Year 8 Study Week

Year 8 Study Week has just passed and students have returned with more positive relationships with each other and the staff who led the visits. Students themselves have “grown” - in confidence in particular, as for some it was the first time they had been away without parents, or had been abroad, and also because many students had taken part in activities they had never experienced before.

I am not sure whether parents fully realise how unusual it is for a school to have so many enrichment activities as our students can access at the Heart of England School. It was very gratifying to be able to pass on letters of thanks from parents for the commitment that staff had shown during the week. As parents we are obliged to be responsible for our children twenty-four hours a day, but Heart of England staff choose to take on this responsibility – all without any extra pay.

Annette Croft
Headteacher

Year 8 Activities Week

Lake District

Wet Activities

The wet activities were extremely wet, and were definitely ones we wouldn’t forget. We had 5 instructors who were very confident and helpful. We first did canoe rafting with Ryan and Simon. We rafted all the canoes together and paddled out to an island in the middle of the lake where we played banana milkshake. Later we did some wind sailing and got towed back to shore. Next activity was kayaking where we had lots of fun and games, a bit like rugby, and a lot of us got soaked. The instructors, Dude and Dudilicious got us playing balancing games and most of us ended up falling out! To wrap it up we lastly did canoeing. We canoed up the lake onto a peninsula where we played banana milkshake (again). When we got back to shore Dude took a few of us back out to play some more balancing games. Lauren Church, Oliver Coton, Vicki Ward and I were the volunteers for the moose games. (Jumping out of the boat making moose noises)!
Jade Taroni (8F

Dry Activities

Everyday we did one wet activity and one dry. The dry ones were Orienteering with Steve, Archery/Mission Impossible with Steve and Hill Walking with Christie and Amy. We went orienteering in Whinlatter Forest Park and Fran Wright, Vicki Ward, Lauren Church, Jade Taroni and I got lost and arrived back half an hour late (the instructor wasn’t very pleased)! The next day we did Archery/Mission Impossible. Mission Impossible involved using your initiative and team skills to solve puzzles. Archery was fun. We got about 20 arrows each and the instructor was very helpful. The last dry activity was Hill Walking with Christie and Amy. We walked up a hill about 450m which was worth while when we got to the top because of the nice views.
Becky Brooks (8F)

Evening Activities

The first night’s activity was a mini Olympics involving 2 teams. The 2 teams did 3 tests. First was rounders. Team 1 scored 7 but team 2 scored 14. The second activity was football, where once again team 2 scored 21 and team 1 only scored 9. The final activity was volleyball and team 2 once again won! On the second night we did a game called shark infested custard which is actually like British bulldog, but when you’re caught by the 2 sharks you become funky seaweed and sing the song. On the third night we did a treasure hunt quiz where we had to find items around the campsite. On the final night there was a talent show where you could get up and show off your skills and talents and prove you were the best!
Daniel Palmer (8T)

Hauteville

Everyone seemed to find it hard to wake up so early so we could catch the coach down to Portsmouth at seven o’clock in the morning on Sunday 23 May 2004. As we travelled nearer and then got to Portsmouth, you could tell that everybody was getting excited and couldn’t wait to arrive in France.
After a six-hour ferry journey, we arrived in France and took a 1½ hour journey by coach. We arrived at the Acorn Adventure in Hauteville-sur-Mer in Normandy and received a welcome from all the instructors. We were shown around the tents and the showers and toilets and it all looked pretty good. A very cold night followed and the students and teachers all looked quite tired in the morning. However, every day had brilliant sunshine so you only had to wrap up warm when you went to bed.
We had different activities each day including; high ropes – a very challenging activity for quite a few members of the group, raft building, a very wet, yet very fun time. We also went rock climbing and ab-sailing, a chance for some of the naturals in the group to impress both the teachers and instructors.
One day we went to the famous D-day Museum in Aramanches and learned a lot about the D-day landings and the men who were part of the war. We also went to the American War Cemetery and looked at many of the names of the men who died on the white crosses and stars that filled the very moving cemetery. We even went to the Pointe du Hoc where we looked at where bombs landed and the American Rangers had to climb steep cliffs to attack the German guns. We dared each other to run down the very large crevices in the ground. It was a wonderful day out that everyone seemed to benefit from. Our other trip was to Coutances, a town near Hauteville, where we looked around the markets and then made our way around the town looking at many different buildings. Many people bought lots of nice things to take back home.
The trip to Hauteville was excellent and everyone had a good time. All the instructors and teachers were great and really encouraging and helped us achieve maximum results. I think everyone who went will agree with me when I say that it was a brilliant week and we will always remember it.
Daniella Colton (8S

