13 December 2018
Roles were reversed on Wednesday as Lower Sixth students took charge of a sports activity for staff. Indeed, not only did they run the session, they had devised and planned the whole thing: registration, team organisation (Santas, Elves, Snowmen and Reindeer), warm up stretching, the competition itself (fiercely fought Bench Ball), cool down exercises (with a Twelve Days of Christmas theme) and the presentation of prizes.
The reason for this (very well organised) festive fun? Lily, Libby, Harriet, Grace, Fede and Margot are all working towards their Level 3 Certificate in Higher Sports Leadership, a nationally recognised qualification that enables students to lead unsupervised groups of people in sport and recreational activities. As part of this, they need to plan, organise and lead sports activities, and the different groups they have chosen to do this with are primary school pupils, disabled people and the community. This term the students have been going to Godstone Village School twice a week, working with both Year 2 and Year 4 pupils; running sessions with young disabled adults at the Orpheus Centre and the staff activity was their second community session, their first being for Year 6 girls who attended our Taster Day in October.
The students also attend lessons and have recently explored disabled sport. To help understand the challenges people face, they attempted ball games when blindfolded and also with their hands and feet tied. This gave them a real insight into what’s achievable for people with particular disabilities – and, very importantly, what’s fun! They’ve also been considering the difficulties in accessing sport that the different groups face and thinking about how to break down these barriers.
Mrs Lomax and Miss Fox, who teach the course, are extremely impressed with the students’ achievements. Working with people of differing ages and abilities has really helped them gain important skills, including planning, time management, conducting online research, how to deal with difficult situations and how to evaluate their work. They’ve also had a great time and enjoyed meeting and working with lots of new people.
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