Connections in the Rye – Reflecting on the Year 8 Connections Project
Antonius Berghuis, Senior Teacher (Key Stage 3, Curriculum and Assessment) If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is what this Connections Project that we’ve just done was about, what it was like, and how all us kids were occupied the whole time, and all that kind of stuff, and you know what? I actually don’t mind that much telling you all about it, if you want to know the truth.
that would help create our new island nation. There were roles like Media, Island Architects, Economics, and so on. You probably get the point. Some kids even got to be in the Government, if you can believe that. We finished with a big, crazy auction where each island got to bid on assets which would help make our island countries successful. I forgot to mention that, too. Our goal was to In the first place, the Year 8 Connections project was make our island nations as successful as possible. All the where the teachers organised this terrific role-playing Year 8s loved that auction. Everyone was in the Theatre simulation project that ran over near 5 full school days. hollering as the auction went on depending on what was On Monday 6th January, all us Year 8s got told we came won. It was a great day. It really was. from this made-up country that the teacher didn’t even tell us the name of. Then he told us our country got all sort of After that first day, we were back again the next day messed up and had some kind of civil war, and that all and we were sort of inspired right from the start. us kids hopped in these boats that just happened to be Then we had this crazy big break for about 20 days. available and put out to sea as a bunch of refugees like When we came back to get on with our islands, lots of you hear about in the news sometimes. crazy things had happened to our islands and we had to Anyway, so we were supposedly just drifting around in fix all the problems. It was kind of messed up, if you ask the ocean and then this storm came blew us all over the me. place. Then the teacher tells us the killer part – all us Year By Tuesday 28th January, all our work was done. It 8 refugees got split into four groups of about 40 kids each, and each group had been blown onto a separate island was amazing to tell the truth. I still can’t believe how much and we have to start a new civilisation. I don’t usually amazing stuff we created – videos, posters, research, like phony stuff like this but the teacher did a good job of national anthems… It was good quality work, too, if you really want to know. The teachers said they were impressed selling this to us. He really did. and proud of us. And they weren’t being phoney at all - I Each island was different. One island was geographically Scandinavian, another was like the UK, the third was like Greece, and the last was like Thailand. A Geography teacher told us about the islands. I forgot to tell you that. So us kids all scrambled and tried to get organised. It was pretty crazy when I think back on it because we really didn’t know what we were doing, and the teachers were just watching us getting more and more frustrated. Eventually, we figured out what we were doing and we got ourselves into different roles which all that tasks to do
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Bangkok Patana School News
31/01/2020