Narbonne

At 3:00 on Saturday afternoon we met outside the school with our suitcases and bags. After much careful planning and a little manpower from our drivers, we managed to cram the whole group’s gear into a single coach. The journey went off without a hitch, we watched many movies including, Finding Nemo and too much complaining by the boys, Legally Blonde.
We arrived at Acorn Adventure at mid-day and we were all eager to get active in the water, unfortunately, we did not.
At the camp we were all fed and watered. Most of the people enjoyed the food with the odd exception of a few people. We enjoyed a fine variety of French bought, English cuisine e.g. Pork chops and cottage pie.
Everyone at the camp found the activities enjoyable. The fun in the sun happened both on land, lagoon and at the sea and included as follows:

Dragon Boating: A giant canoe designed for up to 15 people at one time, not including an instructor steering and a teacher precariously balanced upon the back of the boat beating a drum like a lunatic, the Vikings had it easy!
Land Yachting: By far, many people’s favourite activity, you sit in a plastic “tub” with three wheels, fairly dodgy brake and a sail. You reach very high speeds and very quickly and sometimes come to rest as planned and sometimes not!
Catamaran Sailing: A medium size four man boat with the option for you to hang on the side while sailing. The interesting thing about a Catamaran is that it has two hulls compared to the normal one.
Wind Surfing: Much as you can imagine, but harder than it seems.
Raft Building: A great team building exercise, literally building a raft, out of timber pieces and barrels filled with air. Surprisingly all but one of the groups was quite successful at this.
Pico Sailing: Pico boats are small, two man vessels which operate very much in the same way as a land yacht (plus water), It operates with a rudder and a sail with a chord attached to it. When pulled, it tightens the sail and makes you go faster and get wetter.
The four main causes of discomfort in Narbonne were sunburn, mosquito bites, War Spiders, (nasty little beggars, bites would really swell) and exhaustion. While in many of the other camps getting the students to calm down and stay in bed at night times was a problem. The group in Narbonne were only too happy to be allowed to go to bed and relax their weary muscles.
Tip for next year’s Year 8 – BRING YOUR OWN TOILET ROLL…!!
Half way through the week, we went on an excursion to Carcasonne, a medieval city, to site see and buy souvenirs and presents for our families. The goods on sale in a few shops were quite worrying, the items in question included a variety of medieval weapons, eg, double handed claymores, axes and other medieval replicas. Needless to say, it would have been a hard job trying to get those back through customs! A fascinating place though, all the same, apparently Dragon Alley in the Harry Potter films was filmed there.
The journey back home was much like the journey to Narbonne, excluding the fact that we were held up by a random check at customs and missed the Euro tunnel train back home! We caught the next one instead.
We were all glad to be back home, we were so tired, but we will all remember fondly Acorn Adventure and Hazel, Danny and the rest of the instructors.
I would just like to include a thank you to Mr Squires for organising the trip and Miss Whittell, Miss Perris, Miss West and Mr Prescott for coming with us and looking after us. A special thanks also goes to Mr Prescott for running the “Boots” store (handing out medication) in such a way that would make a chemist proud.
We all appreciated all your efforts very much.

So from all of us from Year 8 who went to Narbonne, we’d just like to say, THANKS!
Philip Cox and Michael Stokes (8B)

L’Escala

The coach arrived at school and we all boarded for our long journey to L’Escala. All of our parents were pretending to look sad while at the same time, planning a week of freedom.

26 hours later, we arrived in L’Escala to be met by our instructors in the rain. Our instructors turned out to be great fun.
The following morning, bright and early, the teachers were knocking at our doors, much to Alex’s disgust. This was the start of what turned out to be a really fantastic week. We experienced new sports such as, Kayaking, Snorkelling, Wind Surfing, Mountain Biking and my favourite, Sailing, while our teachers were testing the softness of the sand and how quickly the body can tan!
When we were not doing water sports, we went to Barcelona to the Dali Museum, which was excellent. Las Rambas (street entertainers, shops and some lovely ice cream) we saw the architecture of Antoni Gaudi, where Mr McNamara explained all about how it was done, which really helped us understand it by the way he also taught us about Dali’s art, which was weird but brilliant. We then visited the Neu Camp, what a fantastic stadium! We saw all the trophies that Barcelona had won, (which was a lot) and the club shop where most of us bought a souvenir, balls, shirts etc.
The food was not what we had expected! My main memory of the food was, horrible soup, salad, salad and more salad. By the time we got home, we were kilos lighter, but much fitter!
My main memories from the week include Dunny’s toilet stops at the side of the road and everyone taking pictures and Jordan’s spectacular “over the handlebars, wipe out” when Mountain Biking Jordan hit the ground first and the bike came down seconds later and landed on top of him!
We had a teachers versus pupils football match where pupils were by far the better team. Miss O’Brien, however, had a fantastic left foot shot, with a fabulous tip over the bar. The pupil’s team should have won, but we were cheated out of it, but being the well-behaved children that we are, we took it on the chin!
We would all like to thank, Mr Hawkes, Miss O Brien, Mr McNamara, Mr Donohoe and Mrs Sinton who showed us that teachers can, and do, have fun and that they are really just like us…….Sometimes….!!!
Matt Mulholland (8F)

