The Military Marching Band - performance on Exhibition Day

The Year 9 students of the Military Marching Band project worked with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Band to not only learn to play unfamiliar instruments in two weeks but to create this stunning marching display too.

Military Marching Band

The Military Marching Band gets some expert tuition from the Drum Major of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Transport Media

This project is a campaign group to reopen a railway line as part of the SENRUG campaign. 

This reminds me of the Revitalize Rochester project, which saw students successfully campaign for funds that ultimately had a huge economic impact upon where they lived.

You can read more about it here http://www.cityofrochester.gov/article.aspx?id=8589940913

Working With Experts

 A big thanks to Cain Scrimegour who came in and work with the "Was ist das? Qu`es-ce que c`est? Qué es?" project at Northumberlandia yesterday.

Check out Cain's work, he really is a super talented guy. His work has featured on ITV in  Robson Greens Northumberland. 

http://cainscrimgeour.co.uk/

Skyping an expert.

A nice example of using experts and ICT to support learning from the Transport Media project . Students had a Skype Q&A session with Green Party Activist NicK Best with students asking questions about economical and environmental issues relating to the re opening of the Ashington/Blyth Tyne Line.

What has worked well in the Project Launch? How do you know?

Here's a selection from around project fortnight:

1.       The dog agility session, letting kids have a go at ‘crufts’ after practising dog obedience in the morning session

Students are enjoying starting their learning journey in their journals. The project launched with a visit from the deputy head of the school we will be visiting and she introduced the school and project to the students. They had a wealth of questions and were visibly excited about the project. Today, students have conducted their own research into the different types of SEN they will work with when at the school. They have also begun to learn Makaton, to the Mr Tumble ‘Hello Song’. 

Cinema inspiration and talking of personal experiences to get the students ‘hooked.’ They’re highly motivated because they see building the assault course as a challenge and have taken ownership of it.

The transport media team  have been thrilled at the manner in which the Y9 lads have organised themselves. A full class discussion about what would equate to success with this project produced broad areas of interest. The lads then placed themselves into these broad groupings and came up with a mini action plan. The quality of their thinking was really good and they thought laterally too, coming up with ideas we had not thought of. The groupings were fair in number and composition, which was also a bonus. Andrew Soulsby blew me away by suggesting he follow a “producer/director” role, advising some groups and facilitating others. All in all, a really positive start, as the structure worked the way we hoped, but without us having to impose it.

 I was impressed by everyone's commitment - they're all more than happy to 'muck in' and seem fired up by the competitive element & the idea that we're up against other schools, therefore what we produce must be top quality. 


We used Video connect, followed by compare and contrast recycling vs upcycling (students make connections and clarify their definition of upcycling). Literacy taboo allowed students to develop their understanding of key vocabulary, as well as break the ice within their new groupings. During the design session students were able to not only select raw materials, but give justifications as to the wider implications of the project in terms or economic value, artistic creativity and sustainability.

To launch our project we showed news articles/ real stories of people surviving in the wilderness. We then did a continuum line to see wether the students would do that to survive. This seemed to hook the students into the project as well as linking it to the hunger games.