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Summer School – 2021

Summer School August 2021

In response to the offer of funding by the Secretary of state for Summer School Provision, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School chose to run a one week summer school (WB 16th August) to our new year 7 students offering a blend of academic education and enrichment activities with the theme of ‘Spies and Detectives’. In total, the value claimed via the summer school programme was £20656.87. Of this figure, £15391.25 was used to staff the provision and £5265.62 was spent on educational supplies, enrichment activities and food.

Summer School Diary

The week started with a bang as we welcomed all Summer schoolers on to site. We started with some breakfast and a welcome assembly and students received their goody bag with a QEGS water bottle, pen, frisbee, pin badge and a copy of the novel Vi Spy which is our theme for the week.

After registering, some students went to the library to start the spy mission activities and others went to the classrooms to start reading our novel. Session 2 was code breaking and using our Maths skills! After Maths we all went to the science labs to have a go at some experiments. Some groups took a closer look at fibres, diamonds and blood under the microscopes and the other groups were using our bunsen burners (all with the aim of completing the spy mission).

We stopped for a bit of lunch and sat outside on our picnic benches before starting an afternoon of spy themed team building. Watching groups work out how to grab the diamonds and walk as a team in their invisibility cloaks was hilarious. Well done to all today. We had 8 very deserving Stars of the Day who won a badge and spy pen! Staff have been giving out raffle tickets as rewards and will do so all week- these will be placed into a grand prize draw on Friday.

It was lovely to hear (and see) at the end of the day, that many of our students had made some new friends and felt more confident with being at secondary school even on day 1! We look forward to seeing all students tomorrow.

Day two of Summer school and we started with assembly led by Miss Wilband (Progress Leader of Year 7) and Miss Platt (Teaching Assistant and part of the Summer School Planning Team). Our first session was Maths and converting binary into decimals to decipher the spy codes. We then had a welcome brain break with some cookies, fruit and chats with our new classmates.

Session 2 was English and we continued to read our novel ‘Vi Spy’ and completed some fun activities based on the chapters read so far. Students are really enjoying this novel and have been given their own copy of it to take home after Summer school is over. Session 3 was Art- staff were blown away with the talent we have coming into year 7 and some wonderful pieces were created.

We then had lunch together and continued to enjoy getting to know each other especially any new people we hadn’t met before.
The day ended with some spy themed team building activities in the sports hall and gym and students who hadn’t attempted to walk in the invisibility cloak were able to do so today plus those who hadn’t given the diamond challenge a go, were able to try and suss the technique needed to reach the diamonds.

Eight more Stars of the Day were nominated by their group leader and loads more raffle tickets were given out.
We are all having a ball and can’t wait to see what Wednesday brings our spies.

Leading this morning’s assembly was Miss Platt and Mrs Watson Jones (Summer School Planner extraordinaire and Teacher of Science). The assembly focussed on ice breakers, team building and reminding students of QEGS expectations

Students were delighted to be back in the Science labs today using our microscopes and Bunsen burners. They are learning very quickly about the health and safety requirements in a lab and have been really mature when completing their detective investigations.

After break, students continued to read the novel Vi Spy and complete code breaking activities linked to English and Maths. Our Summer School spies are really very good at the code breaking and unscrambling letters to decipher key information.
After lunch students completed their orienteering challenge- they loved this. Students had to collect the letters from across the site and then unscramble the words. There was a lot of excitement during this activity and they completed it brilliantly. Well done!

Tomorrow is our last day of classroom based sessions and then we have our celebration event on Friday. We have lots and lots of surprises for our Summer Schoolers for Friday’s event as a way of congratulating them on such a successful week. Just a reminder that it’s a 1pm collection/ finish on Friday.

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Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Ashbourne Derbyshire