Pioneer Centre ~ Cleobury Mortimer

There was a wide range of activities for all, such as raft building, climbing, abseiling and orienteering. These activities lasted about 2 hours at a time.

The centre was set in 25 acres of ground giving space for outdoor games like rounders and football. The centre is about 2 hours drive from school, which was good as it wasn’t a long coach journey. The accommodation consisted of a lodge, which was split into different sized dormitories. Breakfast was served at 8:30am every morning. We had a choice of many different things, which you went up and collected yourself. Lunch was served at 1:00 pm everyday and there was a range of different things all laid out on your table for you to help yourself. Dinner was at 6:00pm, again all the food was laid out on your table and you then helped yourself to what you wanted.
We had each day planned so we knew what activities we had for that day which was good so we knew how much time we had to do whatever we wanted, like play some sport or go to the shop. We left the Centre once to go to the Wyre Forest about 5 minutes away where we walked and created sculptures along the way. The best day was Wednesday we did raft building, it was great fun— we all jumped in and got soaked. We also did an aerial runway (zip wire), which again was really enjoyable.
It was a great study week. The teachers all enjoyed themselves, everyone had a great time.

Harriet Baillie 8B

School Based Activities

Enrichment week proved a big success for all of the students this year. Even the students who did not wish to participate in the residential trips had the chance to enjoy the week and make the most of the break from the usual school routine. There were approximately seventeen students who went on the school based activity week. They did a wide range of different activities and had the chance to acquaint themselves with the more unfamiliar of the students in their school year.
On Monday, we conducted a very professional scientific investigation. The aim of the exercise was to improve our concentration and observance and to solve the mystery of the Art Departments missing digital camera. We enjoyed doing this and looked forward to the next lesson, which was a follow up of the crime scene investigation. The next lesson was rather difficult, however. The aim of the lesson was for each student to produce a murder story, which included some of the different techniques that they used in the precious lesson. This was a competition and so the best story was to be rewarded with a small prize. After lunch, we then started a batik project in art and went home after an enjoyable first day at school.
For four periods of the second day, we were scheduled to be paying games with Connexions. However, one of the people fell ill and we were forced to spend three periods of pain staking work putting together computers in the computer room. Not many of us saw the funny side of it though! We then did an ICT lesson in which we were creating a webpage about Enrichment week. After that, we finished the day by completing our batik project, which was a good end to the day.
On Wednesday, we spent the whole day playing games with endeavour. We did a lot of trust games, which involved putting your trust in another member of the group. We also created an Egg Protector, which we made a catapult and did various other activities. The day was probably the most enjoyable so far overall.
On Thursday, we spent the first two hours doing jobs for various departments around the school such as, shredding paper in the Maths department and cleaning and repairing textbooks in the Science department. This wasn’t very fun as you can imagine and we were relieved to come to the next part of the day. We were cooking our lunch in the food department. We made pizzas, shortbread and salads. We spent most of the lunch hour eating our food and were extremely full up when we came to the last lesson. For the last hour of the day, we were doing PE. We were playing a game, which is known as, “Ultimate Frisbee”. This rounded off a slightly less enjoyable day than the others.
Our final day of Enrichment Week was spent doing Film and Media Studies all day. We designed a cover for a film magazine and also wrote an article for it too. We finally came to the end of the week nicely, with a lovely gentle viewing of the Shreck film, which was voted for over films such as Charlie’s Angels and X-Men 2. Many of us had enjoyed Enrichment week and we hope that the next year’s trip will be just as successful as this one.
Jack Anscomb (8C)

Student windsurfing.

Group of Study Week students.

Photo of lone person opening a lock gate.