Spring Term
Careers Week
Tech in Sports Careers
Year 7 children joined an online lesson all about technology in sport. It was an interactive lesson where the children learnt about then many careers in sport. It was a fascinating lesson! Nicki Phillips, who is a director of digital transformation & IT, shared her interests and career path.
Worcestershire Skills Show
As part of Careers week, children in Year 7 attended the Worcestershire Skills show on Wednesday. The Worcestershire Skills Show provided the children with an early understanding of what businesses are looking for in their future employees and how their education can help them to develop these skills and qualifications. They had an excellent time trying out the demonstrations and challenges.
Westacre's Whole School Careers Day
On Tuesday 5th March, Westacre held their annual careers day. The aims of the day were to
1. show women in high level of responsibility
2. show male and female workers breaking gender stereotypes
3. show a range of different sectors
4. increase understanding about careers paths
5. enthuse the children about a potential career and offer them a starting goal.
We had many visitors into school who worked with small groups to discuss their careers, offered advice, and delivered a short task for the children to complete. These sessions were thoroughly enjoyed by the children and the there was an excitable buzz around school. Many thanks must go to all of these visitors who gave up their time to attend the careers day: Joe & Joe (from Stantech), Ollie, Karl, Ian, Katrina & Ben (police), Lucy & David (Howmet Aerospace), Amelia, Isabel & Ben (Mazak), Kirstyn (Medtroincs), Kathleen (Pet Therapy), Parveel (Digital Marketing Tarmac), and Russel (child safety at Ofcom).
Special lessons were created for the children to find out about a range of Careers and they even got to find out about their personality 'animal', what is says about them and potential career paths that would suit them.
Below are some photos of the day.
Leo & Lily visit Arena Flowers
On Wednesday the 17th January, Lilly and Leo were selected to be part of a panel at Arena Online. They were asked for their views and were representing the future generation. Here is an account of their day.
First off when we arrived, they took us for a tour of Arena Online. We got to look at the warehouse, the flower experiment room, the printing room and the offices. It was really interesting to see the different amount of jobs available there. My favourite part of the tour (Lilly) was going in the flower experiment room. The smell was just amazing – I could live in there. My favourite part (Leo) was going into the big fridge. They keep the flower stems in there so they stay fresh for longer!
Next we made our way into the board room to take part in the SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). There were at least 15 people in total from all over the business giving their input for the SWOT analysis. We then separated into small groups and given targets to discuss. We were invited to give our opinions and be the voice of the next generation. In the groups we discussed targets based on Net Zero, eco-friendlier packaging, solar panel energy, deliveries and water systems. On the screen in the room, we use Jamboard to set a metric (the percent of what you want to achieve), the target year (a goal of when we want it implemented) and then whether there would be a high, medium or low financial and staffing implication.
One of the ideas that I (Leo) brought to the table was that Arena could use electric vehicles to collect packaging from customers that could be reused: in particular, the plastic from the packaging.
Another idea that I (Lilly) came up with was to have a water system at Arena, where there were pipes connected to the roof, that lead into big barrels, to collect the rainwater. This water could be reused to water the flowers and plants.
At the end of the meeting we came back together as a big group to put our targets on one big timeline. We were also given 2 plants (called Juno!) from their sister company Patch, to put in our school.
We really enjoyed it and we learned a lot of interesting facts about the environment and how businesses run. I (Leo) would love to work at Arena and have an apprenticeship there – especially working with Chris in the Warehouse.
We would love to go back there in the summer. It was an amazing opportunity and we both loved it. Thank you Jess for hosting us.
Junior Duke
Junior Duke has started this term after school for Year 5 children.
Taken from the Junior Duke website...
In a busy world it's too easy to do things for children, but when should they begin to take responsibility for themselves?
Introducing the Junior Duke, the world's leading life skills Award with nine levels for children aged 5-13.
This Award has been running in schools since 2007 and has helped thousands of children aged 5 to 13 to realise their abilities and, for some, to discover new talents and passions.
Children in the Junior Duke Awards complete a range of personal challenges including First Aid, learning to swim, cookery, domestic challenges, caring for others, puncture repair, washing the car, climbing a hill whilst carrying your own rucksack, polishing your shoes, making a sandwich, reading The Broons, making a presentation, playing Monopoly or chess and many other fun things!
These skills we hope will give the children valuable skills ready for the working world - of even a new passion and therefore career to pursue!
An assembly from Severn Trent
Rob from Severn Trent visited us to deliver an assembly all about sewage! It was actually very fascinating and we learnt loads to share with our families. After the assembly, we discussed the many jobs that were spoken about in Severn Trent and how we thought we might be able to get into that job if we wanted too.
A visit to Parliament and a visit from Nigel Huddleston
This week, Westacre MPs were thrilled to visit the Houses of Parliament in London.
We were thrilled for our application to be accepted and set off (rather early!) to London to visit the historic Palace of Westminster. We had a tour of the palace, including Westminster Hall (where Her Majesty the Queen lay in state), the Houses of Commons and Lords and seeing so many familiar sights. Both houses were sitting during our day, so it was fascinating to see Block Rod, many Lords and Baronesses as well as artwork, plaques and architecture from over 1000 years ago!
We then went to the education centre and had a discussion of fairness, voting, democracy and heard the story of the Suffragettes. After that, we met with our local MP (Nigel Huddleston) who answered questions and talked to us about his job at Parliament.
We had a fabulous day!