At the end of last week, we celebrated the many partnerships we have with our local primary schools by inviting them all into school for our annual ‘Enrichment Day’. This is a wonderful day of fun and activity where children from our partnership primary schools come together in groups to enjoy a day of enrichment activities led by our Community Partnership boys.
215 children from Putnoe Primary, Cauldwell Primary, Brickhill Primary, Shortstown Primary, Edith Cavell Primary, Goldington Green Academy and Scott Primary came along to the day, and, after a welcome from Head Master James Hodgson, the children took part in a carousel of activities.
These included Shakespearean drama workshops in our Quarry Theatre and ‘A Safari with Sound’ session, which helped the pupils explore what they know about sound, what it is and how we can describe it. In another session, pupils also learned some basic Mandarin words, phrases and writing and looked at Chinese culture.
The children also learned about Greek Myths, enjoyed creative writing with ‘wild words’ and got thinking about some fundamental truths about society and the world around us in a philosophy lesson.
Outside on the playing fields children enjoyed some expert cricket coaching on our 1st XI pitch. One of the guest teachers told us that one pupil, who plays cricket regularly, was in awe of the greens and could not wait to try her skills on the well-kept square.
All children got to try several sessions over the course of the day and enjoyed being taught by our teachers and boys, all of whom have been visiting their schools regularly as part of the school’s Community Partnership Programme, which aims for every boy to have made a meaningful contribution to the community by the time he leaves the school.
One of the highlights, as you might guess, was lunch! The children joined Bedford School boys in the Dining Hall where they enjoyed Friday’s regular menu of fish and chips.
Speaking to some of the primary school children over lunchtime, this is what they had to say:
“I would say that this is a good opportunity to learn some things that you would not normally have learned and it’s really fun.”
“I liked doing the telephone cup, alarm clock and cup of water experiments. There was a stick and some water. I had to hit the stick against some material which started vibrating and when I put it in the water the water started to spin out of the cup, and I learned where sound came from.”
“I quite liked learning the traditional Mandarin song about the two tigers.”
“I enjoyed writing a poem about a fat rat.”
Chris Prior, Head of Community Partnerships explained, “What is so heart-warming about this scheme is that we can not only see just how much our partners are benefitting from the activities, but also how much our boys are learning and maturing from the partnerships. Feedback from the primary school children who attended the enrichment day was genuinely lovely, many of them commenting how they had made friends with our boys and that was their best bit.”
