Through the year there have been classes and clubs on a request basis to meet students interests and needs, these can be run be staff or students alike.
Science Club: This is a long running club where students get to explore hands on science. Activities have included electronics and simple robot building; chemistry such as making crystals; physics looking at light, reflection and refraction; energy, making windmills and catapults and much more.
There have also been recent Chemistry lessons for some of the older students.
The school has also taken part in national events such as Science week where students used Newtons laws to build self propelling cars for a great car race; and Engineers week where students designed and built a Lego bridge that had to support a 2 kg weight.
Students with an interest in languages are learning French with one of our staff members and Japanese with a volunteer who comes in weekly. A group of students have also come together to start to learn American Sign Language (ASL).
We are lucky to have plenty of outdoor green space in our school grounds and have been working on a school garden to grow organic vegetables. Various students have helped with collecting mulch and seaweed from the beach for our no dig beds, sowing seeds and potting on plants, planting things out and weeding. We look forward to enjoying potatoes, onions, kale, pumpkins, peas and salad from the garden this year.
Survival Skills: Initiated by one of our students, Survival Club has evolved to cover all manner of embodied skills from plant lore and bushcraft to tool use and wood working. Over the last year things covered include: starting and minding campfires; working with natural building materials like willow and bamboo; use of and care for knives, axes, saws and chisels; basic wood carving; plant identification and foraging; direction finding.
In the coming year we plan to deepen and expand this repertoire, maintaining a strong focus on the outdoors and physical activity.
Another ongoing project in the school has been game design, which has been possible due to the voluntary input of a local game designer. He has worked with various students, but one in particular, to help them develop and realise game designs. This has been both through coding and the creation of physical board games.
As well as clubs and activities we offer ‘stations’ where staff can be available to share skills and support learning.
These have included: writing station every week, which is a dedicated time for
any interested students to come together and share story ideas, work on their own written pieces, write and discuss poetry or simply play with words and language; Music space or one to one sessions or impromptu jams; Yoga, acrobatics, literacy, maths, circus skills, baking, art & illustration, sculptures, and more...
