Session 1B (Year 8) - Saturday 23rd November 2013

Today saw the third cohort of girls start the ESIP programme. We welcomed our new Year 8 group with Induction and welcomed their parents to the Headmistress' Welcome Breakfast in the Forest Dining Hall.

Mrs Penny Goodman, Head of Forest Girls' School opened the event and talked about the role of Forest School. Dr Simon Davey, Programme Leader explained the vision for ESIP and the role we play in developing ability, belief and character as well as our expectations of parents and how we can best work together. The impact of ESIP was demonstrated with a presentation from two of our ESIP Year 9s (Jasmina and Jannat) who talked about the difference ESIP had made to them and how much they had changed in the last twelve months.

Parents asked questions in the Q&A session before Mrs Goodman led tours of the school.

Meanwhile all 30 new Year 8s were getting to know each other in the Girls School Hall with icebreaker exercises.

We kicked off Year Eight with the Induction session - an introduction to ESIP with exercises in the Big 5 skills, learning capability Runaround and a series of videos. We played with modelling clay and party poppers to demonstrate the malleability of our brains (and our capability to develop new skills and abilities through practice and effort whatever the extent or our current ability) and how our brains create those new synaptic connections.

“Today I achieved teamworking with people I don’t even know.”

In our Inner Hedgehog exercise, we thought about what we were passionate about, what we could become excellent at and what might make us money in the future. This exercise will help shape our ambitions and future opportunities and leads into future sessions and projects.

After break we headed off to the Ways of Seeing session led by Miss Spencer-Ellis and Miss Taylor.

Ways of Seeing focused on two of the Big 5 skills - creative thinking and critical thinking.

“I have learnt that speaking in front of people isn’t as scary as it seems and learnt that I should believe in myself to be successful. I achieved reading my poem in front of others. It gave me more courage to do challenges I wouldn’t normally do.”

We learned about perspectives (and challenged our perspectives) and we interpreted some paintings (and discussed how our interpretations were different to the artists). We brainstormed ideas and we created a poem each.

Most of the girls had the opportunity to read out their poems from the ‘chair of confidence and poetry’. Although some girls initially didn’t want to read they fed off each other’s confidence and became proud of their efforts. They learned more about how to take their peers’ ideas into account and think more deeply.

"Even the girls who didn't like English and Poetry enjoyed the session."

By the end we had a better understanding of the different views of art and poetry and flexed our creative muscles.

 “I learnt about different ways of seeing and I learnt that to be successful you will fail sometimes but you need to try.”

At the end of the day we had Reflection Time, an opportunity to consider what we had learned and set ourselves some challenges to build on that learning in advance of the next session. 

See the gallery of photos from the day.