Over 100 pupils from five of the city’s high schools attended City Academy Norwich on Friday for a day of challenging, fun and interactive learning, at OpenOpportunity’s inaugural ‘Gifted and Talented’ learning day.

The Key Stage 3 students were invited to take time out from their normal timetabled lessons, in order to spend a whole day engaged in hands-on learning in subject areas in which they have already shown great promise.

From science students launching water-powered rockets, to Digital Media students designing new iPhone/iPad apps, and English students adapting Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry through rap, drama and imagery, all of the participants were challenged and engaged in equal measure by the day’s learning projects.

The learning challenges saw students in mixed groups – from City Academy Norwich, Framingham Earl High School, Hellesdon High School, Notre Dame High School and The Hewett School – working on a project in either animation, drama, English, geography, ICT/digital media, maths, photography or science.

Year 8 City Academy Norwich student Chloe Everett, part of the drama project in which students produced short plays inspired by pictures by Avi Gupta, said:
“Today has been really fun and has given me the chance to be creative and work with people that I have never met before.”

David Brunton, Principal, City Academy Norwich, said:
“All of the students responded really positively to the in-depth learning challenges we have seen hosted at the Academy today.  This event has been a great example of what can be achieved by taking a flexible and innovative approach to the curriculum, as well as highlighting the benefits for students of this type of collaboration between like-minded institutions.”

Jim Hudson, Director of the OpenOpportunity partnership, said:
“This has been about giving students the chance to immerse themselves for a whole day in a subject they have shown a talent for, which is a great way to challenge them and stimulate their engagement beyond what is possible within the confines of a normal school lesson.”
“The day has been a great success and OpenOpportunity plans to hold more events like this as part of our on-going work to provide relevant, innovative and engaging learning opportunities for high school students in and around Norwich.”

Notes to editors

OpenOpportunity is a partnership of Secondary Schools and City College Norwich. Over the course of the past 9 years the partnership has developed and run courses for pre and post-16 students in order to widen choices and opportunities available to students. These courses have included A-Levels, Young Apprenticeships and, more recently, Diplomas, BTECs and Foundation Learning programmes.