On a sunny Friday in June we visited Royal Russell School in Croydon, Surrey to support the school’s Sixth Form staff to deliver a pre-induction for 50 students about to join Year 12. Experienced Future Foundations coaches John Paul and Amrit were the team providing a highly energetic and fun afternoon programme to develop students’ leadership skills and teamwork and increase confidence as they prepared to enter the Sixth Form.
- Build the students’ confidence, initiative, teamwork, pro-activity and commitment towards their vision through working together on team building tasks.
- Enable bonding between students, creating a supportive culture within the Sixth Form.
- Pre-Launch the Sixth Form with a fun and interactive experience which the students will remember
John Paul Metcalf
‘We began the afternoon with a short, sharp and impactful opening plenary to set the tone for the new couple of hours. Amrit used her super singing skills to get the young people out of their comfort zones and I talked about why we there and explored with students what they wanted to achieve.
As it was a beautifully sunny day we headed outside to make the most of the weather and the schools’ beautiful green space. We kicked started with a (fairly challenging!) game of ’21’ as a whole group to tune the students into one another and encourage listening skills. Following that the students were split into four teams to tackle “Raising the bar“, an excuse to encourage therm to start thinking about leadership and what it takes to become great leader.
The young people were pretty switched on and were working well together. “Light bulb” moments came when they realised how important listening is to the act of leadership. We examined the attitudes, skills and resources great leaders have and the students came to the realisation that attitudes are the most important determining factor when it comes to success.
The final experiential activity of the day was Toxic Dump, a fantastic game to test the students’ problem solving and team work skills and an opportunity to put into practice what they had learned within the previous activity.They nailed it, despite the fact that we changed the teams around. You could clearly see how their attitudes were driving them forward to complete the course, with great determination and some healthy competitive spirit on display!
Our closing plenary reiterated how the students ability to take responsibility for the next two years of education would determine how successful they would be personally and academically and a positive attitude would enable them to get the most out of their time at Royal Russell.
In summary it was a great day, with awesome people and some amazing futures ahead.