Excellent Outreach Activity

The final full week of term saw an extensive programme of Y5 activities.

A dozen local primary schools enjoyed a day of summer sports, two days of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teaching and a couple of days dedicated to Modern Languages. In all, over 600 children were welcomed to Bablake over the week.

Mrs Cathy Scott-Burt (Outreach Coordinator and Teacher of Music) reflected: "I’m enormously grateful to all the Bablake staff who took part and planned some absolutely brilliant learning for the Year 5s; it was amazing to see how enthusiastic the children were at the end of some pretty packed days!

My particular thanks go to Miss Jayne Simmons (Physics) and Mrs Helen Billings (i/c German), who put a huge effort into the planning of the STEM and MFL days respectively. I love sharing the best of Bablake with other schools and this has certainly been a week of Outreach highlights. The Institute of Physics helped pupils launch a rocket on the main field; some pupils learnt Russian or another European language, while others enjoyed coding with our computers."

Miss Simmons added: "It is incredibly important we promote science, technology, engineering and maths in our teaching as the more technology our world develops, the more important it is we have people interested in these subjects and study them to a higher level. With time and facilities to teach and inspire younger pupils in science being limited in some primary schools, I hope, after these sessions, the pupils might have gained a new interest in STEM."

Our own Second year pupils were excellent guides throughout the week, while our Fifth and Sixth form pupils, who helped run many of the sessions, also stood out as fantastic teachers.

(Photographs by Bablake's Design Technology department.)