For the final week of term, in celebration of the energy and self-discipline QE’s boys have shown in persevering with virtual education, Years 7–9 are being invited to take a break and enjoy some strictly offline activities.
Dubbed Screen-off, Hands-on, the 2020 Junior School Enrichment Week offers boys an array of ‘real-world’ tasks to complete at home.
Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter says: “The boys have done really well to apply themselves to remote learning throughout a long term, so our staff have come up with any number of creative and challenging tasks to make their last week of the year memorable and fun.
“Each department has created exciting subject-related tasks, and boys will have total freedom to create their own Enrichment Week curriculum by choosing which four challenges they want to take on each day.
“They might spend the week making films, creating musical instruments, baking cakes, designing gardens, creating food-art, constructing bird boxes, exploring photography, learning origami, working with ‘tangrams’, writing songs, designing fashion shows, cooking German and French food, camping in their gardens, orienteering… the list goes on!
“The only stipulation is that they record images of their achievements and submit neatly labelled scrapbook-style records to their form blog. In years to come, these will serve as yet another record of the creativity, energy and sense of fun with which our boys met the challenges of the 2020 lockdown,” Mr Bonham-Carter added.
The programme has been designed to ensure all tastes are catered for and includes activities from subjects not taught in Years 7–9 – such as Economics and Sociology – as well as the usual Junior School curriculum subjects.
The challenges are accessed through a dedicated eQE page, with full guidance for the boys on how to complete them. The Art department, for example, is challenging boys to “get creative with the food you have at home and present it in an imaginative, unique and artistic way”. Copiously illustrated with photos and videos, the department’s page includes tips on photography and the preparation of the food. It suggests ways to complete the activity at different levels – easy, intermediate, challenging and ‘the ultimate challenge’ – although boys are also told “you have the option of directing yourself and experimenting in your own creative way”.