Y9 AGT Conference, The Queen's College, Oxford

This year, as part of the West Wilts Federation for AGT, we were delighted to attend a conference at The Queen's College, Oxford. This conference was an opportunity for year 9 students from across the Federation to get to know their peers from other schools and develop skills they might not usually work on in school, including problem solving and team work with people they were unfamiliar with.

Ten students from each school attended the conference, along with two sixth form mentors, who worked extremely hard to ensure the students all stayed on task and did their best. Each Y9 group was made up of a student from each school, and the conference began on Wednesday afternoon with team building games and activities to allow the groups to meet each other. Once at the conference, each team was given a newspaper from which they had to identify problems facing our nation today. From these, each team was given one topic to focus on for the rest of the conference. They then carried out research from the newspapers and online to create an eight minute presentation on the causes, consequences and possible solutions to the problem they had been given.

This proved quite the challenge for the pupils, who had to come up with engaging presentations without the use of IT: I have to say that I have never seen newspapers so well used! The standard of the final presentations was extremely high and, as a judge, I must confess that it was extremely close and took us a long time to decide on a winning team.

As well as all the hard work, pupils were also offered a short tour around the sights of Oxford and we had a formal dinner at Queen's on Thursday night.


We were lucky to have a number of inspiring speakers to entertain us. The Provost opened the conference with a short history of The Queen's College, and our keynote speaker was Dr Sarah McElwee, a researcher in psychology and education with a particular interest in AGT, who talked to us about the issues surrounding the use of scientific research. At dinner, the Proctor of the college talked to us about college life, and some famous alumni, including Tim Berners-Lee and Rowan Atkinson; and the conference was closed by the college Admissions Tutor who gave the students some tips on applying to Oxford.

Overall, the conference was a resounding success and the students really enjoyed it. I think it helped to open their eyes a little to what is out there and hopefully it will inspire them to aim high in the coming years.

Some updates

It's been a while since I have posted about what we've been doing, so here are some updates.

Extension Tasks
The extension activity spinners I mentioned in March are in use in a few classrooms around the school, and the feedback from students has been positive so far. Since departments were encouraged to generate extension activities that were subject-specific, I have not been providing these weekly as in the past. My focus next year is going to be on raising the challenge for all pupils in all parts of the lesson, and my weekly updates from September will focus on this.

West Wilts Federation Events
There are 2 coming up before the end of the school year.

We have selected 10 year 9 students to attend our Federation Conference at Queen's College, Oxford, from July 1st-2nd. I'm so excited to be organising this for the second year running, and that we have managed to secure such a prestigious institution to host us. 80 young people from across West Wilts will be working together to come up with solutions to some of the issues faced by our nation. Look forward to a full report back!

The following week, 80 year students from across West Wilts will be taking part in a number of challenges at Undercover Rock, including rock climbing and high ropes. This will give students an opportunity to meet their peers and push themselves out of their usual comfort zones to solve problems as teams. Sign ups for this close on Friday and spaces are going fast.

In addition to this, we will be having the first meeting for Malaysia 2010 students in July, and we're currently working on a careers fair for year 10 students, to be held in October.

Ofsted
When Ofsted came in last month they were complimentary about the extra-curricular provision for AGT students here at Matravers. Students interviewed were very positive about the events that they are offered and made it out to be a real strength. I am very pleased to get such good feedback! I am already calendaring next year's events and look forward to them being as widely enjoyed as this year's.

Murder Mystery 2010

Last weekend we held our annual Murder Mystery for KS3, at Braeside in Devizes. This is an enrichment event, aimed at developing skills such as teamwork and creative problem solving, whilst also giving students a try at techniques and topics they might not cover until later in their school career, such as forensic science and accounting.

Each year we have a different theme, and staff work together to write the scripts, come up with the motives and create the evidence for each member of the team. It is a large undertaking, but made worth it by the enjoyment and enthusiasm show by the students.

This year, our theme was Britain's Most Haunted. As well as solving the murder, students worked in their teams to write a ghost story (which had to have a twist at the end so I didn't have nightmares!) which was told at the campfire on Friday night; they also had a technology task during which they had to create a ghost detector. On Saturday morning we did a scavenger hunt around Avebury stone circle, and on Saturday night we staged the Ghost Olympics, which was made even more challenging by the ghost costumes we insisted on certain team members donning before taking part.

Busy though we kept them, we culd not distract them from trying to solve the dastardly murder of Miss "Ed Balls" Oliver, a soundman who had been stabbed during the filming of the show on Friday night. Her murderer, Mr "Al Beano" Phillips was quickly apprehended and revealed in questioning that he had been blackmailed into committing he crime, but unfortunately he died before he could reveal who his blackmailer was, having carelessly drunk from a poisoned cup of coffee. Translating his diary from his native French language didn't shed any light on the subject, so students were forced to use forensic science to test for poison and finger prints on the poison bottle. The accounts for the show were also examined and the suspects questioned. Students then produced an incident board, an incident report and a reconstruction of the events.

Some comments from the students:
"Tiring, but a good experience"
"I really enjoyed the weekend as I enjoyed trying out new things"
"Really fun and enjoyable; quite funny as well."
"Challenging, stressful, but overall - awesome."
"This weekend was absolutely amazing, I've really enjoyed myself and I hope I get the opportunity to come again next year!"

Murder Mystery Theme announcement

We had a successful after school session today, which most of the pupils attended to meet with their groups and come up with a team name and logo.

This year's theme will be Britain's Most Haunted. We are suggesting that pupils dress as ghostbusters or inventive ghouls for dinner on Friday night, after which we will be having a campfire with entertainment provided by the pupils. On Thursday afternoon they will be spending time working with a member of the English department to create their own ghost stories, each of which must have a comedic twist at the end. Marshmallows at the ready! See you all on Friday.

Extension Activity of the Week: 20

This week: Feeling Summary Yet?

For this activity, you will need to provide students with a relevant newspaper or magazine article, or perhaps a page from a higher-level text book. Ask pupils to summarise the information provided.

There are a few ways you could do this -

1. Pick out the words that seem to be used to most in the text, in 30 seconds, to provide a hint at what the subject of it is.
2. Summarise each paragraph in 10 words or less.
3. Create 3 bullet points to cover the most important information shared in the article.
4. Write an abstract to summarise the entire content for another reader.

This will encourage students to speed read and develop their note taking skills, no matter what their level or ability.

Extension Activity Selectors

In an effort to make good quality extension tasks available to all students, no matter how fraught the lesson or busy the teacher, I have created a (highly technical) resource which will be appearing on the walls of classrooms over the next few months.


Extension Activity Selectors have been distributed to two members of each faculty, following a successful inset session spent creating faculty-specific extension tasks to full up the segments. At Easter, I'll be asking for feedback from staff and students on this resource and then making sure there is one in every classroom, once any necessary tweaks have been made. I have already had some positive feedback from students.

There will also be a Flash version coming, which can be inserted into Smartboard slides to make the process even more painfree.

Extension Activity of the Week: 19

This week: The world without....

Encourage your students to think Big Picture with this week's task. Pick something key from the lesson - for example, no more fractions; no more maps; no more theatres; and ask students to ruminate on what the world would be like if this was the case.

This will help them to think about their learning in a wider context and think about how important what they are studying really is.