Summer School Highlights

A brilliant 3 weeks of activities at BSG Summer School!

Written by Shaila Chainani, Summer School Organiser

WEEK 1

4-5 year olds

Our youngest students have settled into their classes extremely well and have really enjoyed their Cambridge English classes, as well as their Music and PE lessons. In their English classes they have been focusing on greetings, introductions, numbers, shapes and classroom language. They have been practicing their phonics and looking at initial letter sounds. In Music, they have been learning a musical story called ‘Duck in the Truck’ and have used instruments to replicate the sounds in the story. Last but not least, the children have really loved playing treasure hunt and animal games in their swimming lessons.

6-7 year olds

This age group has thoroughly enjoyed learning linguistic features and grammatical skills through games and songs. In their Music lessons, they have started to learn the story of Mowgli’s adventures in the jungle as well as a beautiful, traditional story from Africa called ‘The Awongalema Tree’. What they have enjoyed most is playing the djembe drums- learning to play together as a group creating some loud but rhythmical music! In their swimming lessons they’ve learnt some basic front crawl skills and in their PE lessons they’ve leant ball control and some basketball skills.

8-10 year olds

Our older students have been looking at Superheroes this week and creating their own Superhero to star in a comic book strip. Not only have they learnt about the features of a comic book, but they have also used onomatopoeia words as well as comparative and superlative adjectives to describe the characters in their comic book script.  In their Music lessons they have been learning the story of Robin Hood and playing the djembe drums. Swimming lessons have entailed students practicing their front crawl techniques and competing in races. In PE lessons they have played games and learnt basketball techniques.

Lastly, we would like to thank the Karate Tiger Temple academy for providing our summer school students with a free karate lesson last Friday. It was great to witness even our youngest students actively engaged, whilst learning defense techniques.

WEEK 2

We have had a wonderful second week of Summer School at BSG! Here are some of our highlights from week 2 for you to share in our fun and learning.

 4-5 year olds

These may be our youngest students in Summer School, but what they lack in years, they certainly make up for in enthusiasm! English lessons this week have focused on colours and toys, using games, chants and following. The children have learnt 11 new phoneme sounds as well as 4 simple diagraphs in phonics. In story time, the children really enjoyed reading ‘The Rainbow Fish’, ‘We’re going on a Nature Hunt’, Brown Bear Brown Bear what do you see?” and " Red is Best". These stories inspired some magnificent collage artwork.

In Music Mr. Dan has continuing working with the classes on their “Singing Playgrounds” and “Duck in a Truck” performances, learning more songs and continuing to use instruments and props to bring the stories to life.

PE has been great fun. In football, they learnt how to play the ‘space ship game’ as well as some dribbling and shooting skills. In swimming the children have continued to build on their water confidence with some fun water activities.

6-7 year olds

These classes have continued to focus on linguistic features and grammatical skills through fun activities. It’s been all about ‘them’ this week, with the children learning how to give personal information with greater detail using adjectives; this was reinforced when they used more adjectives to describe their family. The children have also been learning verbs to describe movement to give instructions, which was linked with the correct use of singular and plural nouns.

Mr Dan has continued working on the musical performances of ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘The Awongalema Tree’ with the children. The songs and dramatic music, as well as the use of props, has really brought these two stories to life!

The children have continued to be extremely active in PE this week. In gymnastics, they learnt some rolls, jumping and balance skills. In swimming the children have continued to build on their water confidence with some fun water activities.

8-10 year olds

The older students have been learning all about Robin Hood this week, which has helped them understand the script and songs they have been working on in music lessons. We have read some of the legend about Robin Hood and learnt about some of the main characters. The students used their Cambridge English focus of describing items of clothing as well as using correct adjective order to write some wonderful descriptions of the characters and Sherwood Forest. There was even time for some shooting bows and arrows in an archery lesson!

In music, Mr Dan has finished teaching the students all the songs for their Robin Hood performance and has almost completed the script. The students have really enjoyed putting their acting skills into telling a story with musical accompaniment.

