Excursions and Exchanges

Learning Outside the Classroom

As part of our aim to learn through diversity, we create many opportunities for our students to learn outside the traditional classroom environment. This helps them to develop many personal skills as well as to focus on their academic and cultural learning through real, hands-on experiences. From Grade 6 (age 11-12), where the students go on a day out at the beginning of the year, students take part in a number of long-distance, external learning experiences. These include the following:

Texel

A three day experience for Grade 7 students. The students not only get to know each other, including their new bilingual classmates, but they also get to know the environment of the Netherlands in a practical, cross-curricular way. Many of the Grade 7 teachers accompany the students on this trip.

Outdoor learning

In Grade 8, all students take part in an outdoor learning experience to either England or Maastricht. The aim is to expose students to new experiences as well as local cultures, and to provide new opportunities for activities such as outdoor pursuits and drama.

Spain and France language development

Grade 9 language development trips to Spain and France. Currently students that have chosen French as their modern language option, will travel to France and those studying Spanish will go to Toledo, where they can learn the language first hand as well as share in the culture of the country.

WWI Trip to The Somme

In Grade 10 the whole year group visits The Somme in France, providing a cross-curricular learning experience on the First World War. This trip is the culmination of an extended project, designed to give students a greater awareness of the consequences of conflict. On their return, the students put on a school wide exhibition on the first world war, demonstrating the extent of the cross-curricula activity undertaken by the students.

“Going to the Somme gave us a profound experience of how the immense battles that had been fought there, must have felt. Seeing the graves and the memorials in person was an emotional and humbling moment. It emphasised the toll which the Great War exacted. Coupled with the historical museums and monuments that we visited, the trip provided us with a great contextual understanding of the war itself, something that we could utilise for the World War One exhibition that we put on at school once we returned. ” – Magnus (Grade 10)