Events

Sports College World Cup Fever!

The PE department at Callington Community College have been busy hosting a collapsed curriculum day to support learning within a vertical age setting. Learners were organised into thirty two classes which represented the thirty two countries entered into this years FIFA World Cup hosted in South Africa. Students in each country represented learners from year 7, 8, 9 and 10.

The day itself gave the opportunity to explore ‘House' systems; eight countries had been brought together to represent a house; there were a total of four houses named after four areas within South Africa (Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town), Learners throughout the day engaged in various cross curricular activities to collect as many house points as they could; the days aspiration were to build cohesion between year groups and subject areas.

Cassie Langead, an English teacher at the college, said "I had a group of 13 students and by the end of the day, found it almost impossible to differentiate between the students in terms of effort. We were amazed at how well they came together and forged strong relationships between different age groups during the day. I spoke to several students throughout the day regarding their thoughts on the school introducing a vertical system. They were incredibly positive about the idea."

Students selected various roles on the day from being a leader; a foreign referee; a football player; coach; sports media writer; translator; maths statistician/analyst; sports nutritionist; holiday representative at various destinations and so on. The day encased at least seven different subjects all pulling together to celebrate learning and internationalism through football.

Kate Harrison-Rendle said "The day has been spectacular, students and teachers have been engrossed in vertical learning environments. Students obviously feel  safe, relaxed and excited about working with new people from different year groups, the college has really pulled together creating a ‘family' feel.  The PE department has worked tremendously hard alongside other departments to use sport as a vehicle for learning.  Hosting the exact replica of the Football World Cup tournament was so exciting for both teachers and students - It is great to see students with their teachers striving to compete for their houses and teams."

The World Cup hugely links to a global initiative to get education for every child around the world, the ‘1Goal ‘campaign is being headed up by world leaders and role models such as Rio Ferdinand. The whole college explored issues around the lack of education in poorer countries as well as the propaganda behind the scenes in South Africa with support from our citizenship department. Learners have signed a petition and have been busy creating and knitting the scarfs to send to the Prime Minister to campaign for all children to have the right to Education. Check out www.1goal.com

At the end of the day the whole college was brought together to celebrate the success of the day, learning outcomes were displayed for all to see in country areas and medals were awarded to all countries who qualified in 1^st,  2^nd,3^rd and 4^th position and the winning house ‘Cape Town' was  awarded with a World Cup trophy and medals. The days aim was to be an unforgettable, exciting and a new learning experience that brought students together in a competitive but cohesive way, the day did just that and was very successful.