Session Six - Gallery Slideshow

Session Five - Gallery Slideshow

Session Seven - Saturday 24th March 2012

Spring has sprung in ESIP and it was a warm and sunny Saturday morning for Session Seven and a day devoted to science.

Today we learned about aerodynamics and streamlining. We looked at how air moves around an aeroplane’s wing and literally creates ‘stream lines’ and how these can be modelled and used to help design vehicles by showing the direction in which fluid will travel. We learned that drag is a frictional force caused by turbulence and we watched a falcon fly to see aerodynamics in practice.

The first experiment involved an experiment with plasticine shapes and a long tube of water to test the speed at which different objects moved through the fluid (water). We worked out how to make it a fair test – always having shapes with the same mass, keeping conditions the same (e.g. dropping the shape with the same amount of force) and worked out which was dependent and independent variables. The girls worked in groups and wrote up the experiments and drew graphs to determine the most streamlined shape – the one which moved through a given distance of water in the tube in the shortest possible time.

Miss Sym and Mr Watson, ably supported by Miss Christu, devised a far from elementary experiment involving the now infamous Forest School Wind Tunnel. Our Emerging Scholars were set a challenge to take an awkward shape and make it aerodynamic by minimising the drag. To make things more interesting we added constraints around budget (the girls had to buy materials to modify their shape), teamwork (they had to work in teams of four or five and ensure everyone had a role and was contributing) and innovation (the design needed to be original).

The designs were then testing in the Forest School Wind Tunnel and the girls gave presentations on why they had created their design the way they did and how successful they thought it was. There were awards for Most Aerodynamic, Innovation, Most Cohesive Team, Most Economic and a special award for the Biggest Catastrophe during the challenge. The group winning the latter award were least pleased about their success!

The day ended with Reflection Time and ideas about what we will do for the End of Year Event. That’s all from ESIP for this term so we wish everyone a Happy Easter and a enjoyable holiday. There are sixty three days until the next ESIP session so we set a challenge to develop a new ‘habit’ in that time. We look forward to the results.

Session Six - Saturday 3rd March

ESIP aims to help our students develop new skills and support them with the important practical skills in life so what better than to teach them how to argue more effectively?

Mr Goswami and Miss Pellegrini teamed up to lead two groups in an introduction to BP (British Parliamentary Debating). We learned how to structure a debate, how to make and rebut points and developed our confidence in speaking in front of groups. There was really no place to hide today as all the girls had to contribute responses in front of their group and even the slightly shy ones spoke up.

To warm things up ahead of the final big debate we played a number of games. First of these was the ‘Where Do You Stand’, literally standing to one side of the room or the other based on whether they agree or disagree. The girls then had to ‘defend’ their position. ‘Motions’ included banning homework or violent video games and taxing junk food. Although it probably is best to tax junk food eaten whilst playing violent video games at the same time as doing homework.

Next up was the Balloon Debate. Five pupils volunteered to take on a persona and tried to persuade the others, by means of a two minute speech, why they should not be thrown out of a sinking balloon. The rest of the class then had to vote on who to save!  The five personas included Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and Simon Cowell. Suffice to say that Mandela survived at least one balloon despite someone voting that he ought to be thrown out because he’s the oldest and most likely to die next anyway. 

In the Alley Debate we were given a motion and had to face each other in rows. We had a volunteer who would move towards the line (For [in proposition] or Against [in opposition]) depending on persuasive the argument was. Suffice to say the further the debate went on the harder it was to come up with responses but the girls did very well and all contributed. This was also an exercise in taking risks – making a point you might not be 100% confident on and being prepared to be challenged and develop a better argument.

As part of the learning we watched some world class debates and learned about what makes these debaters successful and what techniques we can use in both school and everyday life. We learned how to structure a point and what PEEL was – Point, Explanation, Example, Link – and then practised it within a simple debate. We learned about points of information and to wrap things up we played the Alley Rebuttal Game – like the Alley Debate but we had to rebut the points our partners made.

After lunch we prepared and participated in debates around whether alcohol should be drunk on TV and on the legalisation of euthanasia. All the students participated in a debate and we had two grand finals with excellent responses and very convincing arguments.

This session was all about speaking. By the end of the day, all the students gave a speech which was creditable and worthy of competition standard for their age. The students were excellent at supporting and encouraging each other. The session was fast paced and the students were always fully engaged in the activity. There was no chance to sit back and the balloon debate in particular was very competitive.

Today demonstrated how far the girls have come since our very first ESIP session back in October. There is still some variation in individual confidence but everyone participated. The girls are able to share, apply knowledge and could talk eloquently about their emotional responses to quite personal topics. Even when they didn’t agree with the side of the argument they were asked to put forward, they made a convincing case.

Session Five - Saturday 4th February 2012

We’re back at Forest School on a February morning for a day of language, linguistics and code breaking. We started breakfast club with the Getting to Know You exercise – learning about what our fellow students liked, were good at and what annoyed them. This involved a lot of scampering about the Hall, asking questions and writing down the answers in a competition to be first to collect the most responses. We were slightly puzzled by the person who gets annoyed by prawns…

Today Miss Hall from St Angela’s and Miss Carmichael from Forest took us on a journey of languages ancient and modern and taught us how to develop and crack codes. We learn that language is like a science – you need to look for patterns. 

The lessons started with a quiz looking at different European languages. We looked in more detail at Swedish words and how to establish rules for words.

We went on to look at the origins of English words. Latin may be an old language but the Emerging Scholars managed to surprise their teachers with how much Latin they already knew and all thanks to Harry Potter! So if you wondered what your daughter gets out of reading those books and watching those movies, well now you know they really do contribute to academic improvement.

Break time was getting a little quiet so we introduced a new ball game, most of which involved seeing how many balls could be aimed at Simon’s head at the same time.

We practised writing the Greek alphabet and translating English words into Greek including writing our own names in Greek. We learned of the value of Latin and Greek in medicine and a number of girls left the session with plans to learn more Latin and Greek to help them in their medical careers in the future. This helped increase the relevance of the session and breathed new life into the languages.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the day was the code breaking. You need particular skills to be a good code breaker. You need to think carefully, to be able to spot patterns (also useful in Maths), to be analytical and think about what is in front of you. You need to develop your problem solving skills and a little quiet and a lot of focus really helps.

There was a challenge to create codes for other people and get them to break them – all in a competitive spirit. We had background music from Mission Impossible just to add a little extra pressure. 

The girls developed a number of codes and we look forward to trying these out on parents at the End of Year event!