Two days of College Life...

On 18 and 19 June the Newcastle-under-Lyme College School Liaison Team welcomed 45 Year 10 pupils from The Co-Operative Academy of Stoke-on-Trent for two days experiencing college life.

On day one the pupils got to experience various A Level tasters in; Law, Psychology, Sociology, I.T., Science, Textiles, Dance, Art History and Media Studies.

The pupils enjoyed an introduction to the key concepts in Psychology and Sociology, including social norms, values and the process of socialisation. Susannah Gayle commented; “This session was great! Really active and engaging as well as interactive. It made me want to study it at college.” A number of pupils have mentioned that they didn’t understand what Psychology or Sociology were before this session and now they are thinking of taking it at college!

They were also introduced to the basics of Computer programming with the students eventually able to use the knowledge learned to construct images of trees and rockets using various colours, on each line of the screen. Lewis Brown described this session as “The best lesson today, it was fun, enjoyable and interactive”.

Other comments included Jade Johnson talking about her Theatre Studies session; “This was very entertaining and informative and this is something that I will consider taking at college.”

Simran Iqbal summed the day up; “I really enjoyed my visit to NULC. I think it is an amazing college with great facilities.”

 

On day two the pupils looked forward to experiencing various tasters in vocational subjects that they had chosen. The students were split into their groups and began the first sessions in Photography, Hair & Beauty and Bricklaying. In Photography the students were introduced to the college photography studio and dark room and made a number of black and white photograms each. Amy Pearce said; “Photography was amazing! I learnt so much about developing photographs.”

In the second session the pupils were able to choose between Sport, Fashion and Painting & Decorating. In Fashion the pupils learnt different skills to enable them to produce a shirt that they had designed. In Painting & Decorating the students not only learnt practical skills to produce various designs using different techniques but also went home with the knowledge needed to do their own DIY. Sport included both theory and practical sessions and concluded with a very competitive game of Frisbee!

Future tradesman gain the numerical advantage in new construction project

On the 1st July 2014, NULC and the co-operative academy of Stoke on-Trent embarked on a new project to improve attitudes towards numeracy in pupils seeking a career in Engineering and Construction.

A selected group of 19 Year 10 pupils were put into three separate groups and tasked with designing and producing a bespoke piece of garden furniture, the winning piece would be displayed in the school reception area.

The project was run over 2 full days at NULC’s £6million Skills & Technology Centre, during the build process, the students got to try their hands at Bricklaying, Bench Joinery, Painting & Decorating and Electrical Installation.

NULC Joinery lecturer and Project Coordinator Chris Johnstone set a design brief that involved working out costings for materials, exact measurements for the furniture piece and learning how important numeracy is in the skilled trades.

The pupils worked in small groups and were given a current NULC Construction student to act as mentor during the build. An important aspect of the project was to give the pupils an opportunity to speak to current construction students about how maths is used in further education and how they will use these skills in industry.

After two hard days graft, the pieces were finished and a winner was decided by NULC’s Curriculum Manager for Construction & Engineering Steven Michael. The teams were scored out of 28 for each ‘trade’ for example Electrical, Bricklaying and Painting.

The winning team included pupils: Nathan Jones, Kurtis Davies, Taylor O’Connor, Aqib Mohammed and Dale Willatt.

 

This was the first time that a project has been done in this way before and there are plans to expand the format to include more schools in the future.

 

“The project was excellent, all students were engaged and enjoyed learning new skills. Setting the project brief to include numeracy as we had asked was very important’.
Martin Ebsworth
Head of Science and Technology
The co-operative academy of Stoke on-Trent