Case Study

English

In English the activities were focussed on the theme of Fair Trade. Pupils learnt about what Fair Trade is and took part in a Divine Chocolate poetry competition where they wrote ‘persuasive poetry’ on the theme of Fair Trade. The quality of the entries was outstanding.

MFL

Year 7 experienced a ‘Round the World Discovery’ in MFL.  They learned how to sing Guantanamera in Spanish, created a German Christmas market and tasted Raclette and crêpes

Tech

In technology, Year 8 students made musical instruments including didgeridoos, rain makers and African flutes. In food technology they made a wide range of foods from other countries – from curry to edible Christmas wreaths.

Maths

‘Maths around the world’ involved pupils visiting 3 different countries (UK, Greece and India) to learn about the contributions made by these countries to the field of Mathematics. Activities included code breaking, investigating the ‘golden ratio’ and Rangoli patterns.

Science

Students spent their time in Science looking at ‘Food around the World’, ‘Food Miles’ and ‘Fair Trade’.

Art/
Textiles

In their work on Art from other cultures, students from year 9 worked in mixed media techniques based on representation of myths and legends from around the world. A small group of pupils had the opportunity to try out Batik techniques and produced some excellent designs.

Year 10 pupils did a carousel of activities themed around movements of people around the world. This included:

• Dance and drumming with a visiting Zimbabwean musician. This gave pupils the opportunity to appreciate the contribution of other cultures to the UK and find out more about life in Zimbabwe.
• A drama activity involving representing a fictional culture in another part of the world. This gave pupils the opportunity to think about how we interpret and view other cultures.
• Watching an abstract from the film Amistad. This enabled pupils to learn about movements of people during the Slave Trade.
• Listening to a speaker from Save the Children. Pupils heard about the issues relating to education of children in conflict areas; this enabled them to think about how children elsewhere in the world are often forced to leave their home as a result of conflict and how their education is affected. It also gave pupils the opportunity to learn about what they could do to get involved in Save the Children’s campaign on education.
• Producing a book on ‘Life in the UK’. This was an ICT activity in which pupils were asked to produce a page of a book on ‘Life in the UK’ that we can give to visitors from other countries that come to our school.
• Watching Ndeke High School Talent Show. At the end of the day we had an assembly where pupils watched the Talent Show from our link school in Zambia. Pupils were able to develop their appreciation of the culture and talents at Ndeke High School.

Textiles

Our year 10 GCSE textile group were very fortunate to work with Pratima Kramer, who is an Indian Textile Artist. They learnt many techniques such as stitching, transferring images and dying.  They made a textile panel which is used as a door decoration in India. They all really enjoyed the days as they could work with someone from outside of school who had a lot of knowledge about a different culture.

RS

In the morning, Sixth form students explored issues relating to the allocation of overseas aid. This involved doing a decision making exercise based on potential interventions in Kingstown, Jamaica where pupils had to decidedon what aid money should be spent on in order to improve quality of life in certain areas of the city. In the afternoon, their international experience had a historical feel when they had the opportunity to hear from a Holocaust Survivor talking about his experiences during Holocaust.