why the subject is interesting and the different sub categories within them. This helps the students to think more about subjects they may not usually consider, and they get to look into them to hopefully find more interest in subjects that may usually consider.
As you can see the year 7's look very engaged and Lucas and Shannon did not hesitate to help or encourage them.
Leadership passport set-up
In this session, the Ambassadors incorporated a lot of fun ideas into their lesson such as the classic picnic game in which they got all the year 7's to form a circle and they went round one by one. Each pupil would have to say what they would bring to a picnic. As it went round the circle it got increasingly harder for the year 7's to remember what the others had said.
Ellis, Isabel and Josh made sure that all the year 7's projected their voice to demonstrate confidence and the game itself taught the pupils that if you learn things one by one it is possible to remember what everyone said even if it seemed hard the first time.
They showed them how to set up a folder to log what they have done since they started Parklands, giving them a sturdy knowledge and chance to become something quite important in their Parklands life (such as prefects or other important leadership roles).
Fundraising fiascos
Daanish and Ellie started by arranging all of the year 7's into houses (Asia, Australasia, Africa, Europe and South America) and briefing them on charities and what charity events are all about.
The pupils had to take into account the target audience, venue, resources, profit, budget, roles and advertising.
Daanish was constantly asking the pupils questions and encouraging them to be more involved within the project.
The whole idea of the lesson was to create the most realistic charity event taking into account all the different factors you would have to consider when actually planning an event.
They then did a short brainstorming session where the pupil would think abut the different events they could do and writing down on a white board about their final ideas.
They gave them 5 minutes to discuss the possibilities of what they could come up with, I heard one particular group talking about which charity and certain activities they could do, one group decided to focus on the ALS charity and thinking of ice bucket related activities but in the end the they came to the conclusion of doing the ice bucket challenge but with rice pudding instead to raise money for ALS which I think is a rather clever and well thought out idea.
One group came up with a wacky fun run where the runners are pelted with paintballs and get buckets of paint thrown on them to creat a colour fundraising fiesta.
They then encouraged them to go and look at other teams ideas to see how they could improve their own.
What did the pupils think?
A lot of the pupils seemed to have really enjoyed super learning day as it is a chance to get out of normal everyday lessons, try something different or just build on the skills and knowledge that they already know.
The general response was that they found it very interesting and enjoyed the chance to work in teams and get "something out of the day that they wouldn't usually have learnt"
"It is fun having pupils teach you and I like being in groups with different people, my favourite session has been the the 4D space"
"I think it is better than just going to normal lessons because I get to make new friends and do interesting things"
Ambassador & Teacher opinions
"It has been rewarding as we've introduced the year 7s to school" -Richard
"I think it gives the pupils a good understanding of leadership and learning" -Katie
"I like that because we are doing leadership passports as it is setting them up for the future" -Charlotte
"Today has been beneficial for me as it has built my confidence and given me an insight into being a teacher" -Holly
"I found today wonderful and the year 7s enjoyed it and got really involved" -Maria
"It is always fantastic to see how effective students delivering sessions to other students can be. Young people always excel if you give them opportunities and have high expectations of them and their abilities. The ambassadors have done a fantastic job today" - Miss Batson
"It was an excellent lesson on students learning about their learning style" - Mr Wilsher
"The presentation was good and the ambassadors had a lot of confidence" - Miss Titterington
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