Are you wondering how to embed enrichment into school life? If so, Emma Laxton, head of science at St Augustine Academy in Maidstone, has sent us this fabulous blog with advice and top tips!
Here at St Augustine, enrichment is an important part of academy life. We have embedded it within the standard teaching day, students take part in enrichment on a Friday afternoon each week. We believe that enrichment is key to developing well-rounded students as this develops a range of soft skills such as communication, teamwork, leadership, respect for each other, perseverance, resilience confidence, hard work, self-belief as well as key skills for future employment and life.
As teachers delivering enrichment we are able to see the students succeeding, enjoying and participating in an activity they have an interest in. It also allows us to see the students in a different light to our usual interactions in class, which allows the development of a good rapport with the them through a shared interest. This can then be bought back into the curriculum time. We have found this improves student-teacher relationships that, in turn, has a positive impact in the classroom.
The program we run allows students to experience a range of activities that they would not usually have access to as part of the statutory curriculum, or in their personal lives. Being part of the school day also means that all students have the opportunity to benefit and engage with the program.
It covers a range of different activities from a range of different areas; STEM, sports, games, creative and classics. Activities include STEM Club, science club, coding, english through the ages, creative writing, horse riding, rookie lifeguard, board games, maths challenge, musical theatre, extreme adventure, gardening, environmental club and ukulele. These are run by school staff who are encouraged to run enrichment in an area they have an interest in, such as a science teacher running rookie lifeguard. This means that the teacher’s enthusiasm is passed across in the activity to the students. We also have offsite activities such as horse riding and also external coaches and trainers coming to site.
It is important, as coordinators running enrichment, that we have time allocated to oversee the running of the program as there is a lot of organisation and liaison with a range of stakeholders. We run a termly program, so each term the students can choose a new activity, which means we have to promote activities to students, collect choices and allocate activities.
This also means that we can change the range of activities each term, keeping the carousel fresh and interesting. For example, this week we have used our allocated time to meet with a judo instructor and discuss facilities and risk assessment; conducted site visits to a gymnastics gym and researched the possibility of running swimming lessons. The time is also used to ensure that we can resource each activity correctly so staff can deliver an engaging program, such as ordering bat boxes and butterfly gardens for environmental club, as well as maintaining resources for different sessions.
We have also had time to develop ideas for enrichment based on our STEM careers events, where we would like to use STEM Ambassadors within the enrichment program to link the activities to careers. We also provide material for publicity of enrichment such as photographs on the school Twitter feed and PowerPoints of the activities for the mentors. Without the time allocated we would find it hard to organise, plan and deliver a program with should a wide range of activities, currently around 30 activities each term.
Tips for organising an impactful enrichment:
- Carry out a student survey of activities they would like to see
- Be creative
- Promote activities
- Be very organised
- Have a clear outcome
- Get all staff involved, including SLT!
- Keep activities fresh