This week our young learners became budding young journalists interviewing players from Rushden and Diamonds to find out what it is like to be a professional footballer and how this fits in with their life outside of football.

We saw mixed emotions from the students this week as they displayed a combination of excitement and nervousness at interviewing Jack Ainsley, Michael Corcoron, Nicky McNamara, Aaron O’Connor, Craig Farrell, Curtis Osano, Sam Smith, Dale Roberts, Joe Day, Jake Beecroft and Jack Higgins  from Rushden and Diamonds first team, as well as a prospective future stars in Aynsley McDonald, Callum Earls and Jake Gillingwater from the Rushden and Diamonds Academy. 

All the students showed great maturity when asking the players questions about themselves and the opportunity of talking to the footballers had clearly motivated the students to complete their follow up work of producing a write up of the interviews.  The interview activity and the follow up work proved to be an extremely worthwhile exercise in the improvement of their speaking, listening and writing skills in a very enjoyable way.

Two students from Latimer school attended the official opening of Volleyball England’s National Volleyball training centre. This state of the art Olympic standard Volleyball centre is based at the Kettering Conference Centre. Supporter 2 Reporter (part of Radiowaves: www.radiowaves.co.uk) is a project where youngsters train to be youth sports reporters.

After the official opening and speeches from Volleyball England staff, we watched the Junior National Teams (girls and boys) and GB men’s sitting team (future paraolympians) in training and the reporters interviewed some of their players and officials. They spoke with Maria Bertelli (GB Volleyball player, 65 caps), Dan Hunter (GB Volleyball player who had recently been promoted from youth to senior squad), Leo Trench (Talent spotter, Volleyball England), Robbie Barrett (sitting squad captain) and Rakesh Misuria. (sitting squad player) Matt Rogers, Sitting Volleyball development manager advised the reporters about their questions.

To see the reporter’s blogs, stories and edited interviews, visit: http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/s2rnorthampton

Press release:

The National Volleyball Centre (NVC) will provide top class sports facilities for International athletes and competitions in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. East Midlands Development Agency, Kettering Borough Council and Northampton Enterprise Limited have also provided funding which has helped to create the centre into a top class venue by creating four volleyball courts, new seating areas and a social and educational area. The Kettering Conference Centre has an excellent combination of both conference and indoor sporting facilities with good wheelchair access.

Lisa Wainwright, CEO of Volleyball England expresses her delight on the centre: “We identified within our strategic plan 2009/13 our aspiration to establish a National Centre for training and competition to ensure we can provide top quality facilities and services to our talented athletes and all our educators within the sport.”

Wow!  We have been having so much fun this week at the Study Centre as the young learners became programming technicians for Robolab!  The Robolab software allows pupils to programme a lego built buggy to follow a set of instructions and move in different directions.  The young learners took part in three challanges:

The Conference challenge – the buggy must turn exactly 360 degrees.

The Championship challenge – the buggy must be parked in the parking bay.

The Premiership challenge – the buggy must be parked in the Premiership garage.

All the young learners did fantastically with many completing all three of the challenges!  Well done to you all!

The Games are Coming…

Pass it On is the Playing for Success (PfS) 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games national legacy programme.  In the run up to the Games, Pass it On aims to engage all PfS centres in activities around the Games through a national competition and a resource exchange across regions. This is a unique opportunity for PfS centres to use the Olympics and Paralympics as a key resource to raise standards.

The scheme was launched on Tuesday November 3^rd as balloons were released at PfS Centres across the country. Fifteen students from Newton Road Primary School in

Rushden are pictured with Nicky, a BT volunteer, with their

Balloons outside the RDFC Sports Centre.

Competitions

The series of national competitions, launched at the PfS conference in May, follows the focus areas of literacy in Year 1, numeracy in Year 2 and ICT in Year 3, starting with the task ‘Create a poem inspired by the Olympic and Paralympics Games’. Each year students will be invited to submit entries to their PfS centre where regional judging will take place before national finalists are announced at the PfS conference.

Values Relay

Throughout the regions a relay of resources will take place, each resource or ‘baton’, representing an Olympics and Paralympics Value together with Olympic and Paralympics Heroes’ themes; these provide a resource for the competitions and other work that will develop as an online sharing network of ideas and good practice. Centres will be able to upload their work based on the Values Relay to the Get Set website to gain the individual centre and student LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) recognitions. Over the three years in the run up to the 2012 Games there will be nine Values for nine regions over nine terms.

Aspirations, skills and opportunities

A key aspect of the programme is the involvement of young people. London won the right to host the Games by illustrating what it would bring to our young people in terms of raising aspirations, skills and opportunities. It will be the PfS students who vote for the winners of the competitions who will then become national PfS ambassadors. LOCOG awarded Pass it On the ‘Inspire Mark’ in May 2009 – the first Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to be recognised in this way. Rex Hall Associates leads Pass it On which is being developed and steered by nominated PfS Centre Managers representing every Government Office region, together with a member from the LOCOG education team. This group is leading the Games’ PfS legacy activities regionally by disseminating opportunities and supporting other centres to access resources, enabling and ensuring the development of a national network of good practice.

Guidelines are available on the PfS website

www.playingforsuccessonline.org.uk