Staffordshire Challenge 2010

 

The Staffordshire Challenge is organised by Biddulph High School and Horton Lodge Special School to improve skills, team work and promote inclusion. The Sixth Form are responsible for leading the Challenge and supporting the students from Horton to ensure that everyone is given opportunities to participate in all of the challenges.

 

This is the sixth year that the students of Biddulph High Sixth Form have shown an amazing range of skills and qualities to organise and deliver the annual Staffordshire Challenge Day. This unique event offers students a wide range of opportunities from leading the challenges, to delivering activities, working on a one to one basis with a student from Horton Lodge Special School, leading a team for the day, painting faces or helping the kitchen prepare a picnic for all participants. Whatever the job allocated to the Sixth Form students they never fail to impress the staff from the schools involved or the visiting guests from the local community.

 

A lot of hard work prior to the event from the Sixth Form students lead by Clare Taylor (Biddulph High School) and Jenny Roe (Horton Lodge Special School) ensures that the students are prepared to undertake their role within the event. Y10 art students from Biddulph High school work with the students at Horton to produce team banners and Sixth Form students are briefed on the activities that they will lead, new ways of communicating with each other and the how inclusion can be promoted throughout the day.

 

This year the Sixth Form students were supported by students from Upper Hill High School in Kenya who were visiting the country as part of the Dreams and Teams programme. The 100 students taking part from across the three schools learned some important lessons about co-operation, communication and team work as they negotiated the challenges. This year the team challenges were based around the theme of Superheroes enabling the students to have fun moving hazardous kryptonite, helping Spiderman rescue Jane from the flooding city and saving Wolverine from quick sand! The challenges are designed with accessibility in mind and enable students to develop their confidence, skills and range of movement in a fun and engaging manner.

 

 

Throughout the day the students work in teams to complete the challenges and gain points for the level of inclusion and team work generated during the activities. At the end of the day the points are totalled for the mixed teams of Superman, Catwoman, Spiderman, Storm and Batman. In a closely fought competition it was Batman’s team lead by Rebecca Mahan’s super powers that helped her team conquer the challenges most successfully and finish as eventual team winners.

 

The day culminated in water activities at Rudyard Lake. The volunteer Sixth Form paddlers provided the power for the boats and enabled the students from Horton Lodge to enjoy a cruise around the lake. However the peaceful cruising of the Lake was disturbed by the battle between the boats!  The students enjoyed battling against each other to see who would return to land the wettest; however, I think it was the staff that ended up soaked!

 

Clare Taylor
Assistant Head of Physical Education
T: 01782 523977

E: taylorpe@biddulph.staffs.sch.uk