There has been a real competitive feel to the PE lessons this week, with water polo games in swimming and basketball and football games in PE. The students showed their competitive natures in some friendly, but exciting games. 

Friday afternoon saw the real highlight of the week with a team of golf instructors from Birdie Golf giving all the students a free taster session. The students had the chance to practice chipping, driving and putting while moving around a purpose made course. The Birdie Golf team gave out prizes, with the two youngest classes winning 1^st and 2^nd place, which shows you are never to young to pick up a club and play golf!

WEEK 3

It has been a fantastic final week of Summer School, busy lessons, active sports and a grand musical finale. See some of our highlights from week 3.

4-5 year olds

Three weeks of busy days certainly hasn’t slowed down our youngest students! This week, the children completed units 5 and 6 from the Cambridge Kid’s Box. In Unit 5 ‘House’, they named the rooms and furniture of a house and spoke about their own houses. They also used prepositions to describe where things are. In Unit 6 ‘My body’, the children learnt the different parts of the body and practiced sentence structure like “I have got ….” and “I haven’t got ….”. In phonics, the children worked on phase 2, recognising and writing the missing initial, medial and final sounds from some words. During story time this week, the children have enjoyed reading ‘Aliens love underpants’, ‘The Grouchy Ladybug’, ‘The Gingerbread Man’, ‘Aliens love underpants’ and ‘The Gruffalo’.

In music the children continued to put the finishing touches to their performances of ‘The singing Playground’ and “Duck in a Truck’. The children have learnt all the songs and have focused on turning these musical pieces into a performance with props and instrumental accompaniment.

It has been all about active fun this week in PE and swimming this week. In swimming the children enjoyed some water games while in PE played some exciting team games, including ‘Tug of War’.

6-7 year olds

This week has been just as busy for the ‘Starters’ classes. They have been working hard on the Cambridge English units. Focusing on sentence structure when using conjunctions to add information, they even tried using different conjunctions in their own sentences. The children have also been asking and answering questions when discussing and describing their favourite foods and animals. Grammar work focused on the correct usage of 'this is' and 'these are' and irregular plural nouns.

In music the children continued to put the finishing touches to their performances of ‘The Awongalema Tree’ and ‘The Jungle Book’. All the songs and instrumental accompaniments have really brought these stories alive, and the children have clearly enjoyed learning them!

This week the children have been enjoying some indoor games during PE sessions and have been continuing with their swimming lessons in the pool. In swimming, lots of children learnt how to ‘lie down’ in the water. They were motivated to learn this because they wanted to relax in the water after a hard day of work, like they do while they are on holiday at the beach!

8-10 year olds

It’s been a magical final week of Summer School for the older children. The topic based learning has been all about Harry Potter. The children learnt all about the characters, lessons taken in Hogwarts and even sorted themselves into Hogwarts Houses. In Cambridge English lessons the grammar focus was on verbs; modal and imperative, and using different conjunctions to add information, to show contrast between facts and add reasons ‘why’ to a clause.  These skills were then used in their Potter work when writing instructions for a potion and writing about their favourite wizard to create a chocolate frog card.

In music, the children have been adapting to some new key characters in their performance of Robin Hood. The children have worked hard to perfect the story and the songs are sounding fantastic!

PE and Swimming lessons have been extreme this week. In swimming the children continued to perfect their water polo skills, with some great team tactics coming into play, which resulted in some exciting games. PE lessons reached a new height of enjoyment with the children taking to the climbing wall!

Celebration Day

Friday was a day of celebration, and brought to an end of Summer School 2018 at BSG! The day was filled with a morning of musical performances by the children, which all parents were invited to enjoy. There was a real buzz of excitement coming from the music room as the children sang and acted their hearts out! It was a most enjoyable way to spend the final morning, and the children revelled in being able to show off all their hard work. It was a proud moment for Mr Dan, the class teachers and all the attending parents. The celebrations were completed with a lovely BBQ outside on the grass area. Summer School 2018 at BSG has been wonderfully successful, and lots of fun. See you all next year!