The school year of 2020-2021 certainly went out with a bang not a whimper! Over the final weeks of term pupils enjoyed a range of stimulating activities designed to stretch both body and mind. The Wallace Games for Year 8 ( Friday 18th ) were overseen by House staff ( Miss Frey and Mr Simpson) and featured a series of fun challenges, including team-building exercises. New equipment was purchased for this year’s inaugural Games which doubtless will become an annual competitive event.
Friday 25th June saw Years 8-11 participate in Curriculum in Action Day. Each department in school created a fun learning activity for a particular Year group, lasting approximately one hour. Each Year group enjoyed four activities during the day which built upon specific aspects of individual subjects; Year 10 enjoyed Air Rockets in Physics, the Hogwarts Express in English, built a spaghetti bridge in Technology and tested their knowledge of Music and Film in a tensely contested quiz. Year 8 mastered the famed art of paper folding with Flight in Origami, Year 9 enjoyed Mindcraft and Year 11 (as befitting to their advancing years) had the opportunity to gain some financial acumen with Learn to Earn.
Monday 27th was largely devoted to Pastoral Wellness with a particular focus on resilience and hopefulness. The charity Blesma supports injured former servicemen and women and talks by injured former service personnel were delivered via Zoom. Pupils participated in a Q&A session and discussed adversity, resilience and coping strategies. A further positive mental health activity was when staff discussed the 5 keys to hopeful mindsets with their class sets before creating flags which were displayed during the Colour Run. Earlier this term members of the school’s Executive Council had planted sunflowers as symbols of hope. We believe that a proactive approach to managing positive mental health is very much in keeping with our school ethos and tradition of outstanding pastoral care.
Organiser Mr J Reid said:
“It is a well-established tradition in Wallace to end the school year with beyond the classroom style events. The Covid 19 pandemic impacted this year strongly, ruling out many possible activities but my colleagues rose to the challenge of delivering stimulating, fun in-house activities. It’s great to see the collegiality of the events as staff assist each other in different departments. As ever, I’m grateful to all the teaching staff for their commitment and good humour in meeting the challenge of designing engaging programmes.”
(Monday finished with a Colour Run which is detailed in a separate post.)
Last modified: June 29, 2021
