Virtual Plus Festival
Over the past two week, More Able pupils from KS1, 2 and 3 have been invited to participate in an Educational Festival designed especially to stretch and challenge More Able pupils. This has involved a series of talks, lectures and interactive workshops, with opportunities for pupils to meet like-minded peers to learn about a wide variety of subjects. As well as the educational benefits, it has also helped to create a sense of belonging, reduce feelings of isolation and help maintain positive mental health. Additionally, there have also been opportunities for parents to meet with other parents to discuss any ideas or concerns.
The event was organised through Potential Plus, specialists in More Able provision. Over 50 different workshops were organised throughout the festival, including making Zines; Design a Themed Playground; Eating Insects; The Titanic; Science Experiments; Music; Drawing Sounds; Writing Poetry; Stop Frame Animation; Being Peter Pan; Monster Design; Art and Science; Mathematics of Black Holes; Political Theory in Action; Alan Turing; Critical Thinking; Einstein’s Theory of Relativity; Quantum Computing; Philosophical questions; Maths; Canadian history; Building Bridges… As the school's co-ordinator for More Able provision, I have personally participated in over 30 of these events this fortnight and the standard has been exceptional. Well done to all involved. I hope you were able to make the most of these superb opportunities.
Mrs Doran
Report from Hanaa C who attended the V Plus Festival
During half term I was involved in something called Virtual Plus. It is for students to enter every day and learn some cool new things. I loved it. I had to go on the 8-11 year olds since I am 9. On my first day, we were going to design a playground. When we joined the zoom session, there were two people called Rowena and Mark and they told us to be adventurous, explore and to use things around us. They inspired us.
I listened to them and when I finished I felt very excited about my drawing. I had designed my own special playground. It was a sea creature theme inspired by my brother's fish tank! It had monkey bars where you climbed the octopus's legs, it had a pole to slide down that was an electric eel, it had a climbing frame with fish on the ropes. When I was done I felt really good about signing up.
The next day it got even better, this session was called The magic of music (according to science). The lady who did this was called Emer Maguire. She was a songwriter and she helped us understand if music was science or art. At the end, she sang us one of her extraordinary songs called 'Lockdown' and it was about Coronavirus and how it was effecting all of our lives.
All of the others were awesome and I really enjoyed them but my favourite was called Dream Big! It was about drama and the lady who was running the session was called Mary Benzies. She had acting experience and she told us about a theatre show. She was talking about some fairies and elves. There was King Oberon, Queen Titania, Puck and Bottom. They all had a catchphrase/line they always said. She told us to get one prop per character. Whenever she King Oberon, we would hold our prop and say "Bow down to me,". Whenever she said Queen Titania, we would hold our other prop and say "No bow down to me," Puck and Bottom also had lines. My prop for King Oberon was a big stick, for queen Titania I had a mirror, for Puck I had a teddy bear as he was playful and for bBttom I had a crown because he thought he was the best.
I really enjoyed these sessions and I hope all the other children did too.